Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland (07-30-13)

Western Brook Pond Waterfall

In between rain drops, we've managed to explore a fairly good portion of Gros Morne (Large Mountain Standing Alone) National Park, here on Newfoundland.  One of the perks of all the rain has been that the waterfalls sure do look great!

Here’s a synopsis of our outings:

Our first major hike was to Green Gardens. This is a 7 mile hike that takes you to bluffs, overlooking the coast.  Very pretty views, and there are steps that lead down to a beach.  It was a fun, but tiring hike, with about 1000 ft of elevation gain.

Again, very few switchbacks.  When it gets steep, they put stairs in instead.
 

After killing our leg muscles on that outing, we had to give ourselves a little break, so we spent the rest of the day driving around looking at the scenery and the little towns.

The Western Brook Pond boat tour is unique to this area. To get to the boat, you have to walk about 2 miles.  The trail has interpretive signs along the way, making it more interesting.

Once we arrived at the boat, the tour took us into Western Brook Pond, which used to be a fjord. So why isn’t it a fjord anymore? Technically, a fjord is an inlet of a sea, which was glacially created, therefore it contains salt water. 

Western Brook Pond is no longer connected to the sea, and fresh water has long since taken over the salt water, so it is now considered to be a pond.   As we drove deep into the pond, we could really visualize a glacier cutting this gouge into the rock.

Along the way, we passed by what’s known as a hanging valley.  A smaller glacier cut this valley about half the depth of the pond.

To give you an idea of the height of the surrounding rock walls, there is a tour boat in this picture, but it’s barely visible.

Here’s a closer look:

There are three tour boats, small, medium, and large, holding anywhere from 30-80 or so people.  Since we had to hike there, clearly there is no road, so the boats had to be brought there in a different way. One was brought in by helicopter in 5 pieces and then assembled on site.  The smallest was dragged over the bog on a sled, during the winter. The third one was dragged over the bog in multiple pieces, then assembled.  Hope these boats last a long time!!

The morning tours are less expensive (no one wants to be on a trail hiking by 8:30 am??) so that’s the one we took. We were extremely glad we were one of the first ones on the boat, so we could sit up on deck, where we would have a clear view of our surroundings.  I’m not sure I would have been happy down in the cabin.

Anyway, we had the afternoon free so we went for a geology lesson at Green Point. Describing it here won’t do it justice, I think, but it was, to me, absolutely spooky and fascinating to see. We timed our visit to coincide with the arrival of the resident geologist which was critical for figuring out what we were looking at!

When I looked down, I saw thousands of thin layers of something, but it was perpendicular to the ground, and so didn’t make much sense.  It almost looked man made.

When we walked further, we could see the same basic layers, but now they were sticking out of the ground and at an angle.  Each of the layers is a layer of sediment (shale) that settled on the ocean floor over the course of 500 million years. Eventually, the collision of two tectonic plates forced the old ocean floor upwards and onto its side.







The layers of shale (the mud on the ocean bottom) are interrupted by layers of limestone.  Although each layer of shale took hundreds of years to be created, the layers of limestone were created almost instantly, by sediment from earthquakes.  Scientists can determine how many earthquakes took place in any given era by “reading” the layers.










Seeing  the ocean floor tipped on its side, spanning hundreds of feet was cool- I wish I could have backed up to get a better shot, but unfortunately, the ocean is still there, and I didn’t have a boat!

Green Point, Gros Morne NP

We had planned to hike up to the top of Gros Morne Mountain, but its a 10 mile,  very strenuous hike that should only be done in good weather, and the weather forecast is calling for rain.  Too dangerous to head up there, so we’ll try to get back this way after visiting St. Johns.  We have booked campgrounds for the next 8 nights, and for the first 5, we won’t have any Wi-Fi, so I’ll hurry up and post this while I can!

Vikings and Labrador (07-28-13)

We left Gros Morne early in the morning and headed north, towards the town of St. Anthony’s.  Our first destination, L'Anse aux Meadows was about a 4 hour drive. 

 

L’Anse aux Meadows is the archeological site of a very early (1000 A.D.) Viking settlement.  The site was discovered in 1960 when a Norwegian explorer realized there might be a settlement in this area after reading some old Norse Sagas.

The age of this site makes it the earliest known European settlement in North America, predating Columbus by almost 500 years.

The tour was in two parts- the first one showing the actual archeological site where the original Viking buildings stood, and the second part was a living history area in reconstructed buildings.

There was a lot to be learned in the museum as well. For instance, we refer to the Viking age in European history, but a Viking was, specifically, a raider or pirate, and most Norse people of that time were traders and explorers.  Still, we use the term, just as we use the term “space age” to denote recent history, but not many people are actually astronauts.

…Adventures in Labrador…

The trip to Labrador was….well, it was a lot of things.  Stressful, frustrating, wet (it rained the entire time we were there) and a bunch of other adjectives too.  But at least we can take it off our bucket list!

Our original idea was to spend the night in St. Anthony’s on Newfoundland, then take the ferry over to Labrador for the day, just to say we went.  Instead, we finished touring L’Anse aux Meadows early enough that we had time to drive to the ferry and catch the last one to Labrador.  Once we had a hotel reservation, we headed for the ferry terminal. If you don’t have a ferry reservation, it’s first come/first served for the 1.5 hour trip. After purchasing  tickets for ourselves and one truck, we waited for an hour or so and did manage to get on the ferry.

By this time it was getting late.  Sort of.  We found out that we would actually land in Quebec, where the time is an hour and a half earlier.  Great!  Now instead of having a pretty late dinner, we’d have an early dinner. Nope.

Once we landed, we drove the 15 minutes to our hotel in L’Anse au Clair (L’Anse means cove, FYI) and by then we were in Labrador, not Quebec, and we were back on Newfoundland time- even though most of Labrador is in yet another time zone.  Anyway, we figured we wouldn't be there long enough to worry about figuring it out!

After checking in at the hotel, we headed to the hotel restaurant.  I’m not even sure there is a second restaurant in town- many of the towns in Newfoundland don’t have restaurants, and many only have a convenience store, not a full grocery store, and Labrador is more remote than Newfoundland. 

The dining room was occupied by people on a bus tour, so we had to wait quite a while for dinner, but that was fine.  Of course, when we went down for breakfast in the morning, the same people were eating breakfast. No big deal, but it seemed like we kept bumping into this bus tour everywhere we went!

We tried to go online and book the return trip on the ferry, and ran into a potential glitch.  The woman who sold us our ticket over from Newfoundland didn't actually sell us the correct ticket.  Apparently, any truck over 3/4 ton is considered to be a commercial vehicle. That would be us.  Unfortunately, all the commercial spots on the ferry are already taken..for the next 3 days! Oops. 

At that point, there was nothing we could do except try to go on standby again so we spent the morning driving along the coast of Labrador.  We couldn't see very much because it was raining.

We made it as far as the small town of Red Bay, where they have a pretty interesting whale exhibit, but we only had 20 minutes to look around before we needed to head back to get in line for the ferry.

We made a quick stop at the Visitor Center, where we were told we’d better get to the ferry ASAP since on Saturdays the standby line can be long. So off we run, to the ferry office, where we waited for 45 minutes for them to open.  But we had our spot in line!  Paul, being very clever, had brought the receipt from the previous trip with him. When she asked us what type of vehicle we have, and Paul said “ a truck” she asked how big a truck and he just handed her the other receipt.  “Well” she said, “If you came over non-commercial, I guess you can go back non-commercial.” Whew!

Of course, by now the wind was whipping the rain around, and the seas were looking pretty rough.  We figured we could handle it for the short hour and a half ride, but since we weren't sure we’d be able to actually eat on the ferry, we ate whatever we could find in the truck before we got on it.  It turned out to be fine- the wind was not from a direction that would affect the ferry much.

The 4 hour drive back to the trailer was accomplished almost completely in the rain.  Dinner time arrived halfway through the drive, so we detoured a little, over to Port au Choix, because it’s a big enough town to have restaurant options. We were glad we did- this restaurant had some of the best food we've had in a long time!  We picked it the old fashioned way- it had a parking lot full of cars.

The delay caused us to finish our drive in the dark, something you don’t really want to do on Newfoundland- there’s one moose for every 6 people on the island.  There are several things about moose that make an encounter with them while driving at night an unhappy event.  First, they are hard to see- they are dark brown, and are so tall, their eyes are not usually caught by a car’s headlights, plus they don’t tend to stare at cars, like deer do. Second, they have long legs and big bodies, so if you hit them with the car, you knock their legs out from under them, and their bodies come flying through the windshield.  Then, there’s their size.  If they do come flying through the windshield, you lose.  Lucky for us there was a big rig in front of us most of the way, and we didn't see any critters on the side of the road!

New Found Land (07-24-13)

      Putting all of our worldly possessions, not to mention the cat, in the belly of a huge ferry, and shoving off on a 6 hour trip was a little unsettling for me.  At least until I got on the ship.  Once the rig, and the cat, were settled, I enjoyed the trip over from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland.  It actually made me want to take a cruise again.  We had paid a little extra to get assigned seating, and felt that it was worth the extra $10 each to have a seat that reclines, and more room to stretch out. Dozer got to stay in the rig, so he had access to his kitty litter, and no one to bother him.

We were lucky that the weather held, since 50 mph winds were predicted for the evening, after we arrived in Newfoundland. 

Once we were off the ferry, it was a half hour drive to the RV park where we had reservations.  All told, the trip took us 9 hours.  We were pretty tired, considering we didn’t really DO anything.

The next day we were up and running, trying to see as much as we could in a short amount of time.  We started by hiking the Starlite Trail- a trail that heads up a mountain.  And I mean straight up.  Apparently they never heard of switchbacks here, so the trail is pretty much a straight line up the hill, instead of zigzagging back and forth to make it easier.

By the time we reached the top, the wind was whipping, and the fog/clouds were rolling in, so we didn’t linger too long. 

Once we got back down the hill we took the scenic coastal road to Rose Blanche, a nearby coastal community. Unfortunately, the fog really did hinder our view of our surroundings, but still, we could see some interesting scenery.

Newfoundland is known as “The Rock” for good reason.  There is very little soil on the island, creating a very unique look to the landscape.

After two nights in Port Aux Basque, the town nearest the ferry terminal, we have moved up to Rocky Harbor, just outside Gros Morne National Park.  It was a fairly long drive to get here- and as it turns out, we are leaving again in the morning.  Gros Morne is really high on our list of places we want to explore- unfortunately the weather forecast calls for rain for the next 3 days.  So we are leaving the rig here and are headed to St. Anthony, on the tip of Newfoundland.  From there we’ll take a day trip over to Labrador, just to say we went there, and spend some time exploring that area before heading back to Gros Morne. Hopefully by then the weather will have cleared up.

The RV park that we are staying in is in the middle of re-doing their Wi-Fi, and as a result, they have no internet access to offer us.  We “borrowed” someone else’s Wi-Fi but now not even that is working, so I have no idea if I will be able to post this, or if I will be able to get my pictures to post.

Bras d’Or Lake (07-21-13)

Pronounced B’Door Lake, the lake is really an inland sea, with part fresh water and part salt water.  We moved over to the lake, and the town of Baddeck (Ba-DECK) to explore the other half of the Cabot Trail.

We took one day and drove around the island until we pretty much reached the point where we had left off while exploring from the other side.  There are quite a few small fishing villages along the way, but not much else.  A few restaurants, I guess,  and of course some gift shops. 




We were originally going to stop and hike, but decided that it would be a long ride to get to the tip of the island and we might run out of time- so we decided to leave the hike till another day- bad idea, I guess, since it never happened.


We stopped at one of the several beachy areas, and while Paul wandered around looking for sea glass, I set the camera on burst mode and tried to get pictures of the Northern Gannet.

This white bird with black tipped wings, nests on nearby islands, and is a lot of fun to watch.  They soar above the water, and when they see a fish below the surface, they literally dive bomb down into the water.

They fold their wings completely back when they dive. It’s really hard to get a picture because a) they don’t soar too close to the shore, and b) I can’t actually see them through the viewfinder, so I just point the camera where they might be headed, and hope for the best.  I didn’t do too well getting pictures, but it was fun to watch them. You’d have to click on this picture to really see the bird.

“A Dead Man Tells No Tales” – Alexander Graham Bell

Baddeck was also home to Alexander Graham Bell, so we visited the Bell Museum.  Quite handy that it’s a National Historic Place, so our National Park pass got us in for free. By the way, the quote refers to the fact that while testing airplanes, Bell wanted planes that could land on water, so that when/if they crashed, the pilot would survive.  I thought there was some interesting information in the museum, but it was presented in a very dry and uninteresting way.  Although he is obviously known for inventing the telephone, (he gave all but 10 of his shares of Bell Telephone stock to his wife as a wedding present), he had numerous other inventions, and was a founding member of The National Geographic Society.


With the temperatures soaring yet again, hiking came off the “to do” list.  We headed instead to the Highland Village Museum.  With only 3 cars in the parking lot, we were a little skeptical, but went ahead anyway.
 

This is a Living History Museum detailing the lives of Scottish immigrants, from before they left Scotland, until the early 1900s.  Most of the buildings are original. This interpreter did a fabulous job of describing the conditions in Scotland that led whole families to leave the country.  I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with her, even the fact that she sometimes said things in Gaelic, then translated to English.

The afternoon temperature reached 90+ degrees so we elected to take a sail on the Amoeba, a small sailboat that does a 1.5 hour tour of the harbor area.  It was a little cooler on the water, which was very nice indeed!

The captain had a great sense of humor, even pulling out a Sailing for Dummies book to “look something up”, as we got underway.  He had great local knowledge and pointed out things like Alexander Graham Bell’s estate. 

 

   My favorite part, though, was the eagles!
He had fish to toss overboard for the eagles to get, so we got close up views of the birds swooping down and grabbing their treat.  Once again, it was practically impossible to get pictures of them grabbing the fish, with the boat moving and the sun shining, but I did the best I could.

He said that of course, the eagles recognize the boat, and watch for him to toss something for them.  One day, on his first day back from the Caribbean, he didn't have any fish to throw, but they circled the boat, waiting, so he tossed them a piece of pizza.  They seemed happy with it.

I did get a few decent pictures of the birds soaring directly over our head.


















We've now moved on to Sydney, Nova Scotia. where we’ll spend only one night.  Tomorrow we board the ferry to Newfoundland, and you’d think we were headed to a different planet.  We went to the liquor store, Wal-Mart , two grocery stores, the auto parts store and fueled up the truck.  We could probably live for 3 months with the amount of food we have!

Four Years And Counting (July 20, 2009-July 20, 2013)

leaving the house in 2009

Four years ago Paul and I made the decision to sell our house, buy an RV, and explore the country.

Our original idea  was to travel for a year or so, to see how we like the full-time lifestyle.  If we didn't like it, we figured we’d look along the way for a place we might like to live, since we didn't see a compelling reason to stay in Michigan. But, as it happens, we've discovered that we love this lifestyle, and now we have no specific idea on when we might stop traveling.  For us, the two Full timer mottoes really hold true:

“Home Is Where We Park It”

“House-less, not Homeless”

Our 5th wheel really has become our home- as Paul says- once we come inside and close the door- we’re home, no matter what town we happen to be in.  And sadly, too often we forget where we are!

Some things about our life are different than I expected them to be. 

I thought we’d use the boat a lot, and we don’t.  We pull it out once in a while but that’s about it.

Experienced full-timers told us we’d soon slow down and not move as often.  New full-timers tend to travel in what we call “vacation” mode, rushing from place to place, trying to see everything. So, I thought that after a year or thereabouts, we would slow down, like most others do.  But we haven’t.  Even during the winter, we rarely stay in one spot for more than a week or so.  It seems like the only time we stay someplace longer, it’s because we are visiting friends or family. 

I thought I would brush up on  my Spanish, and I haven’t.  I think I looked at it twice.

That really is the crux of it.  We have learned what we like and don’t like and are lucky enough at this stage in our life that we are able to indulge ourselves and do exactly what we want.  Apparently I don’t care enough about Spanish to spend the time to learn it again. Apparently I don’t like geocaching, because although it seems a perfect fit for our lifestyle,we don’t do it.

There are challenges along the way, of course.  Every once in a while, we get into trouble because we only receive our mail every 6 weeks or so. That can be annoying- one time, because of a mail delay, we found out that Michigan had revoked our drivers licenses. We got the warning that they were going to do it, and the notice that they had done it, in the same batch of mail.  Oops. Figuring out where and when we can have things shipped to us is also a challenge..

  Not having consistent medical  care in our lives is causing me some anxiety.  We are both healthy, luckily, so it hasn't been a huge issue yet, but it’s one of those things that we are aware of.  At some point, we may need to make adjustments to our travels because of that. On the plus side, if either of us has a serious medical issue, we can go anywhere in the country to get treatment.

One of the biggest day to day challenges is the attempt to stay physically fit.  Yes, we hike, and we love to do it, but there are a lot of places where it just isn't possible. Plus, hiking does nothing for upper body strength.  We have all the “tools” to do a reasonably decent work out, we just don’t have the ambition to actually do it. It was much easier to just go to the gym 4 times a week.

There are things about this lifestyle that I really enjoy- some of them have come as a complete surprise to me.  For instance, I've never been a huge history fanatic, but I have really enjoyed learning about the history of our country, and piecing together the timeline of its development, as we visit each area.

I am happiest, it seems, in our National Parks.  Before we went on the road, I hadn't spent much time in them, and now I realize that they were made into parks for a reason- they have something incredible to see and experience!

Most of the time I love the fact that we don’t know where we will be next week.  What I love more though, is that if I want to know where we’ll be next week, I can just make reservations in advance.  Problem solved.  We, like most full-timers, make our plans in chalk, or Jell-O. Not very strong, and easily erased, but we do have what Paul and I call “bookends”- reservations that are made pretty far in advance, that we need to keep.  Our next bookend is September, in Michigan, for doctor appointments.  Until then, we’ll meander around.

Dozer, at the ripe old age of 10, has learned to adjust to life on the road. He’s adapted to the point that instead of sitting outside locked up in a cage…

  …he gets to explore new areas on a leash.

Dozer's explorations

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One of the things we “gave up” when we went on the road is our friends.  But then, anytime you move, you give up most of your friends.  What’s really awesome is that we have made a lot of new friends since we went on the road.  These are people that enjoy the same lifestyle we do, so we have something in common right from the get-go.

  And then there are the people who, once you've met them, will be your friend for life.  We are lucky enough to have those kinds of friends.  Some we met before the road…(at age 3)

some we have met while on the road…

 

One of the perks of our lifestyle has been that we actually get to see family more often than we did while living in Michigan. We travel from my family in Boston to his brother in California, stopping by Paul’s mom’s every time we pass through Texas.

We supplement our visits to the kids by either flying to see them, or flying them to see us!

 

A lot of people are curious about our lifestyle, and many say they are envious (although I don’t think they really are).  Many people think we’re a little nuts.  I will say, this lifestyle is not for everyone.  If you have a partner, you have to be best friends and able to live in a small space together.  That’s really the only “must have” that I can think of. Anything else can be adjusted to suit you. If you don’t want to travel a lot, stay in one spot.  If you get nervous not knowing where you’ll be, make reservations.  If you don’t want to sell  everything you own, put it in storage until you decide what to do (some of our stuff is still in storage).  If you need to keep costs down, volunteer in a national park, or work camp.  If you aren’t sure you’ll love the lifestyle, have an exit plan. Ok, I was wrong, having an exit plan is the second “must have”.

There are two questions that we get asked with amazing frequency:

First:  How do you get your mail?? Easy, since everything is done online these days, there isn't much mail to get.  The rest goes to a mail forwarding service, who ships it to us whenever and wherever we want.  The second question is tougher to answer :

Where is your favorite place so far?

Paul has gotten to the point that he is consistent with his answer-Yosemite National Park.

I usually say “any national park, with my favorites being Yosemite, Yellowstone and Big Bend”. 

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Paul and I play a game with each other every once in a while, asking the question “If we had to settle somewhere right now where would it be?”  Answer: Arizona.

So, anyway, here are a few numbers from our last 4 years of full timing. 

We started with one plan- to spend as long as we wanted touring the country in our 5th wheel.  To prepare for this, we sold one house and one boat, had two garage sales, and made countless trips to Goodwill.

We have driven two trucks 106,115 miles and towed three trailers 48,541 miles, using  five GPS’s to guide us.

We have visited 25 national parks, 38 states and two countries spending $26,624 on fuel to get there.

We've stayed in 258 campgrounds and met hundreds of people living the same lifestyle as us and Zero of them are doing it in exactly the same way we are.

We've endured temperatures ranging from 9° to 108°.

Dozer has caught three mice in the trailer, and one baby squirrel that he tried to bring into the trailer. 

We've seen three different primary care doctors, three different dentists, two veterinarians, and dealt with one broken bone.

And, of course, you are reading this because I have written 355 posts on my blog, and I choose the pictures from my 8.7 gigabytes of photos.