Goodbye, Newfoundland! (08-14-13)

 

Well, after three weeks on Newfoundland (it’s pronounced NewfunLAND by the way), it was time to take the ferry back to Nova Scotia. Naturally this involved getting up before dawn, much like taking an early flight.

  




At that time of the morning you need to keep a sharp eye out for moose along the road- luckily there didn’t seem to be any out and about.











Into the belly of the beast we go, along with a dozen or so other RVs, numerous cars and motorcycles, and lots of 18 wheelers!










We have to arrive 2 hours before departure, at which point they line the vehicles up outside.  After we wait for about an hour,  they start loading the vehicles.  It’s very efficient, actually.  Once you leave your vehicle on one of the 3 garage levels in the ferry, you aren’t allowed to go back down to the garage.







We had an uneventful 7 hour crossing.  Pretty boring.  Paul read a book and I played games on my ipad and wandered around the ship. Dozer stayed in the trailer.  I’m pretty sure he slept all day.

Before we left Newfoundland, here’s what we did:

   We drove all the way over to Gros Morne National Park, where we spent one day just hanging around, not doing much at all. The weather was not good enough to hike to the top of the mountain so we made the plan to do that the following day.

In the meantime, it looked like it would be a nice sunset, so we drove out to the nearby cove to wait for it.  

The wind was really whipping, so the waves were bigger than usual.










Eventually the sky turned bright pink.

 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling well the next day and there was no way I was going to hike, so Paul went by himself.  It was a 9 mile hike with over 2000 feet of elevation gain, and of course he said it was awesome! He even saw a moose along the trail.

I was glad he went without me, and glad I got to stay home and do nothing all day, but I was definitely jealous when I heard about the hike.  His cell phone takes a pretty good picture.  The view was obviously spectacular!

  That night was one of the best nights to see the Perseid  meteor shower, so at 11:30 pm, we jumped into the truck and drove out of town to find a dark spot. 

We parked in a parking lot and just as our eyes were getting accustomed to the dark, a car pulled in next to us, with his lights on, of course.  I was a little concerned as to why someone would pull right up to us, but it turns out it was a ranger, just checking the parking lots to make sure people aren’t camping illegally.  We assured him we just wanted to see the meteors.

We each saw a couple of dozen meteors-some were bright, others not so bright.  I love taking pictures of stars, unfortunately I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get a good shot with my new camera, and all of the decent pictures were taken with my old one.  I brought it with me because I know it takes good star shots!  Too bad I didn’t get a good picture of a meteor, but its annoying to everyone to have the light from a camera on all the time, so I didn’t want to take too many.


On the drive home, which was done verrrrrry slowly, we saw two moose on the side of the road.  Those suckers sure are hard to see at night!
So now here we are back in Sydney, Nova Scotia, where we’ll spend a few days exploring this area.

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!