This post is the second of a series drawn from a trip to Newfoundland
which my husband Massi and I made way back in 2006.
For me, it was a return trip, but for Massi it was a first visit.
I've tried to confine myself in these blog posts to
information which will be useful and not outdated by 2019.
On my first visit to Newfoundland, back in the 1990s, I badly underestimated the size of the place. I tried to drive from St. John's all the way to Corner Brook on the west coast, after arriving at St. John's airport around noon. Daylight ran out on me before I got very far past Grand Falls, and I had a white-knuckle drive in the dark, hanging onto the tail of a transport truck the rest of the way. Why, you ask? The island of Newfoundland is the worst place in the world to have a collision on the highway with a moose.
Moose were introduced to the island back in the day, when people didn't understand the checks and balances of nature. With no natural predators, the moose population has multiplied mightily. These animals may be relatives of the deer, and herbivores, but they are massive -- full-grown adult moose can easily weigh a ton. A collision with a car at highway speed will certainly kill the moose, but the animal will probably come right down on top of the car and kill the occupants as well. In a typical year, there will be hundreds of moose/vehicle collisions in the island of Newfoundland.
Just the year before I took that first trip, three people had died in moose/car collisions right near my home in Elliot Lake, Ontario -- and just before that transport truck came along west of Grand Falls I had seen two moose in 10 minutes by the roadside in the dusk. I wasn't taking any chances.
These two internet photos will give you the idea. For all their size, moose can run very quickly and can pop out onto the road with no warning.
The aftermath of a moose-car collision. It isn't pretty.
Just the year before I took that first trip, three people had died in moose/car collisions right near my home in Elliot Lake, Ontario -- and just before that transport truck came along west of Grand Falls I had seen two moose in 10 minutes by the roadside in the dusk. I wasn't taking any chances.
These two internet photos will give you the idea. For all their size, moose can run very quickly and can pop out onto the road with no warning.
The aftermath of a moose-car collision. It isn't pretty.
Moral:
Do not, repeat,
DO NOT
plan a nighttime drive
across Newfoundland.
So, on the 2006 visit which I'm describing here, we split the trip in two with an overnight stop in Gander.
Gander is a small town, but it has a number of hotels and restaurants, and a large airport/air force base, and is home to several thousand of the world's most hospitable people. That was amply proven on 9-11, when dozens of transatlantic aircraft had to land in Gander, and the local population opened their homes, their hearts, and their wallets to help care for, feed, and house the thousands of passengers and crew members until the airways reopened.
Gander is a small town, but it has a number of hotels and restaurants, and a large airport/air force base, and is home to several thousand of the world's most hospitable people. That was amply proven on 9-11, when dozens of transatlantic aircraft had to land in Gander, and the local population opened their homes, their hearts, and their wallets to help care for, feed, and house the thousands of passengers and crew members until the airways reopened.
The story of those events has been movingly retold in the international hit musical show Come From Away. In Newfoundland English, "come from away" is used as a noun to identify a person not born on the island ("He's a come from away.").
The drive from St. John's to Gander was an easy 4½ hour drive with stops. Along the way there were a couple of scenic views worth enjoying -- a rocky stream at Ivany Cove...
...and "Joey's View" at Gambo, named after the province's first premier after Newfoundland joined Canada, Joey Smallwood. Gambo was Joey's home town, and he loved to come up to this viewpoint.
In Gander itself, we visited a sombre reminder of the worst air tragedy ever to occur on Canadian soil. On December 12, 1985, an Arrow Air stretched DC-8 with 256 people aboard crashed on takeoff after a refueling stop at Gander Airport. There were no survivors of the military charter flight. The memorial stands on a hill overlooking a clearing through the forest down to the shores of Gander Lake. That clearing was torn through the forest by the plane as it crashed. The cross at the bottom of the hill was sculpted from the plane's wing. I remember vividly reading all about this terrible disaster when it happened, and I found the memorial intensely moving. The soldier is depicted gazing out in the direction of his military home base, the 101st Airborne Division's headquarters at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
We also found the people of Gander very hospitable and friendly -- they're not just like that in emergency situations. After checking in at the hotel and having a nap, there was time for a side trip north to the shoreline town of Twillingate. At one time, this trip would have involved several ferry crossings from island to island, but the road now crosses all the channels by bridges or causeways, and it's an easy drive from Gander as you traverse the evocatively named New World Island on the way. Twillingate itself is a peaceful place, but becomes more of a tourist attraction in the spring months as the ocean currents obligingly drift many of the huge icebergs from the north right up to this part of the Newfoundland coastline.
The next morning, bright and early in beautiful sunny weather, we were off and away to the west coast via the zig-zag Trans-Canada Highway. Consult a map today, and you'll find "T'Railway" marked on -- this is a hiking trail along the former right-of-way of the Newfie Bullet. You'll notice that it cuts off a huge bend in the highway between Badger and Deer Lake. But don't be deceived. The railway builders mistakenly located that portion of the line across the high plateau of the Topsail Range, and the winds and snows up on that plateau proved to be so ferocious that trains periodically had to come to a stop and have the cars chained to the rails so they wouldn't be flung off the track by the howling gusts.
So the modern highway detours around the Topsails, although it does give you an eyeful of some sizable mountains along the way.
At Deer Lake, it's time to leave the TCH and -- after a stop at the all-essential Tim Horton's -- to set out on Highway 430, which runs all the way to the northern tip of the island. But for this day, it's enough to drive northwest an hour or so into Gros Morne National Park, to the fishing port of Rocky Harbour, which is the main service centre in the park. Here you can find motels, restaurants, gas stations, and a very large and completely accessible public indoor swimming pool. Rocky Harbour's biggest attraction is the scenic bay, placid in the early morning, glorious at sunset.
Gros Morne is the name of the largest mountain in the park, a brooding, hulking rocky ridge (seen here from the far side of Bonne Bay). It's the highlight of several major-league hiking trails threading through the back country.
For more sedate tourists like us, the two scenic highlights of the park are found on boat cruises at two former fjords which are now enclosed fresh-water lakes: Trout River Pond and Western Brook Pond. Western Brook Pond's spectacular scenery is well-known, but Trout River offers you a chance to get a close-up view of something that isn't visible anywhere else (as far as is known) on the entire surface of the earth.
Here's a map of the park to help you get oriented to where we went and what we saw.
To reach Trout River, we had to backtrack down Highway 430 to Wiltondale, just outside the National Park, and there turn west again along Highway 431 which runs along by or near the opposite (south) shore of Bonne Bay. There are some lovely views along this road, which takes about an hour to drive.
That tall orange mountain looming in the distance looks peculiar, to say the least.
The road climbs up and away from Bonne Bay, and cuts across part of that plateau area with a rather odd appearance -- we noticed that there were almost no plants or trees growing anywhere on the orange areas. It looked almost like a desert, but the climate here most certainly is not dry.
We then dropped downhill into the hamlet of Trout River, and followed the signs to the boat dock at the end of the road. Almost as soon as we cruised out into the broad, placid waters of Trout River Pond, we saw two very oddly contrasting views.
That strange orange rock, which here appears on the north side of the pond, goes by the name of "The Tablelands," but it's the rock itself that is unusual. This is actually a protrusion of the earth's mantle, the layer that normally lies well hidden many kilometres beneath the outer crust of the planet. Mantle rock does not contain any of the nutrients necessary to the growth of surface plant life, so the only greenery on the Tablelands is seen where small pockets of more favourable soil have become trapped in folds of the sterile orange surface.
The mountains on the south side of the pond are composed of gabbro, a volcanic rock which does break down into usable nutrients and therefore holds much more greenery. The steeper hills on the south side continue plunging deep down under the water, a common feature of glacially-gouged valleys.
So the modern highway detours around the Topsails, although it does give you an eyeful of some sizable mountains along the way.
At Deer Lake, it's time to leave the TCH and -- after a stop at the all-essential Tim Horton's -- to set out on Highway 430, which runs all the way to the northern tip of the island. But for this day, it's enough to drive northwest an hour or so into Gros Morne National Park, to the fishing port of Rocky Harbour, which is the main service centre in the park. Here you can find motels, restaurants, gas stations, and a very large and completely accessible public indoor swimming pool. Rocky Harbour's biggest attraction is the scenic bay, placid in the early morning, glorious at sunset.
Gros Morne is the name of the largest mountain in the park, a brooding, hulking rocky ridge (seen here from the far side of Bonne Bay). It's the highlight of several major-league hiking trails threading through the back country.
For more sedate tourists like us, the two scenic highlights of the park are found on boat cruises at two former fjords which are now enclosed fresh-water lakes: Trout River Pond and Western Brook Pond. Western Brook Pond's spectacular scenery is well-known, but Trout River offers you a chance to get a close-up view of something that isn't visible anywhere else (as far as is known) on the entire surface of the earth.
Here's a map of the park to help you get oriented to where we went and what we saw.
To reach Trout River, we had to backtrack down Highway 430 to Wiltondale, just outside the National Park, and there turn west again along Highway 431 which runs along by or near the opposite (south) shore of Bonne Bay. There are some lovely views along this road, which takes about an hour to drive.
That tall orange mountain looming in the distance looks peculiar, to say the least.
The road climbs up and away from Bonne Bay, and cuts across part of that plateau area with a rather odd appearance -- we noticed that there were almost no plants or trees growing anywhere on the orange areas. It looked almost like a desert, but the climate here most certainly is not dry.
We then dropped downhill into the hamlet of Trout River, and followed the signs to the boat dock at the end of the road. Almost as soon as we cruised out into the broad, placid waters of Trout River Pond, we saw two very oddly contrasting views.
That strange orange rock, which here appears on the north side of the pond, goes by the name of "The Tablelands," but it's the rock itself that is unusual. This is actually a protrusion of the earth's mantle, the layer that normally lies well hidden many kilometres beneath the outer crust of the planet. Mantle rock does not contain any of the nutrients necessary to the growth of surface plant life, so the only greenery on the Tablelands is seen where small pockets of more favourable soil have become trapped in folds of the sterile orange surface.
The mountains on the south side of the pond are composed of gabbro, a volcanic rock which does break down into usable nutrients and therefore holds much more greenery. The steeper hills on the south side continue plunging deep down under the water, a common feature of glacially-gouged valleys.
The rocks in this photo look much like the others -- but notice the striped rocks just above the waterline. At the time when this strange portion of the earth's interior was uplifted, those striped rocks formed the Mohorovičić discontinuity (say that three times rapidly), the boundary zone between the crust and the mantle. We can make life simpler -- it's often referred to in short form as "the Moho."
The guides on this cruise have a good working script that gives you just enough geological detail to truly understand this weirdly compelling place, without overwhelming you with too much technical scientific language.
The next day, we set out for the far north, stopping on the way (about 30 minutes north of Rocky Harbour) to take in Western Brook Pond. Unlike Trout River Pond, you can't park at the boat dock. We had to park in a parking lot next to the highway and then walk inland along an improved trail for about 3 kilometres (a bit less than 2 miles) to reach the shore of the pond itself.
Along this trail, we had our first encounter with a unique type of Newfoundland forest. These tangled and stunted trees which grow along or near many exposed coastal areas on the island are known to Newfoundlanders as "tuckamore."
The next section led across a boardwalk over a bog. The white water whipping across the bog gives you a good idea of the wind that was blowing (normal). What the water doesn't show you, the haze in the atmosphere does. The air temperature at 9:30 in the morning was already up to 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit), and that is abnormally hot and sticky for Newfoundland, even in summer. Those high temperatures persisted for most of the almost two weeks we were on the island.
In the distance we could clearly see the frowning walls of the Long Range Mountains across the water, and the deep cleft which is the glacier-carved scenic highlight of this place.
When we wound our way down to the boat dock, there were two vessels waiting. Both were filled to capacity when the tour began. You definitely need to make advance reservations for Western Brook Pond cruises; the last thing you want to do is to hike all along that trail and then find there are no seats available.
It takes about 2 hours to cruise up to the head end of the pond, and back again. And with that, I'll just let my pictures of this awe-inspiring natural wonder speak for themselves.
Western Brook Pond may be the more spectacular sight, but Trout River Pond brings you face to face with a far more unusual phenomenon. I strongly recommend that you give yourself enough time to take both trips.
After leaving Western Brook Pond, we carried on northwards to the most remote part of this unique island.
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