Gr0s M0rne ~ Days 1 & 2
12:57 p.m.
The drive was beautiful. Newfoundland is a gorgeous province. It is still rugged and wild and untamed (all synonyms, I know, indulge me) and my husband said to just let him know and he would stop the car so I could take a picture. My daughter replied, “But we’ll be stopping every five minutes, then,” and she was right. So I have no pictures of the landscape immediately out of St. John’s. It is rocky, with tiny fir trees called tuckamore that are gnarled and windblown scattered hither and thither, pools and moss and wildflowers. There were tons of lupines along the sides of the road, mostly deep blue and purple, but occasionally pink and white and various shades in between. There were also buttercups and Indian paintbrushes and daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, as well as other flowers of which I don’t know the names.
We stopped at Joey’s Lookout just past ClarenviIIe overlooking the village at the mouth of the Gamb0 River where it empties out into Freshwater Bay.
(An observant observer will have observed that the first picture was not taken at the same time as the other two, and this is because I snapped it on the return trip when meteorological conditions were somewhat different.)
We stayed that night and the next at Middle Brook guest cabins at the end of the South Arm of Bonne Bay.
Our cabin with my daughter on the step
After we’d moved our stuff in we went for a walk along the highway, and this is what we saw:
Nice, eh? Don’t worry, it gets better, much better. Along one side of the road were fragrant patches of toadflax; alongside the other was an open ditch running with human effluent having a different kind of fragrance altogether. I don’t think I’ll say anything more about that.
We dined that evening at a lovely restaurant called The Loft in Woody Point. It was the first of many pan-fried cod dinners and one of the best, although they were all good. I don’t mind if I don’t taste cod again for a while.
Thursday, July 10 dawned sunny and hot and we returned to Woody Point for breakfast. I took this picture from the shore.
This photo provides you with your first glimpse of the Tablelands, one of the features which makes Gros Morne so unique. When the North American tectonic plate collided with the African so very long ago, the Appalachian Mountains were raised up from the ancient sea beds. Here, though, a piece of the earth’s mantle was actually pushed up and over the crust, composed of rock called peridotite containing mostly iron but also other heavy metals. It is a dark green that changes to a golden colour with oxidation. You’ll be seeing lots more of it.
With our bellies and water bottles filled, we started a hike 300 metres up from the Discovery Centre where the trail started to Big Lookout, which overlooks Woody Point. Voilà!
Alpine meadow
Tablelands ~ note there are still pockets of snow visible
On our way back down the trail, we encountered evidence that a moose had crossed our path:
Having completed one hike, we of course had to embark on another, this time across the Tablelands themselves. We were not wearing proper footwear (we really should have had hiking boots with thick soles; instead we were wearing running shoes) and it was hot and there were flies and we were hungry. But it was still incredibly beautiful. As I mentioned, the Tablelands are alien to the surface of the earth. It looks like a desert, but in fact there is plenty of rainfall. The reason nothing grows is that the rock contains so much heavy metal, it is poisonous to most plants. Here and there loess has collected in crevices and plants have taken a tenuous foothold. The surfaces of the rocks are covered with calcite formations called serpentinite and crystals that can slice through a hiker’s leather boots. My daughter learned this the hard way when she scraped her finger against one.
My husband had planned another hike for that afternoon, but we girls rebelled at this point. We were exhausted. So instead he was able to reschedule the next morning’s boat ride for after lunch. This was a trip along Trout Brook Pond (in Newfoundland, all lakes are called “ponds”), a former fjord that travels along a geological fault. On one side are the Tablelands, on the other are regular mountains made of gabbro, the stuff that was once ancient ocean floors. It also rained, which was not a bad thing, considering we weren’t hiking in it.
Because of the upthrustedness of the earth’s mantle, you find rocks in Gros Morne that should never see the light of day. There is one in particular called Moho (you can read all about it here), a sample of which was onboard the boat:
I took a picture of the exact spot that appears in the linked article, but mine was not in focus, so go look at it instead.
Before I end for the day, I will leave you with one of those self-indulgent photos none of us can resist taking from time to time.
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