This entry was posted on 9/12/2007 3:46 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
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Hey Friends and Family -
As expected, we have no internet access here in Norris Point, Newfoundland. We're actually
staying at a cabin inside Gros Morne National Park. It's very cool. The name of the place is
called Herbie's Hideaway.
What I will do is this - make entries for each day and then post them when I can, in order.
So, here goes :
Dateline : Norris Point, Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada. September 9th, 2007
Well this is our first day to actually do some exploring. We have a place reserved for two
days down in Gros Morne NP. We leave St.Christopher's after a good breakfast in their
Captain's Table restaurant.
What a surprise when we walk out the door in Port aux Basques. When we arrived the fog was
thick as pea soup so imagine our surprise that with the morning sun we now have an amazing
view of the harbor. Wow-weee.
We head out along TCH ( trans canadian highway ) and scored one geocache almost right away!
Yup, we now have a geocache in Newfoundland! The cache is GCR10P - which means nothing to
access again.
We gave a couple more caches to seek tomorrow when we start to explore Gros Morne.
Back to the drive here. It was breathtaking. I will tell you, such a contrast of landscape.
The flat topped mountains ( table mountains ), the cliffs and the shore, bam bam bam, right
one after another. Very cool. Plus, lush fields and brooks and rivers. So much to see.
We arrived at Gros Morne around 4pm, made a quick stop at the visitors center, to see about
a day pass, and then came down to check into Herbie's Hideaway. After checking in, we headed
out to explore Rocky Harbour and get some dinner.
Rocky Harbour itself is very impressive, a very rocky ( duh ) seashore and high surrounding
cliffs and mountains. We ate a little local spot called Jackie's. Go where the locals go and
you really can't go wrong. One thing though, we're starting to get tired of seafood.
Tomorrow we're going to search out hamburgers!
On the way to Rocky Harbour, we stopped at Rocky Harbour Pond ( um, it was HUGE, much bigger
than any pond I've ever seen ) and skipped some rocks. turtlex - six skips. pookie - three
skips.
Dinner at Jackie's was right on the water, which everything pretty much is here, and after a
spectacular sunset we're back at Herbie's now.
We are having a great time. More later.
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Dateline : Norris Point, Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada
Monday, September 10th, 2007.
Gosh what a full and fun day we had today. After a good nights sleep, we woke to an overcast
day, but no rain. No problem! Off we headed to explore Gros Morne National Park.
Today we followed a lot of the Viking Trail and alot of the route around the park - which is
430 and 431. We started out with quick visit to Rocky Harbour, which we saw yesterday and
loved. From there we headed to the Lobster Cover Head Lighthouse, where pookie scored a
geocache ( I couldn't make it down the trail - it was too steep ). From there, onto Berry
Hill and then Green Point and Sally's Cove. We took a long drive through the marsh lands to
Broom Point past Western Brook Pond and then onto Cow Head. We finished this leg of the trip
at the northern point of the park - Shallow Bay, where we had a great lunch. Hamburgers and
good fries. How very American! We did some beachcombing along the way, and grabbed a small
chunk of driftwood as a keepsake.
We did some backtracking then and headed down to Wiltondale to explore the other end of the
park. This was off the main road and onto route 431, which, by the way, is not on my GPS
map. Now, that was an adventure! Into the great unknown. We crossed the Lomond River and
Shoal Brook, which took us into the Tablelands - these really cool looking flat topped
mountains that are a weird kind of orange. pookie commented how much it looked like Mars,
with all the rocks and odd shapes, and she is 100% right there. This is a very rich park,
not at all redundant with it's features. Rivers, brooks, ponds, inlets, bays, mountains,
marsh lands, etc.
We drove to the absolute end of the road - literally. It ended at this seaside cliff
turnaround in Trout River. Enroute, though, we hit the jackpot. By the Green Gardens, just
past Woody Point, there by the underbrush was what we thought were two moose!!! As it turned
out, there were three of them there. One male, with huge antlers that were almost white and
two females! It was very cool.
We finished up the adventure with dinner back in Rocky Harbour at the Fisherman's Inn
Restaurant. Now we are back at Herbie's and as I am blogging, pookie is checking the truck
for the journey back to Nova Scotia tomorrow night. We plan to start out early and take our
time driving back to Port aux Basques. We noticed a couple of geocaches on the other side of
the road while driving here, so hopefully we can get those as we head out of Gros Morne.
This has been a great couple of days, and I'm sure we'll be back. There's so much more of
Newfoundland that we didn't get a chance to see at all. Including Cape Onion at the very tip
of the NFLD map. This place is just vast. We did the right thing though, focus'd on one area
and enjoyed it to the fullest. Which is exactly what we did.
Of course I will post this as soon as I can. We have a late night ferry ride from Port Aux
Basques to North Sydney, Nova Scotia which we have a small cabin booked for as we will be
travelling through the night and arriving back in Nova Scotia around 6-6:30am. Of course, I
am not counting the weird time change that has to happen. I honestly haven't figured out why
Newfoundland is 30 minutes ahead anyways. Just to be different, I suppose.
That's all for now.
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007. Dateline : Saint John's, New Brunswick, Canada
Oh, where to start, where to start?
When we left Herbie's, the truck was packed and off we went to Port Aux Basques to catch the
late ( 11:45pm Newfoundland time ) ferry back to Nova Scotia. The plan was to sleep on the
ferry and wake up today ( Wednesday ) and go down to the vehicle deck and then drive to New
Brunswick. Well, all that worked out - sorta, kinda.
First, though, we got to Port Aux Basques earlier than expected, so we took a long drive out
along the coast. That was very cool. So much to see here, and we really haven't even
scratched the surface.
We got back to PaB around 9pm and checked in at the ferry terminal. No problem, there were
tons of people already checked in. However, it was starting to rain. No biggie, right?
Right?
They boarded the Ferry early ( the Leif Erikkson ) which was great since we had a cabin and
were really tired. We got settled in our cabin, not really that small, but it had two sets
of bunk beds. Actually, still no problem - because it's not like there are any other
surfaces to put stuff on, so we each grabbed a bottom bunk and used the uppers for holding
all our stuff. The bathroom, yes, with a cabin we got our own bathroom, was actually really
pretty big. Much larger than I thought it would be.
So, we hunkered down and the Captain made his announcements - how with the tropical
depression coming in, there'd be some rain and it might get a little choppy but towards the
end of the trip, closer to Nova Scotia, it would die out. Nothing to worry about.
Sure, there's nothing to worry about until around 2:30am when we wake up in the middle of
the Perfect Storm!!! The wind is blowing, the rain is smashing against the porthole, the
waves are crashing.... oh this is great. Not a heck of a lot of sleeping going on. The room
was all over the place, up and down swells, banging coming from the vehicle bays, motor
smashing through waves. Not exactly the leisurely cruise and sleep we were expecting.
Luckily, VERY luckily, we were not sea sick. Not at all. It was just hard to sleep with the
whole world banging on around you. Not to mention, I'm seeing Marky Mark and George Clooney
yelling about the swordfishing.... Just kidding. I guess we fell back to sleep around 5am or
so.
The Captain woke us at 6am - saying we were an hour from port. Gee, thanks for waking us to
tell us we can sleep more. We got up with 25minutes to port and by the time we docked, we
were dressed and packed and really sleepy.
No worries though ( yawn ) really, driving isn't at all sleep inducing ( yawn ), I'm pretty
sure we stayed on the road, at least most of the drive here to New Brunswick.
So, that's where we are right now. You're all caught up. I still don't have a clue what time
it is, but I think we're at least back on the hour! Actually I think we're still an hour
ahead of East Coast.
Heading to bed soon - then hoping to catch some geocaches tomorrow on our way to Vermont.
Long Days and Pleasant Nights.
Notes to comments :
Jim - Tennis? They only show hockey on television up here. When it's not an actual game,
it's a movie about a game. Glad the William's sisters got beat, regardless.
Suzanne - Okay, this is weird. Cause, though your recipe looks right - we finally found a
picture of a Donair in a menu, and it looks like SHAVED meat of somekind. This is very odd.
I still can't get up the bravery to buy one of these things.
JK - I got your voicemail from the Ferry in Newfoundland. Too much cash for the Bruce
fellow, especially with yours truly now paying for a trip - and hoping to repeat it as soon
as possible.
Del - Ah, Thankee-Sai. I knew you'd grab that. To point - we've been listening to gunslinger
since we left with all the driving. Kind of weird - out here, Midland trucking is big, and
so are weirdly Mid-World looking landscapes. Who am I kidding - Actually, it's pretty cool.
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