making the most of our last day in Newfoundland

We left St. Anthony (pronounced Stantny by the locals....) reluctantly.  First, we had a really nice hotel overlooking the harbor and a great room - almost a small apartment in fact.  We would have loved to stay there for a week or two and really get to discover this entire area.  Secondly - it is just a beautiful place!  I think I could get to love winter here, the way the locals do....  (but it's too far from my babies....).  But we had a long drive ahead of us, to get back to Deer Lake, at the very bottom of the peninsula to catch a very early flight home tomorrow .

So we decided to see as much as possible on our way back.  We felt a little bit guilty that we did not go to the Grenfell Museum -  Dr Grenfell is, by a long shot- the most famous person who ever came to St Anthony.  Every other building is named after him and they love to share his memory.  But, as I said in a previous blog, we only go to museums when it rains....  but you can find everything you need to know about Dr Grenfell here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Grenfell (it's an interesting story).

Instead of going to the museum, we drove down to Goose Cove (there are a lot of coves....  this was a random one). 

 What a great little detour that turned out to be:  The little town is so pretty and the trail that overlooks the cliffs has great views of icebergs, Labrador and the bay.

 

On the way there, 2 bald eagles flew over us and just as we were admiring the icebergs,  2 humpback whales (mommy and calf) swam very close to shore, and then dove together, displaying they flukes, as if to wave goodby.  What a treat!
(Bad picture of the whale blowing - Joe did not have the right lens on).

 As we continued south, we stopped by the ecological preserve of Burnt point.  What a weird place that it!  It is like driving on the moon and at first, one wonders about the "ecological" part of it:  nothing seems to grow there but rocks. 

 But then, when you start paying attention, you discover that all kind of plants are growing- almost out of nowhere. 

 They are small and stunted, but some have beautiful flowers and wonderful colors

In fact, there are some 300 unique species there- some found no where else.

This one is my favorite, because it is so small, and just growing out of nothing - life is just amazing!

Driving across the Great Norther Peninsula (the very top of the peninsula), we came across numerous little vegetable gardens, right there on the side of the road, far from the little towns by the coast:  These were started after the highway was built in the 60's:  The land inside is a bit warmer and thus better for gardening, and the highway construction cleared the side of the road, freeing the wonderful peat moss ground.  So people just pick a plot, dig it up, and grow veggies on the honor system (no permit required, but people won't go and take other's veggies).  They are just starting to plant right now for the short season (a lot of root vegetables). 

There are also large piles of wood everywhere - with numbers taped to them.  I thought these were telephone numbers to call if you wanted to buy wood.  But instead, it is the identification number of the individual who has cut it, for heating his or her house during the very long winters - they leave it by the side of the road for drying and storage and in the winter, come to pick it up with a snow mobile and sled.

 We also finally got close enough to a moose to take some good pictures!!!!!!  It was our last chance, so we were very excited!

 We took a very short side trail that advertised "thrombolites"  We had no idea what thrombolites are, but they are these fascinating living rocks- in fact colonies of micro bacteria that calcify as they grow.  They are the oldest form of "life" on earth and only found in very few places  (each of the round colonies is about 8 to 10 feet across).

 Finally, we stopped  to look at these arches - which were formed under water, and then an uplift in the land raised them above sea level for us to admire.

We could literally have stopped every 10 km along the 430km drive to see something beautiful or amazing, but we had to pick and choose.
And so we end our trip - we have seen a lot - from puffins (PUFFINS!), to a tiny bit of France, to icebergs, and vikings and beautiful shores, and lakes and rivers, and charming little towns.
We are happy to go home, and yet feel there is so much we have not seen or experienced here.  But Newfoundland is not that far away.......  maybe we'll be back....

the land of icebergs and Vikings.

We are VERY far north!  If you look at a map of Newfoundland, the Northern Peninsula sticks out like a finger pointing straight north.  We are at the top of it.  There are icebergs, snow at sea level and, until last week, there were a few polar bears around (now they have finally swam back the 18 miles across the channel to Labrador.  I am sorry we missed them.....).

We left Gros Morne early, taking advantage of the morning light to have a last look at the Table Lands over breakfast.

 It is then about 200 miles straight north to get to St Anthony, a small town that serves as the service center (medical,  insurance, etc...) for the entire area, including the south of Labrador.  So although it has only 2500 inhabitants, it has a large hospital as well as a lot of services (the largest grocery store we have seen in a long time for instance). 

As we drove up, we got some very good pictures of a caribou who was grazing by the road, and - unlike yesterday- was not hidden by bushes at all.

 Then as we got further North, we started noticing small icebergs in the bay.. (the land  on the other side- in the haze- is Labrador)...  it was tempting to turn here and keep going North,,,,,,

In St Anthony, there are several large icebergs (and a lot of smaller ones), some floating around, some grounded (which means that the bottom has hit the bottom of the ocean and they are stuck).  We took a boat to get a closer look.  It was a beautiful but cold day out there!  Our guide said that in order to live here, you have to really love winter - like won't do it.  You have to LOVE it!  He talked with a lot of enthusiasm about snowmobiling until early June, and going hunting on the ice in the middle of winter.  We got to circle a couple of beautiful icebergs:  This one is about 70 feet tall, and grounded on the ocean floor, which is about 260 feet deep right there.

 This one has been battered by waves into very pretty sculptures.

After our boat ride, we drove to the "Anse aux Meadows", where the Norse settlement that proved that Vikings had made it to the Americas 1000 years ago was discovered in the 1960's.  The discovery itself is a great story of detective work and persistence:  The Icelandic Sagas describe two trips in a great deal of detail, but it took a lot of work to figure out where the landing was, in part because the Norse never established permanent settlements in North America:  they used this area as a base to get lumber and possibly grapes (that's still not proven) from the areas south of here (maybe New Brunswick). 

But they only stayed around long enough to load the boats, wait out winter and sail back to Greenland.  Now, the general understanding is that they kept going to Labrador for a long time after they abandoned the site here, but never stayed long enough to leave any structures.  Right is a re-creation of what one of their larger structures looked like - this housed about 30 people throughout winter when 15 to 20 feet of snow is normal....

What is left now are just mounds that have been excavated, showing the first iron making in North America, as well as remnants of wood that did not exist on the continent - thus proving the presence of Europeans.

 The park was not just very interesting, it also was a great place to see more icebergs, and the pack ice that is still around (this is a tough place to live in.....).

We went to the lighthouse for a great dinner of local seafood (I had the locally caught snow crab - it was great!).
Tomorrow is our last day:  we will take our time driving back to Deer lake and hope to catch a few more sights on the way down. 

Not enough hours in a day......

 (This is the official flower of Newfoundland - found all over Gros Morne National park!)

 The problem with the type of road trip we are taking is that often, while trying to see "everything", we end up seeing not enough of anything.....  This is particularly true today:  we have  only one full day in Gros Morne National park, and one very full day just does not do it justice.  But we tried our best!
It helped that we woke up to bright sunshine, right outside our hotel room door!

We started early in the southern part of the park at the very unusual place call " the Table Lands".

Even from the highway, you can see it is unusual - it does not look like it belongs here, among the tree covered hills.  That's because it does not....
the Table Lands is one of the few places on earth where the mantle is exposed:  when the European and American tectonic plates bumped into each other, one pushed the earth's mantle on top of the other.  In 1909, this is the place where they proved the motion of tectonic plates by discovering sea floor right next to the earth mantle.  The place still looks otherworldly.... 

The rocks from the mantle are a complex chemical mix of iron, magnesium and some silicate, forming peridotite.  The reason they look orangish is because the iron is oxydising.  When the peridotite comes to the surface and is exposed to water,

it forms serpentinite (so called because it resembles the scales of snakes).

 Very little grows there because the rocks are toxic, but the pitcher plant - a carnivorous plant that is the official plant of Newfoundland and Labrador is everywhere  ("feed me Seymour....").

Joe and I walked the very well maintained trail through the Table Lands (Canadians are very good at trails!), and then,

as Joe walked through the visitor center- learning everything I wrote just now- I climbed to the top of a hill that provides a great lookout to the entire valley.  It was a short but steep walk (about 1.5 miles up and 1000 feet) and well worth it for the panoramic views.

  At the top, these 2 local people where having a snack and literally forced fed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich:  I looked hungry, and when people from Newfoundland see someone who looks hungry - they feed them!  No arguing about it!  (it was a good sandwich, and I love the attitude).

The trail looped around though some snowy marshes ( my feet got quite wet....),

but most of it was this beautifully boarded trail.

We then went to the northern part of the park, where the landscape is dramatically different.  On the way, we met a caribou!  (we saw a moose too this morning, but, after driving hundreds of miles yesterday without seeing a single one, we were not prepared for it and were so surprised that we did not take a picture.....).  That caribou was shedding and looked to us like an old male (because caribou tend to travel in herds, but we could be wrong).  We were very happy about this meeting!.

We continued on to the majestic Westbrook pond - formed by glaciers a long time ago  It is almost a fjord, but does not reach the sea.  It has deep and cold water and is one of the purest lakes anywhere.  It is however very fragile:  It is a pond - so water does not get renewed much.  They protect it by making access to it difficult - you have to park 3km away and walk to it.

 The walk is easy and pretty however and provides nice opportunities to see the old cliffs and the lakes and brooks around them.

Finally, we went back to the lighthouse and walked by the shore.  (I love the chairs placed strategically in spots where one should stop and sit!)

By 6pm, we were very tired (I put 30,000 steps on the fitbit!) and had Stouffer's frozen lasagna in our hotel room...  it was good!