Newfoundland

We had a wonderful time in Newfoundland this week. It rained a little in St. John’s toward the end of our visit. This was part of that tropical storm that came up from the United States. We drove out of it and the weather has been much more pleasant. We backtracked our route with our new friends from Nova Scotia. They are a lot of fun and it was a pleasure to travel with them. Stuart and Carolyn took us to Gros Morne National Park. Gros Morne is the second-largest National Park in Eastern Canada. It stretches across 1,805 square kilometres (still thinking in metric and the Canadian-way of spelling) of western Newfoundland. These towering Long Range Mountains also include tiny seaside communities, forests, bogs, barren lowlands, and magnificent shorelines. The park takes its name from Newfoundland's second-highest mountain peak (at 2,644 ft/806 m) located within the park. Its French meaning is "large mountain standing alone," or more literally "great somber." In Gros Morne, we traveled up to Cow Head, Trout River and Rocky Harbor. The weather was a perfect 79 degrees and sunny. You couldn’t have asked for anything more.
We saw a few different vehicles this week. ATV’s are extremely popular here. People will park on the side of the TCH (Trans Canada Highway 1) and abandon their car to hop on their ATV for the day. You will see them far away from their vehicle riding along the hilly, rocky terrain. Something I thought was unusual was looking at the semi trucks traveling the TCH. They have big "moose catchers" mounted on the front of the truck with extra lights attached. These trucks are constantly going from one end of the island to the other hauling everything under the sun. Their main goal is to get to their destination as quickly as possible. There is only one thing that can slow them down…………..and that would be hitting a moose. So these truck drivers have extra lights and giant bars on the front of the trucks so when they hit a moose (no deer on the island) the moose doesn’t hurt their trucks and the truck driver can just keep on going on down the road with no time lost for a damages.
Where the TCH was built, some of the riding was a little monotonous. Miles of Tucamore (a Newfoundland term) trees (stunted spruce trees) are on the side of this highway. The salt spray and the wind stunt the growth of these trees so they are short and sort of hideous looking. Emory said the other day that this reminded him of the Outback in Australia……….And I am agreeing with him…………………until I remember………………………….I’VE NEVER BEEN TO THE OUTBACK so how the ‘ell would I know what that would look like. But Em was right; the part of the TCH that we were on was repetitive and probably hard driving when you see the same site for a couple hundred of miles. So we traveled close to 600 miles in a day and a half on mostly a two-lane highway - on the way to the ferry. Most of the roads were great and hardly any pollution on the sides of the roads. However……………….to be continued.