Newfoundland 2011: One Big Dog

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
The Origin of Texting

Tuesday 9/6. Rain continued overnight and didn't show any signs of letting up in the morning so we pointed South to the Avalon Peninsula on the Southeast corner of the island where the rain ended only to be replaced with fog.

The normal nice weather was restored on our arrival to St. Johns, Newfoundland's largest city with a port and a distinctly Irish feel. Signal Hill rises over the city, the site of a fort that the French surrendered to the British in one of their many petty squabbles. On Signal Hill a century later, an Italian named Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent the first transatlantic wireless telegraph, much to the distress of the companies who had run long wires across the pond for the same purpose. Marconi probably would never have guessed that, another century later, teenagers would prefer to communicate using an endless stream of short text messages rather than engage in real speech.

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We wandered through the streets in search of a suitable place to spend the evening. The bar with the loudest folk music was selected and after an evening of local fish and beer we retired to the camp site a few kilometers away at Pippy Park in town.

Where the rain with its buddy, wind, joined us for an all-night party. Where we learned that the cheaper tent field doubles as a wind tunnel. Where we learned that the little green Nemo Obi-2P tent that looks more like Yoda swallowed Darth Vader really doesn’t care that we didn’t pay the extra five bucks for a more sheltered site.
 
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grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
The End of the New World

Wednesday 9/7. Cape Spear is the Eastern most point of Newfoundland and also Canada and North America. The oceans are watched over by a lighthouse and, during the second world war, several large guns. On that windy Wednesday, the park officials were strongly suggesting that 100 kmh (60 mph) gusts of wind weren't conducive to safely standing on the rocks at the end of the new world.

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Looking out from the guns I got the impression that any shells fired that day may have destroyed the lighthouse above and behind me!

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Even the guns are sheltering from the wind

Back in St. Johns and stocked up with groceries and gasoline, we drove across the peninsula via Cateracts waterfalls (that would be truly impressive with lots of water and painful to take pictures of without so I won't torture you).

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Groceries

Castle Hill: another site of Anglo-Franco bickering. Can't live with each other, can't live without, the British and the French!

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“Done” with bays and craving bigger and better things, we got back on the TCH and headed back West until the moors beckoned us to stray off the path. No full moon, though.

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We camped somewhere in the vicinity of Clarenville. Finding a nice en-route place to camp in an unfamiliar area is a black art, especially in the dark. The paper map never shows enough detail and the GPS topo map has plenty of detail, a screen the size of my ear and shows roads that may or may not exist, may or may not be wide enough for a regular vehicle, and may or may not have holes where bridges once spanned.

For Newfoundland we found this approach worked OK most of the time:

  1. Use the paper map to find a junction where there is no town but a road goes to a somewhat distant town.
  2. Drive down that road and use the GPS to find a road to a close lake.
  3. Drive down that road to find a perfectly acceptable spot.
  4. Wonder if there is a better spot somewhere else.
  5. Spend an hour looking for it.
  6. Return to the first spot.
Where we had great steak kebabs for dinner.
 

Haggis

Appalachian Ridgerunner
Great tale so far Graham! Though it does remind me how much of Newfoundland I missed out on the last time I was there. Did you see many mooses and caribous while out gallivanting?
 

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
So what happen with the Jeep? Did it make it out of surgery alive?

Yes but we haven't kissed and made up so its sulking on my driveway.

Great tale so far Graham! Though it does remind me how much of Newfoundland I missed out on the last time I was there. Did you see many mooses and caribous while out gallivanting?

Thanks! To be honest we didn't see as much wildlife as we expected, just a few here and there. Most of the moose we saw were strung up waiting to be a meal.
 

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

Thursday 9/8. Debbie slept most of the way along the TCH, missing a roadside moose, and woke up as I pulled off the highway to find “the back road” to Sir Richard Squires Provincial park which could well be a good place to picnic. With significant help from Garmin we found the sandy snowmobile track that was marked on the paper map as a “road” and followed it for miles of puddles without seeing another soul.

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Rental vehicle image blurred to protect the guilty driver

The tablelands area of Gros Morne National Park was clouded in as we arrived in the afternoon, reminding me very much of good weather in the Scottish highlands! We camped at the Lomond camp ground in the park. Haggis would have been an appropriate meal here but those furry creatures are in short supply so we cooked the next best thing: curry.

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grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
Enough Sitting Down, Lets Walk

Friday 9/9. The overnight rain stopped and the weather looked like it was improving. The ranger at the visitor center suggested that it might clear up later so I took the opportunity to hike up Gros Morne mountain (806 m) where a stiff climb up a loose rocky gully was rewarded with great views of steep sided rocky valleys with cliffside lakes and waterfalls and caribou.

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Well it was after a while, anyway.

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Several helicopters were flying up and down the valley opposite and the story I heard later was they had found alive two backpackers who were expected back four days before so that's good news.

There’s a great boat tour on Western Brook Pond fjord which we would have loved to see but gimpy girl hadn’t recovered enough from foot surgery to hobble the few flat kilometers of trail to the dock. If nothing else, that’s a good reason to go back to Newfoundland. Assuming, that is, we can make it there without breaking down!

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While I was hiking, Debbie had been exploring town and bought fresh cod from the dockside to cook for dinner. Fish on Friday but not for everybody.

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suntinez

Explorer
I should have known when I saw who wrote this report that I'd be hooked until the end. Great writeup, AMAZING pictures, thank you!

Newfoundland has long been high on my bucket list, but it just bumped up a few notches.
 

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
I should have known when I saw who wrote this report that I'd be hooked until the end. Great writeup, AMAZING pictures, thank you!

Newfoundland has long been high on my bucket list, but it just bumped up a few notches.

You're too kind! :blush: :)

The last set of pictures are sorted and I'll try to write the words this week.
 

jim65wagon

TundraBird1
I missed this whole story! Now that I've found it I will wait for the updates til the bitter (but hopefully better for the Jeep) end. Quite an excellent writeup and the photos are great too!

  1. Drive down that road to find a perfectly acceptable spot.
  2. Wonder if there is a better spot somewhere else.
  3. Spend an hour looking for it.
  4. Return to the first spot.
Funny this is quite like our method in VA and WV. We have found quite a few nice spots this way, even if it is a little time consuming.....
 

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
Waiting impatiently for the finish...don't make me drive up there to Mass to get you posting agian! :shakin:

The claymore threat always works. Here you go...

I missed this whole story! Now that I've found it I will wait for the updates til the bitter (but hopefully better for the Jeep) end. Quite an excellent writeup and the photos are great too!

Thanks! Here's a few more days that you can't read yet because I'm not quite finished!
 
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grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
On the Viking Trail

Saturday 9/10. Northbound past Arches Provincial Park which had some interesting arches and the inland on dirt roads wondering what we’d see. Obviously not much because there are no photos but its always refreshing to come across a bald-tired minivan slowly picking its way up a monstrously pot-holed hill.

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Newfoundland can be characterized by several odd things. Firstly piles of firewood on the side of the road, or trail, just left there. I think they’re left until they can be dragged home using snowmobile trailers.

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Secondly most abandoned vehicles, both in people’s yards or out in the boonies are school buses. Most look like they haven’t been driven in decades but there was a sign inside this one suggesting that the owner will be coming to collect it soon.

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New boats...

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... and old boats. It turns out that Columbus, Cabot, Cartier and Cook were all beaten here by the Vikings, in boats like this replica.

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The Vikings would probably have been pretty proud that they had discovered a new land in a boat with no roof. Until they met the Eskimos who had simply walked there.

Eventually we ended up in St. Anthony where it was rather late so we asked at the gas station where the best place to eat is. “We have Jungle Jim’s!” was the enthusiastic answer so there we went and the beer was good and the food was what we needed. Apparently Jungle Jim’s is a Newfoundland based chain serving Atlantic Canada and, curiously, Williamsburg, Virginia.
 

grahamfitter

Expedition Leader
Labrad or Labradon’t

Sunday 9/11. The saga goes that Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, was banished from Greenland for crimes committed. He couldn’t go back to Iceland because that’s where his father was banished from so he went the other way and found Labrador. He followed the coast all the way South to a place he named Vinland because -- he said -- wine grapes grow there. My own opinion is he was getting some sweet revenge on those who named a frozen tundra with no trees “Greenland” but for years nobody knew where it was until his settlement was discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows at the Northern tip of Newfoundland.

Now A UNESCO world heritage site with nice sculptures and windblown tourists, the settlement has been excavated and recovered to protect it from the elements.

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Somebody had this in their back yard...

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... which turned out would have looked much like this. A chap inside, dressed the part and eating seal meat, told us more history. What amazes me is when this was discovered in 1960, the village at L’Anse aux Meadows, like many coastal communities in Newfounland, was only accessible by boat so the basic ebbs and flows of life wouldn’t have changed that much in the millenia between the two.

Anyway Leif left, presumably banished by the Eskimos.

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More icebergs at St. Anthony.

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We were close to making a big decision. The ferry to Labrador was close by and we had the option of driving through an area populated mostly by caribou who are out-numbered by several trillion to one by black flies. Over a thousand miles of gravel roads in a brand new rental vehicle that has rules about where it can be driven.

The sign in the window at the ferry port at St. Barbe said the ferry was cancelled because of high winds.

We sat around drinking beer, waiting for an update. The update came, and said the next ferry was cancelled because of high winds. Without a reservation we didn’t fancy our chances but figured we’d see what the weather was like in the morning.

Outside it had stopped raining but it was still hard to stand upright in the wind. The motel at the ferry port was full, meaning that pitching the tent was going to require some imagination. Eventually we found a square stockade of firewood on the side of the road and called it home.

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