Newfoundland update at of 7/21/2016
We are experiencing lousy to no wifi connections so keeping
up with the blog has become a real trial.
For now, pictures are pretty much out of the question, but I do want to
keep updated as much as possible.
This has been an absolutely amazing adventure and I would
have to say that if you are going to take a trip out of the USA and want to see
something unique…this is the place. The
people are warm and friendly, the landscape is magnificent and mostly untouched. There is only one major road that goes East
to West from the S.W. tip at Port Aus Basques (where you land on the Ferry from
Sydney, NS) to St. Johns on the SE side of the island where you can take a
return Ferry to Sydney. The return trip
from there is about 14 hours whereas the one to get here is only 5 or 6
hours. It’s also triple the price! For that reason we have decided not to go all
the way to St. John’s, but double back from wherever we decide to stop (making
that decision today) and return from Port Aus Basques. A little disappointed not to make it all the
way to St. John’s , but I have to say that just exploring North to South on the
Western coast has been so incredible that we can feel satisfied we have seen a
great portion of this beautiful country.
One of the issues with touring here is that every road you
take to see the sites and villages is a one way road, meaning none of them
circle around and bring you back to the main road. You have to double back from every place you
go which is a little frustrating and very time consuming. And, most of these places are 40 to 100 or
more miles off that main road.
Rocky Harbor is about 85 miles off the main road and 300
miles from where we landed in Port Aus Basques.
We have to backtrack those 85 miles before we can begin to move further
east to our next major stop. However,
Rocky Harbor is in the heart of the Gros Morne National Park, which is truly a
magnificent location with lots and lots to see.
We do day trips from here to many of the visitor sites and coastal
villages. The highlight of the time here
was taking the boat trip into the Fjord at Western Brook Pond (Pond being a
huge lake here!). We stopped by chance
when we saw tons of cars in the parking lot.
Once we started walking we decided to go to the end and there was the
opening to the Fjord and the boat tour.
Turns out they had 3 seats left so we signed up! What a gorgeous and amazing experience. The weather was perfect and I got some great
pictures. This is one of the purest lakes
in the WORLD. We had to hike in about
1.5 Kilometers on trails over bogs and meadows just to get to it.
On Monday we left the RV in Rocky Harbor and drove the 349
Kilometers up to St. Anthony with many, many stops along the way. It was an all day trip, but we were fortunate
to find a delightful B&B for the next two nights. With what we saved in gas alone we paid for
the B&B which also came with a very nice breakfast each morning. From St. Anthony we did driving tours. Each of these drives were about 80 to 100
miles round trip, but oh my gosh what views and what a fascinating part of the
world. They didn’t have a road up here
until the 70’s so until then the only way to get around was by boat or snow
mobile. Each little village is pretty
much self-sustaining, although how they do it is beyond me. The ground is so rocky that nothing
grows. However, after they put the road
(Hwy 430) which is the only road from Rocky Harbor to St. Anthony they had dug
deep enough and put dirt along the sides of the road. Some enterprising guy figured out the soil
might be good for growing so he put up a garden on the side of the road and low
and behold…root vegetables such as potatoes and turnips did grow. Now, all along the highway are small
vegetable gardens. No one owns the land, you just pick a spot,
fence in your garden and plant away. The
gardens are usually located near one of the little lakes that are just off the
road so they can have access to water.
The other interesting thing you see along the road is huge piles of
firewood all cut and stacked. At times
there is not a single tree for miles, but there will sit this huge stack of
wood. Come to find out that in the
winter folks get a permit to cut and then they haul by sled and snowmobile
their wood, cut it and stack it to let it dry out along the road or by the
coast to be picked up in the summer for the following winter. No one
bothers the stacks (no theft) and they don’t own the land, it’s there and they
can use it. There is a very small
population up in this area and mostly people live in very small villages along
the coast. There is NOTHING on the
Eastern side of the Hwy but bare land, forests and ponds for as far as you can
see. The little villages MIGHT have a
small market/variety store, but very, very few have restaurants, coffee shops
or really shops at all. MAYBE one gas
station, but those are few and far between.
The other significant thing we have noted is that literally EVERY house
is covered with vinyl siding. We have
never seen so much vinyl. Sure would
like to be the vinyl supply guy up here.
On the rare occasion we have seen parts of an old house being covered
with the vinyl so you can see that it’s still the old wooden house underneath,
but they slap that vinyl on and hokus pokus you have a new house. New windows too. Sadly we have noted that they are doing the
same thing to the old churches so they look like new, but are losing their
charm. One church we visited we learned
they took those old bottle glass windows out and threw them away. I almost cried! I wish I could have loaded them up and
brought them home. I asked why they
didn’t attempt to sell them…they could pay for the new siding! Just not the way they do things here I guess.
While we were in St. Anthony we drove up to Wild Bight and
Cape Harbour which involved a lot of backtracking, but we wanted to see
“everything” so off we went. The next
day we went to Cape Onion which is the furthermost tip of NFL and L’Anse Aux Meadows where the Vikings landed in 1000
AD. That night we had dinner at the
Liefsburdir Viking Festival Dinner Theater which included an evening of
authentic Viking food, fun and feuds in the only sod covered dinner theatre in
North America at Fishing Point in St. Anthony’s. The last morning we caught a whale watching
tour and saw one whale and a couple of awesome ice bergs. We had one last meal in St. Anthony’s at the
Lighthouse restaurant where we had an incredible fish chowder and shared an
Iceberg Beer….truth…made from melted ice of an iceberg in St. John’s NFL. Pretty tasty stuff!
We are back in Rocky Harbor now. Today was a down day so we could catch up on
laundry, Fred cleaned the car and RV and I’m catching up the blog. We are trying to make reservations in Gander
for a week. From there we will do
driving tours and we are HOPING to get all the way to St. John’s by car. If we make it there we will have gone all the
way North and South and West to East.
Pretty good coverage of a place we never thought we’d see and are pretty
sure we wont see again. We would however
highly recommend a visit if you get the chance.
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| This is the map of the Western coast of NFL. We have traveled from one end to the other (furthest south to the furthest north) along the coast. |
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| This is the section of map from the center of the country to the far East. St. John's is on the far right and Gander, where we hope to stay for a week is about the middle of the page on the green line. The green line is the only way to get from one side of the country to the other. All the orange roads are the side roads that take you to the tourist areas and small villages along the coast. Some look like they will let you make a loop, but generally there is one way in and you backtrack to point A to go to the next stop. |
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| The Happy Campers at Western Brook Pond, Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland. The boat tour through the Fjord was amazing and beautiful. |
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