Day: July 28, 2019

July 26, 2019

After driving through several small communities near Corner Brook I continued north on the TCH to Deer Lake, where I would be spending the night.  After checking in at my Airbnb and dropping off some of my stuff I hopped on Route 430 to drive northwest to Gros Morne (pronounced grow morn) National Park.  Today I would only be seeing the southern portion of the Park as I drive west of Route 431 to the town of Trout River.

The first large body of water I can to was the South Arm, one of two “arms” which branch off of Bonne Bay.

The photo below is from Woody Point.  You are now looking out over Bonne Bay.

The brown mountains you saw the snow on in an earlier post are called the Tablelands.  They are very unusual mountains, devoid of trees or grass.  The Tablelands are actually made of peridotite, thought to originate in the Earth’s mantle, and were forced up from the depths during a plate collision several hundred million years ago. Peridotite lacks some of the usual nutrients required to sustain most plant life and has a toxic quality, hence it’s barren appearance.  It has a high iron content, thus the brown color when exposed to air.  The unexposed rock beneath is actually green!

 

 

After taking a short sit-down break after passing Tablelands….

….. I continued on to Trout River:

Then it was back out to the main road and down to Deer Lake for the night.

I’d have a busy day on Saturday as I have an activity planned in Gros Morne and then a long drive up to the tippy-top of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland.

 

 

 

July 26, 2019

Friday on my way north from St. Andrews to Deer Lake in southwest Newfoundland I made two side trips – one just past Corner Brook out through the little towns of Meadows, Gillams and McIver’s and the other further north at the southern end of Gros Morne National Park, which I will be visiting again and posting details about in the coming days.

This is Corner Brook, a fairly good sized town, as I drove past on the Trans Canada Highway.

I exited the TCH just past town to head west on Route 440.

This was just as I started out on Route 440:

The photo above is of the Humber River.

And yes, that is snow you see on the mountains in the distance (on July 26!).  More about those mountains later….

The body of water you are seeing in the two photos above is Bay of Islands which comes in off the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the west of Newfoundland.

 

 

July 26, 2019

 

When I arrived at my Airbnb in St. Andrews (about 1/2 hour north of Port aux Basques where the ferry dock is located) on Thursday I spent about 3 1/2 hours visiting and sharing stories with my hosts.  Friday morning I was hoping to get on the road early but ended up talking with them for another 3+ hours before departing at around 1030am local time.  They were VERY nice people – a perfect example of why I love using Airbnb!

I’m going to make this separate post about the mountains I saw upon entering Newfoundland, specifically the Long Mountain range I could see from their front yard Friday morning.  These looked different from other mountains I have seen in person, with very steep faces.  For some reason they made me think about movies I have seen which were filmed in Scotland or Ireland….

I will be seeing a variety of mountain types as I drive up the west coast of Newfoundland in the coming days.

This is a 3-shot panorama, left to right, standing in their front yard looking east:

These two were taken a little further up the road about 10 minutes later.  The mountain range was heading inland, away from the highway I was on so they appear further off in the distance.