Mountain Views and Sea Swept Vistas

(2022 Newfoundland Ep 6)

We arrived on Newfoundland (NF) early on August 6 after a redeye ferry ride from Nova Scotia.  At a gravel parking lot a few miles from the ferry landing, we cooked breakfast and viewed the Long Range Mountains to the east.  The range is an outlying extension of the Appalachian Mountains – western NF is surprisingly mountainous.

We continued to our campsite overlooking the Codroy Valley.  After resting for most of the day, we completed the August 7 RabbiTRAILS blog post.

The next morning we drove around the sparsely populated area and visited the Cape Anguille Lightstation on the westernmost point of NF.  We ate lunch and enjoyed the solitude of the windswept place.  Later, we visited a nearby town and walked around a church that dramatically sits on cliffs overlooking the ocean.

The next day our travel plans almost changed.  We were driving towards Trout River Pond in Gros Morne National Park.  As we neared Corner Brook, the largest town in western NF, our tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) alerted that the right rear tire on Oscar had dropped 20 percent.  We exited the Trans Canada Highway to air up the tire and to go grocery shopping.  As I was getting the inflator ready, the TPMS again alerted the tire pressure had dropped another 5 percent.  Action was needed!

Pat went shopping while I removed the tire.  I rolled the tire over to a Canadian Tire store just across the street. (Thank you, Lord!)   They were busy and couldn’t look at the tire for several hours.  Finally, they called and said they found a fishhook in the tire!  Although a careful check revealed the hook didn’t penetrate the inside of the tire, they redid the tire bead and put in a new valve stem. We’ve had no further problems with the tire. 

I guess Oscar was a big one that got away.

Our trip resumed.  We arrived at the VERY small fishing community of Trout River after 6 pm and followed signs to the nearby national park campground.  We crossed three narrow wooden plank bridges to a gravel road with lots of potholes.  The campground was nowhere in sight. 

We considered turning back to find somewhere else but decided to go a little further.  Shortly we arrived at a very nice campground, home for the next three nights.

Trout River’s ‘15 minutes of fame’ occurred in April 2014, when a blue whale carcass drifted to shore coming to rest on an icy beach near town.  By May, the ice drifted off leaving the grounded whale carcass.  After remaining on the beach for several weeks, the massive mammal was towed to another location for ‘dismantling.’   Today, the whale skeleton is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

The next day was a three hike day: from Trout River, we hiked to a small lighthouse and then to a remote ocean lookout.  Later, we hiked the Tablelands Trail several miles away.  The mostly barren Tablelands consist of a geological feature found in few places in the world – a mountain pushed up from the earth’s mantle.  Aside from a few areas with small plants and grass, the terrain is barren and is said to resemble the surface of the moon and mars.

Our travels continued north to a national park campground near Cow Head.  The town got its name for a rock along the coast that an early explorer thought resembled a cow’s head.  We biked to town and then across a small spit of land to an island, where the inspirational rock is said to viewable from the Point of the Head trail.  We looked and looked and couldn’t find any formations that resembled a bovine skull.  The hike was beautiful anyway.

While at Cow Head, we enjoyed one of ‘top 10’ things to do while on NF – the Western Brook Boat Tour.  After a 1.8 mile hike from the parking lot, our morning boat ride started on the mirror smooth pond just west of the Long Range Mountains.  The trip took us nearly ten miles into a narrow freshwater fjord with two thousand foot cliffs on either side.  We learned the pond has a maximum depth of 541 ft and is ultraoligotrophic, low in nutrients so it supports a few slow growing plants and animals. 

As we returned to the tour starting point, patches of sun broke through the clouds.  As the ride ended, we were entertained with an impromptu performance of NF folk tunes by the boat’s talented crew.

Next week:  learn what moose and pythons have in common, the significance of a Viking settlement at the northern tip of NF, and why we decide to leave the island.