Blown over at Blow Me down

View of Bottle Cove

With just a few days left on The Rock, we decided to take a short drive west from Corner Brook to visit Lark Harbour, Bottle Cove and Blow Me Down Provincial Park - aptly named because the winds in this area are quite notorious for being strong, and can even become quite violent. Gusts of 85km/hr are not uncommon, and storms with 150km/hr winds have created havoc and caused extensive damage in the area in past years. Yet people still live here… I don’t get it!

Fun Fact #1: a ‘Fresh Breeze’ is on the Beaufort Scale is between 29-38kph. 

It seems that over the two nights we stayed at the campground in the park, the wind was pretty typical. We climbed the Governor’s Staircase to the top of Tortoise Mountain for a view of York and Lark Harbours and Governors Island. At the viewing deck at the top, D had to scramble through scrub brush to retrieve his ball cap after a wind gust grabbed it right from his head.  

Governor's Staircase is built into a natural cut in the rock face

Climbing the Governor's Staircase

A bit windy at the top!

Lovely views of Lark Harbour

Fun Fact #2: it takes a 110km/hr wind to knock an average sized adult off their feet. 

I’m not sure it was that windy, but the next day, I was knocked off my bike by the wind as we rode back from Bottle Cove. And no, I had not been drinking!

Entrance to Bottle Cove

Despite the wind, and despite being laughed at by D for falling off my bike, the journey was well worth it for the beautiful views we enjoyed. And this far in our trip through Newfoundland, we’ve come to expect a bit of wind every day - just some days more than others.

Are you sure we're on Planet Earth?

With our time in Newfoundland winding down (insert sad face here) we made sure to stop in an area in Gros Morne National Park called The Tablelands. In the summer months there is a fascinating, fun - and free - guided walking tour every day at 10:00am. That’s a bit early for both D and I, but we managed to get there in time - just in time. Guided tours are so much better than going it on your own, I think!

The tour takes you two kilometres along a trail through barren landscape of rusty orange-coloured rocks - rocks that have been pushed up from the earth’s mantle (a layer of rock found deep beneath the earth’s crust) hundreds of millions of years ago. Peridotite is the name of this rock. It is a greenish colour that looks a bit like snake skin, before it changes to rusty orange with oxidization.

The only way I can describe The Tablelands is… otherworldly. I wasn’t surprised to find out that two sci-fi movies have been filmed here, and the area has been used to train astronauts for missions to Mars and the moon. Oh, and this is where geologists were able to definitively prove the theory of Plate Tectonics.

That’s quite an impressive resume for a bunch of old rocks!

Peridotite rock from the Earth's mantle

It's not a holiday without a boat trip

Heading into the fjord on the 3km walking trail

We (more like D) really misses our boat, so couldn’t pass up a boat tour on Western Brook Pond. 

Technically the pond cannot be considered a fjord - it has to be open to the ocean for that, and Western Brook Pond is a lake. However, the majestic billion year old cliffs of Western Brook Pond out-fjord anything found in Norway or Alaska.

We did not have reservations for the boat tour (and the tours were booked for the day), but decided to walk the 3km trail to the lake head. As luck would have it, there was a couple at the dock with extra tickets, so we were able to take the tour after all! Well worth it, though we were little concerned about the weather - which held out until we go back to our van. Phew!

Many stunning waterfalls along the way

Here come the Vikings

A re-created building at L'Anse aux Meadows

The archaeology geek in me has always wanted to visit L’Anse aux Meadows, a national historic site in northern Newfoundland. I got to check this one off my bucket list on this trip.

L’Anse aux Meadows contains the remains of an 11th-century Viking settlement (settled by Eric the Red) - the oldest known European settlement in North America. Although the current buildings are recreations of what archaeologists found, they are a very close replication of what was there all those years ago.

As serendipity would have it, our guide for the our of L’Anse aux Meadows was the great granddaughter of the man who discovered the remains of the Viking settlement in his field.

 

Costumed Viking interpreters

Weaving loom - more geek-out for me!!!

Sleeping quarters

Statue of Eric the Red - the first European in North America

Are you sick of rock photos yet?

Well, fooled ya! These ones aren’t rocks, they’re fossils.

In the small northern Newfoundland coastal town of Flower’s Cove lies something apparently pretty spectacular - Thrombolites. 

To you and me, they look like large flat, bun-shaped rocks on the edge of the ocean. But to geologists and biologists, and biogeochemists and all the other ‘ists’ out there, they’re more than that.

I’m not much for science, but my understanding is that each Thrombolite fossil was once a giant colony of tiny living algae and bacteria. These organisms are the earliest forms of life - living from 3.5 billion to 650 million years ago.

Not only is it amazing that we can still see evidence of these organisms that are the foundation of us, and everything around us, but that apparently they are pretty darn rare. the only other place you can see Thrombolites is in Western Australia.

So, no rocks this time, but I can’t promise there won’t be any more rock photos in a future blog post.

In the early 1900's, this was the only access to Flower's Cove - and by foot or by horse only.

Mother Nature is an amazing artist

 

Not far north of Gros Morne National Park is yet another jaw dropping bit of scenery, with thanks to Mother Nature. The star of the Arches Provincial Park is a short drive from the highway, and if you blink, you may miss the turn-off. Trust me, you’ll want to turn around.

We arrived, thankfully, just before a huge tour bus pulled into the lot, and thankfully because it started to rain, the mass of people returned to the bus just as quickly as they got off.

Over millennia, the ancient limestone rock was carved by the pounding surf into this natural rock formation. There were once four arches, but sadly the ocean has laid claim to one, and I’m sure in time the others will follow.

I’m glad we had a chance to see them before it’s too late.

If these rocks could talk

 

I managed to convince D that a 180km roundtrip detour was in order, so off we went to visit the Fleur de Lys Soapstone Quarries National Historic Site.

Over 1600 years ago, the Dorset people mined the soapstone in this region to make various use vessels and stone oil lamps. The rocky outcrops above the village of Fleur de Lys still bear the scars of the work of these people, and this is one of only a few in the world so well preserved.

On our way down the hill and back to our car, we chatted with one of the volunteers of the site, a man in his 70’s at least, who lived across the road from the museum. He explained he lived in the ‘new house’ on the property his great, great grandfather had homesteaded after arriving from France on one of the fishing schooners. Oh, and the ‘new house’ was 125 years old, built using some of the lumber from the ‘old house’, which would have been built around 250 years ago, maybe more!

I’m just gobsmacked every single day over the history we uncover every day here in Newfoundland - whether it’s at a national historic site, or just chatting with a local. Amazing.

Fogo Island in pictures...

... because words cannot even begin to describe the experience.

Fogo Island Inn

The Great Auk

The Sheds

A feast of wild blueberries

The Pitcher Plant is the official flower of Newfoundland

Oliver's Cove

The old farm at Oliver's Cove

Tilting

Squish Studio artist residence in Tilting

Long Studio artist residence in Joe Batt's Arm

Nice, breezy day to air your quilts

The climb to Brimstone Head

Sign at the top of Brimstone Head

Brimstone Head from below

The fishing shed - an iconic part of Newfoundland and its history

"We were expecting you."

 

Cashin’s Chestnut Tree Café

It never ceases to amaze us just how friendly Newfoundlanders are. We were stopped at the end of the driveway to a private campground, deciding whether we wanted to spend the night there or continue on a bit further, when a fellow came up to the RV and started chatting.

He introduced himself as Sean Callahan, son of former NL cabinet minister Bill Callahan. Bill Callahan served under Joey Smallwood (Newfoundland’s first premier after confederation in 1949) and was responsible for the creation of Gros Morne National Park, making the west coast of Newfoundland the tourist destination it is today.

Sean also, upon learning this was our first time in Newfoundland, offered many suggestions of places to see and visit, and even gave us his phone number - in case we needed more ideas on places to go. One restaurant he highly recommended was the Cashin’s Chestnut Tree Café in Gambo, a town located about a half-hour’s drive east of Gander. Turns out, his friend Billy Cashin owns the café, and there’s a bit of a story behind the restaurant, and the town itself.

We we were heading in that direction a few days later, so took Sean’s advice and stopped into the Chestnut Tree (known to the locals as Billy’s Café) for lunch. That is, we drove by twice looking for the restaurant, before realizing it was completely obscured by the giant (we guessed chestnut) tree in front.

Wandering in, we told Billy that Sean recommended we stop in for a meal. He said, after making a few jokes about his friend, “We were expecting you.” I’m not sure we received any extra special treatment for dropping names (because everyone there was friendly with everyone), but the food was fresh and delicious, and served in huge portions. And although Billy was too busy to chat with us that day, he did send us on our way with a bag of freshly made chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

So, what’s so special about Gambo, and the Chestnut Tree Cafe? For a start, Joey Smallwood was born in Gambo in 1900. There is a statue commemorating him in the centre of town, very near the Chestnut Tree Café. And stepping into the café is a bit like stepping back into Smallwood’s time. Originally a general store located a short distance down the road, Billy acquired the building and moved it to it’s current location to open a café/bookstore/general store. The interior is an eclectic, yet inviting, mix of old and new and just plain odd - the original store counters from 1938, paintings on the wall from local artists, a wood and glass cabinet filled with antique shoes and other curiosities, and Christmas decorations adorning the piano in the corner of the adjoining room.

Inside Billy's eclictic Café

There’s a joke about Newfoundlanders. It’s a knock-knock joke. It goes something like this:

“Why are Newfoundlanders bad at knock-knock jokes?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Well, let's try it. I’ll be a Newfoundlander. Say knock-knock.”

“Okay. Knock-knock.”

“Come on in, the door’s open!”

That kind of sums up our trip here. We’ve never felt more welcomed by the land, the culture, and the people, than here in Newfoundland.