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GROS MORNE NATIONAL PARK -NEWFOUNDLAND’S WEST COAST JEWEL

Even to the most unseasoned traveler, one look at the map of Newfoundland would reveal few roads. And if the thickness of the line is any indicator of the quality of the road, and it usually is, there are really only two routes for an RV of our size and weight. The first is Route 1 or the last leg of the Trans-Canada Highway, which traverses the entire island of Newfoundland from the town of Port aux Basques, on the western edge to the capital of Newfoundland, St John’s, and the most eastern city in North America. A second road, of lesser quality, Route 430 runs along the western shore of the Island to the tiny fishing village of St Anthony. This route is known by locals as the Viking Trail as it ends close to the 986 AD landing place of Leif Eriksson, son of Eric the Red. Newfoundland is one word and is correctly pronounced “Newfoundland” with emphasis on the LAND. The few other roads on the island are less than a hundred miles long, and like tiny capillaries running off a main artery, lead to such exotic places as Dildo Run, Burego, Leading Tickles and Pouch Cove and can suddenly turn to gravel with no warning. There are many villages in NewFoundland which have no apparent passage by land whatsoever, such as Pushthrough, Belleoram, Comfort Bight or Croc and without ferry service or airports, one can only speculate how the hell anyone could get in or get out.

With only these options available, Sara and I began our Newfoundland adventure traveling up the Western Coast, first on Route 1 and then the Viking Trail. By pure chance we decided to fill up with diesel and take on food stuffs at Corner Brook, the last reasonably sized city before embarking on the Trail.

And what a wise decision that turned out to be. The price of fuel increased and the availability of things to eat that did not come out of a can or freezer decreased proportionally the further north we traveled.

Our first destination was the famous National Provincial Park, Gros Morne, for a two week visit. We had been told that the park was named because in French it meant “Bad Morning” due to the constant fog and poor weather. This explanation came from a fellow traveler we met on the ferry, whose grasp of French could not have exceeded Bone Jour or Wee. We repeated the explanation only to be corrected unmercifully by our RV park hosts. Gros Morne means “big mound or mountain”, a name the park acquired by early French visitors in the 1700’s. Gros meaning big and Morne is a Creole word for rounded hill. Morne in French does mean gloomy, and when the fog rakes across the mountains, the place does take on a gloomy isolated appearance that does certainly give a hint of accuracy to the first explanation.

One is truly at a loss to choose words that can accurately convey the beauty of this place. Actually, the mountains of Gros Morne are the northern most extension of the Appalachians and are called the Long Range. Voted the second most scenic drive in North American by a national Canadian travel magazine, Gros Morne is an absolute “must see” for any visitor to Newfoundland. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Park which puts it in the same awesome ranks as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Asia’s Himalayas and Yellowstone Park in the USA. It is over 600 square miles of beauty. Each morning pure white fog oozes between massive green mountains where the land meets the sea, like gravy spreading between biscuits on a breakfast plate typically served in the area. As the air warms, the fog shifts up and down, slowing dancing over the landscape, sometimes ringing the protruding cliffs in two or more distinct layers like the distant planet Saturn. The fog usually parts by midmorning to reveal the bluest of skies and the sparking of aqua seas and inland lakes. This symphony of visual delights is a marvel to the eyes, and combined with whiffs of fresh sea air and ever present pine scent, the experiences is complete. And the sunsets, those incredible sunsets. The accompanying pictures try but cannot do justice to Gros Morne. You have to be there. And if you come, there are three attractions in the park that are not to be missed. The first is the park sponsored boat ride on Western Brook Pond and the second, a visit to the Tablelands and finally the Gros Morne Festival Theatre.

The Western Brook Pond experience begins with a short hike on a boardwalk to the landing through a marsh bog so typical of the park. Interspersed along the 3k walk are several clearings and ponds. The boardwalk quivers underfoot, often betraying the soft mossy bog over 12 feet thick below. The water is stained dark brown like tea and has a low pH and its lack of oxygen acts as a natural preservative, which limits the type of vegetation found in the area. Early seafarers valued this water over spring water and it was collected and stored in wood flasks. The water would not foul due to the preservatives and remained drinkable during long sea journeys. There are countless blue violet iris, pitcher plants and sundew and bog orchids along the boardwalk and one is tempted to step onto the bog to get a closer picture. It is against park rules and the thought of sinking up to ones waist discourages the move.

At the end of the trail is the boat landing and it is the only man made structure within miles of the Western Brook Pond. In fact the tour boat was brought to the dock area in three sections by huge helicopters and assembled later. West Brook is one of the few remain super oligotropic lakes remaining in the world. Because the water contained within its shores originated from melted glaciers formed thousands of years ago and before any industrial pollution, it is some of the purest on earth. West Brook Pond was formed by a glacier that was several miles, yes, miles thick. As the glacier crept between the mountains, the sheer weight of the ice pushed the land below sea level. As the glacier retreated, sea water from the Straits of Labrador poured into the valley. Scientists know this because fossil records of sea life abound in the ancient rock that towers around the lake shore. Subsequent glaciers flushed the sea water out and filled the present lake with fresh water. This took only 18,000 years they figure. The lake water is cold and deep. A depth gauge on the boat showed over 360 feet at several points. There are few fish and they are quite small due to the scarcity of food in Western Brook. The boat ride lasts about two hours and it is a trip into a dream world. Boarding the steep cliffs are several waterfalls including Pissing Mare Falls, where water drops over 1148 feet. The water never really hits the lake as it turns into a rainbow jeweled mist which floats away over the lake surface below. It is one of the few places we have visited where I actually ran out of digital film for my camera after taking over 165 pictures. Don’t miss the boat tour of Western Brook Pond. You will never forget it if you do, and never forgive yourself if you don’t.

Another highlight of Gros Morne National Park is the Tablelands. From a distance they appear as a strange brown landscape amidst a kaleidoscope of greens. This color is due to the high level of iron in the rocks. The Tablelands are a geologist’s dream, where one can walk on rocks that were once under the ocean and actually part of the earth’s mantle. The rock was forced hundreds of feet above the present seas as the continents of Africa and North America collided, displaying one of the finest examples of plate tectonics on the face of the earth. The rocks are over 500 million years old and display fossil remains of long extinct sea creatures. The Tablelands are mere youngsters when compared to the nearby Long Range Mountain rocks at more than one billion and a half years old. Tablelands rocks are made up of peridotite which lacks most of the mineral nutrients necessary for plant life, reducing the landscape to a barren moon like place. Peridotite is very high in magnesium and has other toxic amounts of heavy metals.

During our two weeks in Gros Morne Park, we stayed at the KOA RV Park outside the town of Rocky Harbor. At a population of just under a thousand, it is one of the largest villages in the area. The local grocery store has the basics but lacks fresh meat and has a meager supply of fruit and vegetables. More of a supply store than a grocery store, one imagines it to be patterned more like the company store of the Hudson Bay in days gone by than the IGA. Where else would all the meat be contained in large chest freezers dutifully labeled beef, pork and poulet. Chain saws hang from the ceiling and motor oil and birthday cards sit side by side. The movie rental display was huge with Kill Bill Vol 1 and Bowling for Columbine as new releases. The winters are long in Rocky Harbor. There is a fishery store at the dock offers live lobster, fresh haddock, cod and salmon which more than make up for any lack of fresh meat in the area.

The neighboring village of Norris Point (population 600) boasts three churches, one of which was actually Catholic. Control of this area was hotly contested between the French and the English in the late 1800’s and the English appear to have won based on denominations of the churches. There was absolutely no discernable way to determine a Mass schedule, with not even a sign on the building indicating that it was a church. A peep through the window revealed a confessional confirming its persuasion. After asking several locals who seem astonished that anyone would want to go to a Catholic church, one women requested that “ef we was to find out, tat we say a prayer fur her as she wis Catholic, but never goes much.” We gave up after hearing that. Across the bay from Norris Point is the tiny village of Woody Point, (population 400) and the site of the Gros Morne Discovery Center.

Sara and I visited Woody Point by taking the water taxi from Norris Point and were treated to the sight of several minke whales frolicking in Bonne Bay that separates the two towns. The Discovery Center was a bit of a disappointment, for such an impressive building, the displays housed within had minimal information about the park and its history. With several hours to kill before the boat returned, we walked to the lighthouse and visited a restored home. Lunch at a local coffee shop was limited to a chicken salad sandwich as the proprietor informed us that “All de hot soup is gone! Got a tour bus, yea kno.” In this part of Newfoundland, when something is gone, it is gone.

Other highlights of the Rocky Harbor area include the picturesque Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse, the Gros Morne Park Visitor Center, a community owned heated swimming pool and the Gross Morne Theatre Festival.

The Festival is housed in a group of buildings in Cow Head just north of Rocky Harbor and offers a glimpse into the past through lively entertainment, music, plays and food. The dinner theatre offers such local favorites as Jiggs’ Dinner, (salt corn beef, yellow peas, carrots, turnips and cabbage) Fish-n-Brewis (salt cod and hard tack which is soaked in water over night, the hard tack bread too, and then mixed together and cooked again, only then to be topped with fried salt pork, both pork and resulting rendered fat poured over the dish) No calories there!!! Also there is Lassie Bread. This brown bread is thick with molasses and often served with a thick fried slab of Newfoundland bologna, an island staple. To top off the meal, as though anyone needs more to eat, a traditional dessert with bakeapples, small bittersweet berries that grow only in the bogs of Newfoundland is served. Local rum suspiciously called Screech is poured over ice cream and with bakeapples as a garnish; it is billed as a delicious treat you will not find elsewhere.

Sara and I decided to skip the dinners in hopes of attending one performance and trying the dessert. We were warned that kissing a cold, dead codfish passed around the table was also a tradition at many of these dinners, making you an official, honorary “Newfie”. That information gave us another reason to skip the dinner besides the massive number of calories.

We opted to see He’d Be Your Mother’s Father’s Cousin, a comedy by Mary Colin Chistolm. Described as a hilarious ditty filled with Island humor, it lived up to its billing. The plot was simple enough, centering on a dysfunctional family consisting of a mother, who is forced to communicate with her daughter who has moved away to Ontario by using a tape recorder. The father is upset over high phone bills and is always losing his personal belongings like his keys and glasses that are perched on the top of his head. (Don got several pokes in the ribs by Sara during the play.) But the person who stole the show, is the crotchety grandma dressed in flannels and huge mittens who is constantly wandering about the stage calling out, “Here Puss, Here Puss, Here Puss!” as she looks for her beloved cat. The cat is found as it was plastered behind the ceiling by the father and the handyman who get plastered themselves on rum during the repair. Of course the ceiling requires repair because Grandma fell asleep in the upstairs bath tub with the water running and the door locked.

The play goes on with memorable scenes of a car trip to Halifax where Grandma smuggles the cat in a suitcase only for it to have kittens half way there, a hospital scene where Grandma uses the tape recorder to prerecord a conversation with her fellow patient in the room who is dying or thinks she is.

The play ends with the enviable return of the daughter during the summer at the cottage, much to the delight of the mother. Filled with Island colloquialisms such as, “She talked so much, dat me could have sawed off me ers wit a spoon.” “Stay where ya to, till I comes where you’re at”, “By Jesus she fell from the ugly tree and hit every branch on da way down”, “Christ tis cold enugh to freeze the da nuts off a jeep”,or my all time favorite, “I’m so hungry, I’d eat the arse off a low flying duck.”. We left deciding to skip the dessert but enjoyed the show immensely.

On the drive back to Rocky Harbor, were treated to beautiful sunsets over the western shore of the park. They were some of the best and we have seen a lot of sunsets. We never did tire of the park's sunsets. You could fill a photo album of them. Many evenings we were treated to an every changes show of water, light, clouds and rocks.

Our visit to Gros Morne Park had come to an end. The place seems bigger than life itself and our visit had been too brief.

Speaking of brevity, Bill Bryson, author of a Walk in the Woods, I Am a Stranger Here Myself and In A Sunburned Country among other books, gives a wonderful way to appreciate how truly brief our existence on this earth has been. In his work, A Short History of Nearly Everything, he explains that if all books of the Bible represented the lifespan of the earth, we as humans have been around for the last four words. He closes his book with the following thought:

“If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by “we” I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp. We have arrived at this position of eminence in a stunningly short time. Behaviorally modern human beings-that is, people who can speak and make art and organize complex activities- have existed for only about 0.0001 percent of the Earth’s history. But surviving for even that little while has required a nearly endless string of good fortune. We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a good deal more than lucky breaks.”

Before leaving the area we stopped at a small gift shop in Rocky Harbor and the proprietor, a life long resident gave a brief history of the area. She sadly remarked how they used to have the Winter Festival out on the harbor ice, but remarked that harbor doesn’t freeze up anymore. “Global warming yah think?” she asked.

Yes, indeed we will need more than lucky breaks.