July 5, 2024 – Gros Morne National Park - West Coast of Newfoundland


Friday, we drove to the south end of Gros Morne National Park to the Tablelands.  The rocks of Gros Morne National Park contain some of the world’s best records of plate tectonics.  When two continents collided 460 million years ago, the Tablelands and associated seafloor rocks were pushed onto continental crust as the Appalachian Mountains started to form.





The landscape was barren compared to the rest of Gros Morne National Park, but we did find this beautiful waterfall.









Farther into the Tablelands, we stopped and hiked on the Green Gardens Trail.  The 9.5 km trail takes you to the coastline of green meadows, cliffs and sea stacks.  We first crossed barrens and then descended into a forest.





The trees were not very tall at the beginning of the forest but did get taller as we descended towards the coast.





The views were beautiful.  We reluctantly decided that we would not be able to hike all the way to the coast as the weather was getting more threatening and we were all getting tired.  We also had a lot more places we wanted to see today.  







After our hike we stopped in the small fishing town of Trout River where we hiked a short path along the shore.






The path took us by this workshop that had a whale vertebrae and ribs around the door.






We ended up at the dock where we visited with a couple of fishermen at their boats.  One of them offered us a chance to kiss one of the cod’s he had caught, but we respectfully declined.






After leaving Trout River, we stopped at Southeast Brook Falls where we took a short hike through a balsam fir and white birch forest.





Southeast Brook Falls plunges 400 meters over a ridge of granite.  It was raining a little when we reached the top.







Looking down from the top of the falls. This was a nice and peaceful hike.






On our way back to the campground, we stopped at Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse.  We wanted to tour the lighthouse, but they did not allow dogs, so we walked around the grounds.






The skies were dark, the wind was blowing, and it was raining which made for a beautiful scene.


We had a very busy day but were glad we could see so much of this beautiful national park.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 4-6, 2009

Image
June 4, 2009 We drove Northwest of Jasper along the Yellowhead Highway to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We saw a moose along the river in the distance but wasn’t close enough to get a picture. We saw Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, and had a picnic lunch at the Mt. Robson Visitors Center. The scenery is spectacular – a picture of Mt. Robson. Our site at Whistler campground. June 5 We left Jasper in the sunshine and warm but the further North we got, the colder, rainier and more grey it got. As we turned north on route 40 to Grand Paririe, we started to hit a little snow. Didn’t last long but really woke us up. It stayed rainy and grey until we got to Grand Cache then it started to clear. We also got our first real windshield chip today, but a trip to WalMart and a windshield repair kit later we were fixed. The land here is somewhat hilly, swampy and covered with trees. There are some really big oil and gas complexes and some large lumber mills such as the one we saw in Grand Paririe.
Read more

August 24-26, 2009

Image
We headed towards Flathead Lake Monday morning and stopped in Kalispell to get our air conditioner repaired. It had stopped working a couple of weeks ago and August is not the time to be without an air conditioner. The RV dealer we stopped at gave us the name of the guy who does their air conditioning work. He was able to fix the air conditioner (a switch had burned out) in a couple of hours and we were on our way. We drove to Polson, MT at the south end of Flathead Lake and are going to stay here for a few days. We are staying at Eagle Nest RV, which has a cherry orchard on one side, a golf course on one side and a horse pasture on another side. It is a really nice park with lots of grass and trees. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the cherry season and we might not be able to find any fresh cherries. Tuesday morning we decided to take a drive around Flathead Lake. This is a very scenic area with lots of fruit orchards. We found a fruit stand and bought cherries, peaches, tomatoes
Read more

July 28, 2009

Image
We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R
Read more