Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland

The photographs below missed my last post, but I put them in here, even though we are now well back in Newfoundland.

Waiting for the International ferry from Canada to arrive in St Pierre

Seems like there are still old whisky crates from prohibition days in St Pierre. This one was being used to record visitors votes in a photographic competition at the museum.

Old photograph showing the stacks of whisky crates on the pier in St Pierre during prohibition.

Well, the Newfoundland weather has caught up with us. Last Sunday when we were on the Bonavista Peninsula it blew a gale and rained intermittently. After exploring the Heritage area of Trinity, we tried to walk out on the cliff at Elliston to see the puffins, but the wind was so strong it was too scary. However Monday morning was bright and clear and calm, so we went back to the puffin site and were glad we had returned.

From Trinity we explored around the Twillingate area on our way to our next stopover at Bluewater Lodge. It was log cabin style very comfortable and nice people, but in the middle of nowhere - in the forest by a lake, with no real views.

Tuesday morning it was raining and it hardly stopped all day. At times it was just sheeting down and the water was hardly running off the highway. We thought it a good day for museums and coffee shops.

There was a very good small museum in Grand Falls-Windsor and as part of the $2 entrance fee there was free entry to the Loggers museum in the forest just outside town.

This morning when we woke it was foggy and still inclined to rain. We were booked on a boat trip into West Brook pond which apparently is a spectacular fiord. It is a 3 km walk into the boat dock.

Anyway we thought we might as well walk down the track to the water. it was a pleasant walk and there were some wildflowers, but the boat trip was cancelled as the fog did not lift at all and the maximum temperature was 9. Apparently the weather means the trip is cancelled about twice a week on average and this is summer!

Everybody keeps warning us about moose on the road. Someone introduced 2 pairs in 1878 and now there are more than 120,000 on the island and they cause a lot of fatal accidents. They are big!

Anyway cross your fingers for tomorrow.

 L plate driver - Newfoundland style

19th C house in Trinity. The internal walls are vertical boards (spruce?) covered in wallpaper. There are no studs so they are less than 2 inches thick.. I think it is called balloon construction

 Crazy patchwork quilt.

Typical indented rocky Newfoundland coast. James Cook spent 4 years in the 1760s charting these bays.

 Last Sunday we saw how angry and dangerous the sea can  be.

The view from our room at the Fishers' Loft Inn, near Trinity.

 The view from the dining room at the Fishers' Loft Inn

 A puffin spreading its wings. They look very ungainly in the air as they beat their wings rapidly.

 Another puffin poses. They are comical appealing birds, but much smaller than I expected.

 Long Point Lighthouse, near Twillingate. There are no shortage of lighthouses, some still manned.

 The Loggers Museum. You will have to imagine the mosquitoes.

 Interior of one of the huts. As you can see, a pretty Spartan place to live for months at a time.

 The view from Neddies Harbour Inn, Norris Point - just outside Gros Morne Park

Canadian Burnet(t?)

 Bakeapple -like a Newfoundland wild raspberry. This one is unripe. When ripe they are orange.

 Arethusa or Dragon's Mouth

 Late afternoon on Wednesday and the fog has not lifted.