Blogs from Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, North America

We continue to dodge rain but are so enjoying the ride. Long stretches of barren forest, mountains, and rivers. Oh and lots of black flies! We’ve been riding on the Transcan Highway with some good long hills but with reasonable grades and a wonderful tailwind. We left the Transcan and started on 430 North, the Viking Trail just after Deer Lake and had our first bout of headwind. Stopped at a Tim Horton’s and met our first bike tourist in NF. A young Italian living in Toronto and heading for St John’s. He’s been on the road for 8 weeks and had a lot of the cold snowy weather we missed. He’s ready to get home! And just on the 430 we had to stop at the Insectarium! What a great place! A display of developing ... read more

Left Twillingate for Gros Morne. After a five hour drive I took the rest of the day off. Today, despite the overcast weather and constant threat of drizzle, I had a busy day. First off was a visit to Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse. There I hiked three of the short trails, two of which had beach access. Then off to Green Point Geological site. I walked along the beach, looked at the rock walls apparently home of fossils. Further North, I hiked the Cow Head Lighthouse Trail, about 2 km in length. There was a beach access and one could see the unique limestone rocks associated with the area. My final stop was the Arches Provincial park, a very unique rock formation along the shore with three large arches carved out through erosion. Luckily, no drizzle ... read more

This is a five day adventure story. July 18 After four good sleeps at the Viking RV park in Quirpon, a Sunday visit to the local United Church where sitting and singing with Guy the old geezer from the RVcamp made for an enjoyable hour, the bedding and clothes laundered in one shot because of two machines, the oil changed early Monday morning at a very local garage and a three hundred and seventy four kilometer drive, the Adventure is ahead of itself by two days. The drive south along the western side of the Northern Peninsula is constantly changing from pebble strewn, windswept shores to coniferous trees stunted and bent by the wind to small villages made up of square white clapboard houses but no shops and again and again mountains of wooden lobster traps ... read more

The weather has turned. It's considerably warmer this morning. Blue sky with high clouds, and very windy. We eat a home-cooked breakfast, individually prepared by Cassie, in the B&B dining room in the company of our new friends from last night. After breakfast, we check out. We head over to the L'Anse aux Meadows Visitors Centre. We have a few minutes to review and complete our perusal of the exhibits before the first tour of the day starts. One theme that pervades the exhibits is "completing the circle." The idea is that modern humans spread out from Africa some 100,000 years ago and gradually spread all over the planet. When the Vikings met the aboriginals at L'Anse aux Meadows, as we know they did, this marked the closing of the circle of migration. An intriguing idea. ... read more

We awake to a sunny but windy day in Twillingate, with many clouds in the sky, some threatening. It's rained at some point in the night and the temperature is noticeably cooler. We check out of the hotel, then tour Twillingate. The original name of the town, by the way, is Toulinguet. It was so named by the French because the rugged coastline reminded them of this area in Brest. But Toulinguet did not trip lightly over the English tongue and Twillingate is the result. We visit the Twillingate Museum, lovingly put together and maintained by community volunteers in the former Anglican rector's house. It's well worth the visit, with many interesting stories to piece together from the displays. One of these is the life of Georgina Stirling, born in Twillingate, who became a world-renown operatic ... read more