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Published: July 25th 2016
Oil Change Garage
Will this engine ever be put together again? The garage man was confident in his ability but we questioned his need for order.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 lying inside the forest.
Thankfully the KOA campground had sites available ... the only qualifier being a different site for each nite ... at different prices. The most expensive was the 50watts installation for .. ready? ... $50! A second huge accomodating electrical plug had to be borrowed from the camp office.
July 19
“The Westbrook Pond
boat ride was enthralling. To get to the wharf and the ticket office a three km walk over peat bog, thru black spruce forest and along boardwalks is taken. Sixty dollars plus a visit to the toilet and the water tour begins.
Canadian fjord or
lake located in
Gros Morne National Park on the west coast of the island of
Newfoundland.
It is in the
Long Range Mountains, the most northern section of the
Appalachian Mountains having been carved from the surrounding plateau by
glaciers. After the glaciers melted, the land rebounded and the fjord was cut off from the sea.
Salty water was eventually flushed from the fjord leaving it
fresh. The
catchment area is composed of
igneous rock with relatively thin soil, so the waters feeding Western Brook Pond are low in nutrients and the lake is classified as
ultraoligotrophic.
It is fed by Stag Brook at the extreme eastern end of the lake and by numerous waterfalls cascading from the plateau above. One of these,
Pissing Mare Falls at 350 m (1,150 ft), is one of the highest in eastern North America.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Brook_Pond
The boat has a capacity of ninety five. The three loudest passengers stood in the prow of the boat and made listening to
the info extremely difficult. (The Pond is fresh water, very deep, formed because the earth rose up after the glaciar melted and cut the 'fijord' off from the sea. It takes fifteen years to change the water in the pond via a small brook. The water is so cold no algae grow. Loons, and other birds as well as inland salmon can be found in the pond... this is as much as could be heard.)
The french version was delivered by a very heavy English accented speaker.Waterfalls, waves and whitecaps made for sparkling vistas. The walls of the pond were so high heads had to be pivoted completely back. Rock slides, scree and broken boulders litter the steep shores. Two hours later all passengers disembarked the small red boat faced by a very large crowd of hopeful people ready to experience the wonder of Westbrook Pond.
On the same day Rocky Harbour, a small town close to Norris Point was visited. There are many B&B'S, motels, cabins and hotels waiting for tourists. The small grocery store had bananas, peaches, yellow broccoli, some green onions, wrinkled peppers and one frozen bag of California Style Veggies. These veggies go well
with curried chickpeas the dinner for Thursday. Only soft bread was available so its boiled potatoes from now on.
July 20
At ten o'clock on Wednesday the Gros Morne National Park offers a guided tour of the Tablelands. After a seventy five km drive the tour guide and a large crowd was met at the side of the parking space reserved for hikers going onto the earth's mantle.
Tablelands Geology:
“The park's rock formations, made famous by Robert Stevens and
Harold Williams, include
oceanic crust and
mantle rock exposed by the
obduction process of
plate tectonics, as well as
sedimentary rock formed during the
Ordovician,
Precambrian granite and
Palaeozoic igneous rocks.
The Tablelands, found between the towns of Trout River and Woody Point in south west of Gros Morne National Park, look more like a barren
desert than traditional Newfoundland. This is due to the ultramafic rock –
peridotite – which makes up the Tablelands. It is thought to originate in the Earth's mantle and was forced up from the depths during a plate collision several hundred million years ago. Peridotite lacks the usual nutrients required to sustain most plant life, hence its barren appearance. The
rock is very low in
calcium, very high in
magnesium, and has toxic amounts of heavy metals. Peridotite is also high in iron, which accounts for its brownish colour (rusted colour). Underneath this weathered zone, the rock is really a dark green colour.” Widipekia
From this route three distinct eras of the earth's geology can be seen:
Gros Morne is from a different era than the the long Range Mountains than the Tablelands which are from the earth's mantle. It is not all totally understood but below find the beginnings of prehistoric geology which definitely needs a lot more study ... winter project?? What's on offer at Laurentian ...oh there is that name. Our Laurentian shield is evidence of some of the oldest rock on Earth.
As a beginning to geological study ...a ga is equal to 230 million earth years
Gondwana (~510–~180 million years ago) •
Laurasia (~510–~200 million years ago) •
Pangaea (~300–~210 million years ago) •
Pannotia, also called Vendian
(~600–~545 million years ago) •
Rodinia (~1.1 Ga–~750 million years ago) •
Columbia, also called Nuna
(~1.8–1.5 Ga ago) •
Kenorland (~2.7 Ga ago).
Neoarchean sanukitoidcratons and new continental crust formed Kenorland. Protracted tectonic magma
plume rifting occurred 2.48 to 2.45 Ga and this contributed to the Paleoproterozoic glacial events in 2.45 to 2.22 Ga. Final breakup occurred ~2.1 Ga.
•
Ur (~3 Ga ago). Classified as the earliest known landmass. Ur, however, was probably the largest, perhaps even the only continent three billion years ago. While probably not a supercontinent, one can argue that Ur was a supercontinent for its time, even if it was smaller than
Australia is today. Still, an older rock formation now in Greenland dates back from
Hadeantimes.
•
Vaalbara (~3.6 Ga ago). Evidence is the
Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia and the worldwide Archean
greenstone belts that were subsequently spread out across Gondwana and Laurasia.
In the place called 'The Bowl' sixty three inches ... no that must be feet .... of snow can accumulate. Parks Canada writes,”This north facing bowl collects a lot of wind-blown snow from the Tablelands in addition to the huge annual snowfall in the region”, so it must be feet. There are also avalanche dangers during the winter. There were still patches of snow visible on July 20.
Read a detailed account at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Morne_National_Park Gros Morne has been declared
The Best of Trout River
... never have to visit here again ... here and Musgrave Harbour a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its beauty and because it illustrates convincingly the tectonic plate movement. That makes three UNESCO World Heritage Sites visited while in Nfld.
Port aux Choix is an Archaic h
istorical heritage site. July 21
Thursday morning and its drixxeling. Waterproof pants are searched out and finally found in the bag with the down jacket and other winter clothes. Today temparature in single digits are being reported and nowhere in Nfld is it above 15.
Waiting till 09:00, the camp office phone was used to cancel the 25
th ferry crossing to the 23
rd. The adventure is still two days ahead of itself.
Arriving at the Gros Morne Mt. parking lot at 09:30 there were still plenty of parking spaces available. And so began the four kilometer uphill hike in to the base of the mountain,the drizzle continuing with the back pack protected by a plastic bag. The very waterproof coat had to be put in a plastic shopping bag and strung on one of the backpack straps because the plastic protecting the backpack was already neatly and securely tied. The coat would find its place in the backpack
An Amazing Work of Art
Tickets were $2 so I bought two. on the 4km downhill walk out to the van.
The path has enough space for single file hikers. There are rudimentary stairs constructed from four by four timbers in the steepest parts. Gravel covers flatter areas, boardwalks lead over marshes, bridges over rapids in the river and the rest of the way is boulders, small rocks, pebbles and black peat bog puddles. All about the coniferous trees are brilliantly emerald, the barks tar black and the hanging mosses apple green.
The eight km in and out hike took three and a half hours. The boots were wet and mucky, all clothes had been shed to a decent coverage and half the food and water had been consumed. On the way back the wind caused some cool discomfort so the wind jacket was once again put to use.
At the wan all sweaty clothes and dirty boots were removed, the rest of the water and food were eaten A wonky knee and vertigo were elements not in keeping with a complete encounter of the mountain which rises to 806m. Pictures were taken of the two thirds of the hike not taken .... skree, cliffs, huge boulders and steep
Sculptures by Ann Bartok
AMAZING!!! many examples of naturalists at work terrain. The warnings posted were headed.
One of the warnings at the base is not to proceed if the top is obscured by fog. For those people planning todo the whole hike the fog cleared by 14:00.
The Parks Canada website does not mention the words grueling, joint damage and no where was mention made of possible vertigo.
With the sun shining fantastically, the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting, knitting, listening to the radio ... until the batteries died. The last meal has been cooked. Left overs will be consumed tomorrow. Hopefully real bread will be found in Cornerbrook.
There is a warning about taking potatoes out of Nfld. This could be because the potatoes bought here are quite not as potatoes one is used to; lots of scars, black spots, and hard sections and white lines in the flesh which is neither white or yellow. These ugly potatoes have been imported from P.E.I. I Sudbury the bag would be returned to the store! No wonder so many garden plots are filled with potato plants.
July22
An early start was made and the Codroy RV-Tent Camping Park was reached
by 14:25. The route followed was TCH 1 and was totally b-o-r-i-n-g. Tanksbetogot there was little traffic. Long straight stretches and little to gaze at besides continuous and repetative christmas trees, moose fences (until they stopped and the moose had easy access to the road) and green turn off signs to possibly cute little towns but probably the usual white clapboard houses all in a row were the view from the passenger seat. There were some family homes directly along the TCH(trans canada highway)???
Upon arrival at the camping park a travelers guide was received. Here are Things You Should Know said one page:
• All root vegetables will be confiscated before boarding the ferry if they are not cooked. One more batch of horrible potatoes is boiling at this very moment. The rest that are in the bag will be donated to anyone that will have them.
• Noted is a list of sixty eight birds spotted in this area in 2013 ... it may be assumed that they are still around.
• A conversion Table ...metric to imperial is provided but only imperial has been heard all thru-out these Maritimes & Nfld.
• Maps, poems, songs
and articles complete the small Cordoy Valley Travelers Guide (no punctuation given).
• There are other gems of wisdom ...too many to list!
Meeting couples met before along the way is not uncommon ... three here at Codroy ... all are heading in the same direction ... off the Rock, the adventure over.
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Eugenia
non-member comment
Why do I have to put a title for this... well, this is about Barbara.
(I can't believe I am hosting such an amazing person in my place.) She is absolutely great, I enjoy her stories and adventures, her food, her friendship, and her unique personality. Thank you Barbara for give us a positive way to see life.