Visit Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland.

by The Beave · Published September 3, 2019 · Updated September 3, 2019

Visit Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland

August 13, 2019.
Pollards Point, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Not Larry and I got moving and out of Pollards Point at 13:00. It is tough to get going when there is so much going on all of the time and so many tasks to tackle!

We left Beatrice the Bendix behind for a couple of days while we get a new rad-hose to replace the one our lady now has pin-hole through. I guess that is her way of saying that she wants a few days to recuperate from the cross-continent drive. No problem honey. So, for this journey we set out in Not Larry’s Nan’s car for a trip up the western peninsula of Newfoundland. It is said to have stunning views.

Not Larry has been up the western peninsula of Newfoundland as a kid and as an adult, but it has been some years. The western peninsula is where she used to vacation with her family as a child. We even drove past a waterslide she used to visit at Cormack’s Funland Resort. “Big Daddy’s Lounge” is the bar at the children’s Funland Resort. Big Daddy’s Lounge… I am not sure I would be in a big rush to take children to a fun-land resort where patrons of Big Daddy’s Lounge hang out! Then just a little further down the road we passed a place called Killdevil Camp where Not Larry went to church camp when she was young. The irony of that place-name for a church camp is truly fantastic.

Just past the gates of the Gros Morne National Park, Not Larry and I went into the discovery center where there seemed to be some outlandish scenes of animal porn taking place. It was ridiculous and I hope the display was designed by teenagers who can not believe that they got away with it:

The Gros Morne National Park is beautiful. Things on this east coast are much older than that of the west coast. Not Larry told me that the hills here are the “Grandparents of the Rocky Mountains.” What is a great term! And there are people from all over North America here. At our first stop we saw license plates from Quebec, Nebraska, Texas, Alberta, Florida, Ontario, and Maine. Newfoundland’s peninsula is a busy place. How are people from Nebraska and Texas finding out about a park on the barren western peninsula of Newfoundland? And because of this new influx of tourism, Not Larry says that the towns are more vibrant than they were when she was a girl. The buildings are freshly painted and towns like Norris Point are lively and thriving as opposed to how they were dying when she was young. Tourism is doing great things for the local communities on the northern peninsula of the Gros Morne National Park of Newfoundland. It is great to see the little fishing villages here have been struggling for years.

We stopped in Green Point on our drive north. The place feels magical with stacks of sideways flat rocks…

From the welcome sign:

This sequence of rock was originally flat. Each layer formed as much and organic debris settled to the floor of an ancient ocean. The younger layers were deposited on top of older layers. Later, tectonic forces tilted the rocks, so that today we find the older layers to the right and the younger layers to the left.

Awesome! Ocean mud and sediment stacked upon itself on the ocean floor like long pancakes, piled high. The sediment and mud fossilized over time. Then, the tectonic plates moved which pushed the piles over to lay them on their sides. It is amazing to look at the changes in the earth. Nature does some wonderful things.

Visit Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland.

Formerly horizontal, now vertical rocks!

Fun Notes of Interest:

– Not Larry had some moose-soup at a snack shack on the side of the road. Newfoundland is special as it is the only province in Canada allowed to serve wild game.
– There are tuckamore trees all along the road, which lean over like trees that have been hanging onto the earth for deal life in constant wind. Not Larry told me that the DNA of those trees has changed over time so that they now naturally grow on an angle. They look like something out of a cartoon.
– There are signs for named brooks everywhere to draw in your attention and I realized that I have never been associated with a brook before. What is a brook? Is it something between a creek and a stream? I can imagine what one is but I am not sure if I could determine a differentiation between a creek, a brook and a stream.

The view at our $130 home for the night!

As we pushed further north, it felt like we traveled a lot but there was so much to stop and look at that the miles were not many, though the journey offered plenty. When we arrived in a town called Cow Head, Not Larry got us a hotel room for the night at the Sea View for $130 and with the outrageous price I realized that we have not stayed in a hotel for a while. I guess this trip is kind of our get-away from our vacation! But it was great as in the evening we went to a show and watched something called Newfoundland Vinyl, a musical with a live band tackling Newfoundland music from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. It was $65 each for the show and a lot of fun to listen to live story-songs about Newfoundland and culture. All songs in Newfoundland are based on what the ocean gives and takes and the four-park harmonies were so great to hear. Not Larry picked out the fake Newfoundland accents which made me laugh. There are two plays here every night through the summer. Things are vibrant and fun!

We had a couple of drinks including beer made from 20,000 year old iceberg water, and were in bed by 01:00, played out from the long day.

Thought to Ponder:

On the drive I saw a camper with a brand-name of Sea Breeze on the top. That got me thinking… If I was in a conversation with you and told you that, “I went down to the beach to enjoy the Sea Breeze in the Sea Breeze,” which order did you envision what I was doing? Was I at the beach enjoying the wind in my camper or was I at the beach enjoying my camper in the wind? I would love to hear your visual order in the comments below!

August 14, 2019.
Cow Head, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Not Larry woke up at 06:30 and then woke up my mid-section. It was 30 minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off, but if a man is to be woken up early, it is tough to beat such reasons…

For $65 each, we make her dreams come true!

We showered, had breakfast, and headed to the Gros Morne National Park again to go to the Western Brook Pond to get on a boat to see the gorge. Not Larry said that she always wanted to take the boat out to see it, but never had enough money to do it when she was young. She has come to the east side of the gorge on snow-mobiles, but has never approached it from the west.

We are doing it!

We had a one-hour hike through the park on a gravel path to get to the boat. The hike was awesome and is something we never seem to do anymore. We are becoming un-exercised lumps. It felt pretty darn good to get bodies moving this morning. I feel like my thought patterns are not in a straight line anymore and maybe that is do to a lack of exercise and oxygen through the body. So the brain-food hike was actually quite a treat! I feel smarter. Not Larry had to endure extra one-liners today.

Life is different now. We do not live in Europe so that means we drive everywhere, and we are not backpacking so that means we are always in a car from Point A to Point B. That can not be healthy and we had better start to up our body usage beyond the horizontal holka-polka if we want to stay fit and still look like we will not be the last selected for a make-shift Sunday baseball team!

The Western Brook Pond gorge.

There was a line-up to get on the top deck of the boat to take us out on the Western Brook Pond. Not Larry and I got two of the last seats on the top. It was chilly as the air temperature was lowered from the water, but the sights were beautiful and our guide was an entertaining local man who was full of great information of the Western Brook Pond.

Try Some of these Gross Morne National Park facts on for Size!

– The Western Brook Pond is not a true fjord because the pond is not salt water. It has not been a true fjord for 8,000 years and pretty much only the creosote bushes have an opinion from then and they are not talking!
– The Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne National Park is 165 meters deep at its lowest point, the highest cliffs are 717 meters high and the and has a total length of 16km. This entire gorge was created during the last ice age when the water melted and there was run-off. The running water cut through rock to create this beautiful geology. A flood in a small town makes the news today. Imagine if there had been papers during the melting of the ice-age? They would still be writing about it!
– The water in the Western Brook Pond here in Gros Morne National Park is too pure for minerals required by most plants and fish. So, the pond is sparse with life in comparison to other ponds of a similar size. We did not drink a sample of it, and Not Larry did not seem interested in taking a dip to see how it felt on her skin.
– A normal body of water of similar size to the Western Brook Pond here in Gros Morne National Park flushes itself 6 to 8 times each year. But, in the Western Brook Pond there is very little water coming in with the small water falls and only a small brook to take the water out, so the water in the pond takes 15 years to flush. That is under three full flushes during my entire lifetime!
– There are 500 caribou in the Gross Morne National Park. There are also 2,700 moose in the park. The moose are not native, but they have thrived here. In 2007, there were 15 moose/km², so hunting was introduced to bring the number down to 2 moose/km². That is a lot of potentially delicious roasts and soup!

The east side of the Western Brook Pond gorge.

At the end of the gorge at the very east side of the Western Brook Pond here in Gros Morne National Park, we let six people off the boat to hike back to the parking lot over the next couple of days. What a great experience that would be, but I was wearing cheap shoes from Peru, Not Larry was under-dressed, and neither of us had a morsel of food with us. So, we rode the boat back to the dock where we started. As compensation, we played spoons along with the Newfie music for the rest of the boat trip and everyone seemed to be happy with the whole morning.

After the tour, Not Larry drove us to Shallow Bay Beach as it is her favorite beach in the entire province Newfoundland and Labrador. The sand at Shallow Bay Beach was incredibly fine and soft grey in color. We have been collecting sand from beaches we have visited around the world, so I was trying to find a vessel to collect some of the Shallow Bay Beach. Other tourists were there and were watching me as I searched one garbage can, then another, and then another. All the while I had Not Larry’s purse on my shoulder. Eventually I found a plastic blue roller-dumpster with a Gatorade bottle in the bottom that I could not reach. So, I had to pull the roller bin out of the wooden holder to be able to tip it over to get the bottle from the bottom. Other tourists watched me do all this. They were probably pretty leery of me and must have thought I was pretty desperate for money as the purse I had stolen had obviously produced none. But, I got the bottle and I was able to fill it with sand to take home in spite of their curious looks!

Arches Provincial Park.

There is still trust up here and it is nice to find.

Not Larry and I stopped in Arches Provincial Park, and then carried on to St. Anthony, right at the top of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of the drive north was right alongside of the ocean with occasional giant waves rolling into the pretty little sea-towns which welcomed us along the way. The Gros Morne National Park and the northern peninsula is truly a gorgeous drive. However, it was hard to find accommodation in St. Anthony and probably took 15 phone calls to find a room in the area. Eventually, we could a place about 25 minutes outside of St. Anthony. We rented a cabin for $148, which is kind of the going rate for a place to stay here. The lady who ran the cabins was entertaining as is the case with most Newfoundlanders. We were to arrive at the cabin late, after her office was going to close…but she told me she would leave the cabin unlocked and the key on the table. She did not even ask for my name or my credit card. There is still trust up here, the people are so sweet and all of it is so nice to find.

Just look at that view. So dang nice!

Even in the gas stations and convenience stores, people greet you like they actually mean it. What a treat to be around sincerity humans.

We have arrived in St. Anthony which was once known as ‘Vínland’, the first place settled by Europeans…the Norse Vikings back in the year 1000. This should be fascinating…

For the fun video on the day, make sure you click here or click it at the top!

For a few more photos on Visit Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland: