It is sometimes much more fun to explore small local areas than to go on great journeys, especially on the last day of one's travels. Today was such a day. The only distance we had to travel was about 45 km from Corner Brook to Deer Lake where we had a B&B booked. As an aside, B&Bs are the way to go in Newfoundland. The people are friendly, the food excellent, and it's much cheaper than hotels and motels. So today we set as our goal, the little town of Howley which is on Grand Lake, the latter a huge long and skinny lake roughly 150 km long. Why Howley you might ask? Well the other option was some very pretty falls in a provincial park, but that would have required travelling on gravel road again which we were loathe to do after our previous Labradorean experience. The other reason is that Howley was the site at which moose were first introduced to Newfoundland. Moose are not indigenous to the island, but were brought here from ...
Dry and dusty but otherwise good It was actually a good gravel road, as gravel roads go. When we booked the car, we made sure (several times) that they knew that we were going onto the Trans-Labrador highway and that we'd be on the gravel part -- 'off-road' or 'dirt road' wasn't permitted. No problem. Then we bought all the insurance possible. In L'anse au Clair we borrowed the satellite phone (for emergencies only) because there is no cell service on the road to Mary's Harbour (not that ours worked anyway, but someone else's might have). But, sadly, the Ford Fusion wasn't up to the challenge. We must have done something right in our lives because just as we pulled in to Mary's Harbour, the car started to beep indicating low tire pressure and when we stopped in front of the motel the left rear tire was well and truly flat. At least it didn't happen in the middle of nowhere, though there were actually quite a few road crews work...
Today we set out on another excursion, this time south and then west as far as Cape St. George. But first a drive through the small campus of Grenfell College, an extension of Memorial University of Newfoundland. The main campus building actually has an observatory. En-route, we passed through Stephenville, important historically because this is where the Americans set up an air force base during the second world war. Today it has transformed itself into a badly planned town that seems to specialize in the sale of all manner of vehicles: bicycles, motorcycles, cars and trucks. There's nothing beautiful about this place. An ad on the main street for a bus tour to commemorate US soldiers during WWII. Past Stephenville one enters a region called 'Port au Port' which is essentially a roughly circular island but connected to the mainland via a narrow isthmus as wide as the road. You can then drive in a circle around the island (I guess technically ...
Comments
Post a Comment