Newfoundland and Labrador -- 150!

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 ...

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 ...

T he scenery is no less dramatic when descending from Gros Morne to Corner Brook.  What is special historically  is that this area was explored and surveyed extensively in the late 18th century by Captain James Cook. Here is a memorial to Cook with some information and a copy of one of his maps. Not to mention his statue. A little more information here.. But if you can manage to see it, Cook's map of Newfoundland (sketch) is placed next to a modern map in colour in the following right hand picture.  The accuracy was remarkable. Description of the plane table used by Cook for his map-making. We then drove down the coastline along the Bay of Islands, named by Cook for obvious reasons as you can see below, as far as Lark Cove, passing Blow-me-down Provincial Park in the process. What a lovely area and a great place to spend a couple of days.  More exploring to come.

Back in Gros Morne and enchanted by it.  En route to Rocky Harbour, we stopped at the Arches, a kind of mini-perce.  Newlyweds having their picture taken was an unexpected treat. . Yesterday, we took a boat tour from Western Brook Pond.  You walk in 3 km and the boat then takes you through a 'fiord'.  Fiord is in quotation marks because it isn't a true fiord, although it used to be.  Over time, the water became cut off from the sea and now it is fresh water, the pond being deep and clean. Our boat is on the right. Waterfalls and crevasses.   In the spring, the caribou climb down one side, go across the ice, and climb up to a plateau on the other side where they give birth. The pond is filled only with snow-melt and rain.  Very little water enters and only a small brook empties this 300 m deep lake (it seems that all of the freshwater lakes are all called ponds here, even if they are large). Our guide regaled us with songs...