Gros Morne National Park South May 2024

 

Before leaving Corner Brook, we drove to a viewpoint overlooking the city and the Humber Arm river that flows into Bay of Islands. It had a statue of Captain Cook, who arrived here in the mid 1700’s and surveyed Newfoundland – amazingly, his detailed map looks almost exactly the same as those of today with all our advanced technologies.

Captain Cook, the Surveyor

Being here in Spring (last time we were in Summer), we are seeing spring flowers – I have never seen as many dandelions as here – actually quite pretty.  Some homes had an entire Dandelion Lawn!

A robin among the dandelions

Downtown Corner Brook's paper and pump mill

The hillsides covered in trees just getting
 their new leaves and dark pine trees

After lunch at the lookout, we drove north into Gros Morne National Park. It is a huge park that encompasses miles and miles along the coast with a massive variety of landscapes, plants and animals. Its diversity earned itself a designation as a Unesco World Heritage site. There are a few towns within the park (not actually part of it, though) and we were lucky to get a site in Shoal Brook right on the South Arm of Bonne Bay.

Weather is cool and cloudy, but not windy. At one point, the bay was completely still and suddenly Jack yelled out WHALE!!! There was a whale (small, probably a baleen whale) swimming and breaching right in front of the RV. Pretty exciting to watch, but weren’t quick enough to get photos.

Good to know.

Hanging with friends

Friday, we visited the park’s Discovery Centre – an interesting museum with a video highlighting the various aspects of the park, and displays regarding the indigenous peoples and the geology of the area. 

Beau and I hiked a portion of the Green Gardens Trail. It started off in a small Tablelands section with orangey rocks that have high contents of heavy metals and so little grows there. As we climbed the gentle hilly areas, the terrain changed to low growing alpine type plants and as we neared the ocean, it became verdant green. A pretty walk and Beau and I got some much needed exercise.

The trail started out in Tablelands

Progressed to some vegetation

Beau leading the Green Gardens Hike

We then visited the small historic town of Woody Point that was a major town in the early 1900’s, but today it is a tiny village with a couple of restaurants, craft shops, and a fish processing plant. We stopped at one craft store and picked up a couple of unique mementos. We returned to our site overlooking the bay, but saw no more whales.

Craft shop with many local artisans' works

Jack made me stop in the middle of the street so he could get this photo.