Gros Morne National Park - day 1

After arriving yesterday at the KOA Norris Point / Gros Morne, we headed out this morning to try to see some of the park.

We started with a visit to the Visitor Centre which is just up the road from the campground. We heard there that it is supposed to be rainy tomorrow, so we should try to do outdoor things today.

Before we could do any touring, though, we had to go to the hardware store and get some bolts to replace the ones on the tow bar.

Home hardware building centre in Rocky Harbour

The night before we were leaving Pistolet Bay Provincial Park, Dwayne was inspecting the tow bar and found that one of the two bolts that held the tow bar to the component attach to the Jeep's frame had sheared off. This was on the side of the tow bar where the cross bar sheared on our way up toward the northern part of the island. We are surmising that the two went hand-in-hand, though we don't know which happened first. I (Patti) think that the shearing of the bolt could have happened due to the wearing of the roads that pulls the Jeep strongly when we're in those areas. If the bus is trying to pull the Jeep along side the ruts and the Jeep pulled strongly into the rut, maybe the bolt sheared, which eventually caused the stress on the cross piece causing it to break also.

Our last evening at Pistolet Bay, one of the rangers helped us by finding a bolt that we could use temporarily, but we knew that it needed to be permanently fixed. We got all new bolts, washers, lock washers, and nuts at the Home hardware building centre in Rocky Harbour.

 After making those fixes, it was too late to join any of the morning activities in the park. We had called about taking a boat tour in the afternoon, and needed to call back at 2pm to see if they would be doing a 4pm boat tour. In the meantime, we visited Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse.

Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse

The interpreter at the lighthouse was one of the most engaging people we have met! She asked if we would like tea, and after providing us both with tea (sweetened with molasses, which would have been common at the time of the use of the lighthouse), she shared some stories with us about how Sally's Cove was named, and some of her own family's history in the area. Then she suggested that we should have some music - here she has Dwayne ready to play the percussion instrument in the house and she is working with two other ladies to figure out which song to sing. The interpreter is the lady with reddish hair and black top/grey pants, nearer to Dwayne in the center of the picture. Interestingly, the lady in all black in the center is a singer who performs with a group in St John's and one of the folks who works at the Cape Spear Lighthouse (where we went to see the sunrise a week or so ago) - she likes visiting lighthouses and getting ideas for how they can improve what they provide at Cape Spear.

 I took a video of the impromptu performance - I'm hoping the upload will eventually finish and you'll be able to listen to it here: https://youtu.be/gVLWz3uWECQ
You can find the lyrics here: http://www.lyrics.com/islander-lyrics-shanneyganock.html

When we called the boat tour folks at 2pm, they confirmed that they would be running a 4pm tour. It was about an hour drive up to the parking lot where the trail started, and then a 45 minute easy hike in to the lake where the boat ride was to occur.

We were heading to a lake that was in the valley that was below where the notch in those mountains was.

I think this signage tells us that we are on the path for the hike to the boat tour... either that, or a spaceship with aliens is ahead of us...

This was the view of the lake from the dock area.

Soon after we got going in the boat, there was a moose drinking alongside the lake. This is the picture with my phone camera so you get an idea of how tiny the moose looked next to the walls of the canyon (and this isn't giving you any idea of how tall the walls of the canyon were).

Switching to Dwayne's pictures - maybe you can start to understand how magnificent it was... beautiful sheer walls of the canyon into the "pond".

Just gorgeous creation by God!

Here's Dwayne's picture of the moose!

After the boat passed him, the moose seemed to be watching us go!

Beautiful...

The body of water we were on is called "Western Brook Pond". You may be able to detect a small white object right at the base of the cliff in the water in this picture... look at the next one...

That little bitty thing was the other tour boat heading back up the lake as we were going in. The other boat was probably 30' long. I think we were told that the cliffs were 1900' tall.

One of the beautiful waterfalls that we saw.

A second beautiful waterfall... close up...

This is the second waterfall without the zoom in on Dwayne's camera.

The eastern end of the lake.

Some of the information provided at the lake/pond.

The boat that we went on - it was a little larger than the one that was in the earlier picture.

 We were really glad that we called and got on the 4pm trip - it was so beautiful and gave a chance to see a part of the park that we would not be able to see otherwise!