Tablelands at Gros Morne National Park
Trip Start
Jun 06, 2011
1
9
16
Trip End
Jun 21, 2011
Where I stayed
Woody Point, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
Monday, June 13, 2011
We got some muffins and juice at the local store this morning and ate out on the deck before making our way into the park for another day. We first hiked at the Tablelands, which was an easy 4 kilometre walk. Since I don’t know enough about geology to bore you with the details, the Tablelands is one of the few places on earth where the mantle from the earth’s core is exposed on land. This was apparently caused by a plate collision about 100,000,000 years ago. The Tablelands resembles a desert: rocks are brown and vegetation is sparse. However, when you look across the road, you see evergreen trees galore and grasses, bushes, and other vegetation aplenty.
We then went to Green Gardens trail, which was listed as a moderate to strenuous hike, with the trail beginning to the top of a barren hill of the Tablelands and descending through a forest to a volcanic sea coast. We made it to the top of the mountain over a very rocky path and then started down (350 kilometres) to the ocean. We got a little over halfway and then realized that if we wanted some time to lounge on the deck at the Seaside Suites this afternoon, we would have to turn around now and head back up the mountain. It was a difficult hike uphill from where we turned around and would have been a lot harder had we made it all the way down to the coast. No worries, we were back at the Suites by mid –afternoon having an early dinner on the deck.
I have long been a fan of lighthouses and I didn’t realize that there is one here is Woody Point (Woody Point Lighthouse) until I spotted it from the deck. I walked down the road to photograph it while the other half grabbed a quick nap after some rough hiking. We try to walk every day at home, but you can’t prepare for terrain like we’re seeing here by strolling through Wyomissing Park.
We saw moose tracks on the trail, but have yet to see a moose in Newfoundland. We spotted a fox near the Tablelands this morning, but that’s about it for wildlife. Kathi was determined to see a whale in the bay off our deck and had herself convinced that she saw one (there weren’t any there today, but I’ll let her think that she really did spot one).
The weather today was very nice, about 60 degrees on the trails. Back at our place right on the water, it’s considerably cooler and breezy. We sat out on the deck for awhile with jackets on, but retreated inside and turned on the heat in the fireplace.
We leave Gros Morne tomorrow to head for Twillingate, about five hours northeast of here. Twillingate is one of the top places in Newfoundland to see icebergs, but we’ve been checking on the Iceberg tracker online and there have been no reported sightings yet. Hopefully, one or a few will float into the area while we’re there.
