Welcome to Newfoundland

Thurs June 28 2001
Port Au Basques, Nfld to Woody Point, Nfld
252 miles

I woke up this morning in my airline, sardine can type seat, and in the distance I can see the shoreline of Port Au Basques. Holy crap I think I'm finally here. As the land gets closer it just gets taller and taller, it's unreal. As we pull into dock I get the feeling I'm not in Kansas anymore Toto. The temp has dropped a bit in the last six hours, upper eighties have become upper fourties and fifties. The temperature wouldn't be all that bad if it weren't for the insistant wind. Gusts of crosswinds seem hell-bent on sending me lowside. Occasionally I'll get hit with a wind that is trying to rip the helmet off my head, or that sends my neck to one side or the other. But you know it is all worths it! Driving out of Port Au Basques the landscape is priceless. Behind us is the ocean and in front pure mountains of rock climbing ever higher. Its hard to put into words what it all looks like, and the pictures I've taken seem to be unable to capture the essence.

We ride on towards Gros Morne, and eventually meet up with Steve and Alice again. We left the boat before they got up I think, they had one of the oh so sought after cabins. We make plans to possibly meet up for dinner and then part ways again. We get off the Trans-Canada at Deer Lake and head towards the southern end of Gros Morne. As we get closer to the park the lanscape becomes more intense, every landscape I see becomes more stunning than the last. Huge mountains of rock appear in the middle of a forest of greenery. Then we hit the Tablelands! Massive, inhuman orange protrusions violating a sea of green. They remind me more of the surface of mars than anything I've seen thusfar on this planet. Some of the tops still have snow on them!

We grab a room at the Blanchard House B+B in Woody Point which is run by Ivy and Linda. The one other guest there (I forget his name too) works for the canadian fisheries doing some type of conservation stuff. We came back tonight after supper and he was snoring away on the couch in front of the tv.

Sean and I did a bit of sight seeing, and I found a library with an Internet connection to check my mail. We grabbed a table at the seaside restaurant in Trout River, and Steve and Alice came shortly after with Alice's sister, her husband, and someones brother. Sorry guys but I can't remember everyones names. Fish seemed to be the big thing on the menu, but not a big thing with my pallette. I ordered a shrimp stir fry which was pretty good, but I also tried some pan fried cod, and some wolf fish, and was pleasantly surprised. We ordered a bottle of bakeapple wine, that everyone tried with mixed emotions. Desert seemed to be bakeapple parfait or bakeapple cheesecake. Bakeapples are a tart little berry type fruit that I'm told grow wild. The bakeapples or cloudberrys as they are sometimes called weren't in season yet, so I don't know how that affected the taste, but I didn't care for them.

We all exchanged email addresses and planned on possibly hooking up again near there vacation home near Twillingate. Just as we left to get back to the room the sky spit a bit. We ended up buying some bakeapple wine, bakeapple liquor, and screetch at the liquor store before ending a really long day.

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