The Rock

[Ike in black, Bethany in red]

There was a distinct sense of excitement and anticipation by those on the ferry as the land began to resolve from indistinct shapes in the fog. As a prairie-born individual, I too was right at the windows, but less in excitement and more just to verify that there was land we were going to. Six hours wasn't particularly long to be on a ferry [and a luxurious one at that][compared to the other one that took sixteen hours][also... it was plenty long to be sitting by a guy who was blasting Eminem's Stan from his phone], but I still wanted to verify that we hadn't ended up going through a time warp or anything crazy. [Fog is always a clear indicator that vortexes are possible]

From the crest of luxury, danger may loom?

Newfoundland isn't particularly remote nor desolate, but as the land came into focus [most of the six hour journey had been in dense fog, which suddenly cleared about a half hour from shore], I distinctly felt that the trip had begun in earnest. “Where are the trees?” I asked Bethany, “It's all moss and rock-oh my God, look up there” and I pointed to some clefts in the hills, where large patches of white could be seen. Bethany's eyes widened and her voice jumped half an octave. “Ike, we're camping here....”

First glimpse of Newfoundland, from the Port-aux-Basques harbor.

If anything, the exhilaration was greater knowing this. There is something romantic about taking your trip as far as it can go, and while Newfoundland isn't exactly apart from civilization, the way the landscape seemed to loom over us seemed to reinforce that it was different.

We descended nine stories into the bowels of the ship where our vehicle was stowed. As we roared off the ship and into the unknown, our trip was taking flight again...for about 30 seconds as we immediately pulled into a gas station to fill up the car and the reserve jerry can, as well as ask for directions to the super market. But THEN it was off! For 2 minutes until we hit the visitor's center and stocked up on information. BUT SERIOUSLY GUISE THEN IT WAS REALLY TRIP TIME.

Newfoundland has a provincial park pass you can purchase for $20 so you don't also have to pay a nightly fee. I rolled my eyes at first until I realized it's because they don't mess around with the quality of their parks: all we've been to have showers, many have laundromats, and they are piloting a wifi service at them as well! We learned all of this as we checked into the JT Cheesman provincial park not far from Port-aux-Basques. It was a light load for us that evening because we had a long day of driving ahead of us. We biked over to the beach on the other side of the campground to enjoy our first sunset on this rock we would call home for the next week or so. 

We spent somewhere in the vicinity of 7 hours on the road the next day, as we made our way towards St John's. We had the joy of staying at Dildo Run provincial park, which was a fantastic campground, as its name implies. Nestled overlooking a lake, we grabbed a campsite overlooking the water and settled in.

The ever-present fog on our first day's drive

Hiking is something we both enjoy doing, and the opportunities for it [obviously] abound up here in Canada. Dildo Run had a couple of hiking trails, so we decided to spend some time on a beautiful day making our way up them.

The entrance to the trail seemed to stem from an existing campsite, and I was a little nonplussed as it seemed a bit worse for wear. “Are you sure this is a trail?” I asked Bethany. She wasn't having any of it. “I looked at the map before we left; it's a trail. Do you wanna go back and verify?” Shrugging, I followed on. The trail was obviously a trail, but as we made our way in, it seemed pretty worse for wear and needed some upkeep. At first, I figured there had been trees blown over from the wintertime storms. Newfoundland gets pounded by some relentless winter weather every year and it would make sense that they needed to spend a fair amount of time keeping up their trails, and considering we'd been to some parks already that weren't even open yet, it made sense that perhaps this tiny little provincial park hadn't had a chance to update theirs yet. And then we saw the large bushes growing up in the middle of the path and it was clear this trail hadn't been maintained for years. Nevertheless, we pushed on. “I know I saw it loop around and connect to the other trail” Bethany said with some irritation in her voice. To be fair, she also apologized profusely several times for picking a path that was clearly more than we had bargained for. Eventually, we tossed in the towel and made our way back to where we stared. And there we noticed on the map that the trailed was called the “Old Hiking Trail” and the ranger told us indeed it had been abandoned several years ago.  [And, for the record, it did meet up with the other "newer" trail. We were probably 3/4 of the way there when we turned around.]

Oh yeah, totally normal hiking path....

Recouping, we made our way on the actual path, which followed the coast and gave us a view overlooking the bay that was more than we had bargained for:

As we spent many minutes here just soaking up the view, neither of us saying anything, we noticed a small boat making its way from far off to our left.  Over the intervening minutes, as it slowly made its way across our visible horizon, there was just the sound of the wind and the light hum of the motor.  You could easily follow the 'V' of the wake from the boat almost the entirety of the path it had come.

"Why wait until retirement to live the life you want?"  Randy the park ranger said to me. I nodded in agreement.  "I work four months a year to allow me to live the life I want the other 8."  I nodded again.  "Good for you for doing this now while you can!" I smiled.  Randy is living the dream, and I appreciated the positive reinforcement.
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Twilingate is another popular tourist destination in Newfoundland. We'll let you guess why:

Twilingate also houses the Auk Island Winery, famous for their wine made with iceberg water.  This is a common theme in Newfoundland: the Quidi Vidi brewery I visited also does this, and there is a distillery that makes vodka, gin, and other spirits with iceberg water.  Their wines were also pleasantly cheap, so yeah, we picked up a couple of bottles.

St John's is the place to do stuff in Newfoundland.  It's the oldest city in North America, and changing hands between the French and English several times has led to lots of history.  Nestled along a natural harbor tucked behind the mountains surrounding it and next to the Atlantic, the view of the city our first day from historic 'Signal Hill' was amazing:

We celebrated the start of the St John's Day festivities [marking the city's 126th birthday] with the firing of the noon gun:

Redcoats, BOOOOOOO.  Also, Canadian mayors seems to be involved in a ton of stuff; that's St John's there at the back.

With free tours and admission to sites abounding for the festivities, we also joined a downtown walking tour eminating from the railroad museum, allowing us to partake in a concert in a wine vault, as well as see a historic pharmacy, founded by Newfoundlander and native hero Tommy Ricketts.

Ricketts served with great distinction in WWI, the young men on duty at his memorial made sure to tell us, right before they proudly showed off their pin the reserve Newfoundland Regiment gets commemorating their participation in burning down the White House in 1812.

Reeling from this information and needing a drink and the highest touted fish & chips in the Province to help ease us from this information, we noshed:

Thanks for the recommendation, Peter!

We ended up camping at a private campground within St. Johns. When we pulled in Friday morning it was fairly empty, but we noticed that motorhomes and fifth-wheels hauled by large trucks kept roaring by our site. This continued on Saturday morning and afternoon. When we returned from Duke of Duckwell's Saturday evening, I felt like we were back in college at a frat party... well, one with packs of 8-year-olds cruising around on their bikes, playing hockey on the lanes, and screaming nonsense that only 8-year-olds could understand the meaning of. Our neighbor was blaring his radio until at least 2am... but I couldn't complain too much because at least they were good tunes. Keep on rockin' in a free world! We later found out that it was a 3-day weekend. Monday was Discovery Day, a provincial holiday celebrating Newfoundland's discovery back in the 1400s.  

We attended St John the Baptist Basillica on Sunday morning, and were amazed by the scale and beauty of the place. Throw in a friendly, outgoing priest and it wasn't half bad!

"Do you mind if we turn on the game? I'm up from the states and want to watch the US play."  A quizzical look met me.  "What game?", the bartender asked.  "Soccer."  "Are you sure it's on now?" he asked, flipping channels on the only TV in the bar.  We found it, and settled down at the Blue Finn Lounge, the only bar in Louisporte.  We weren't the only ones in the bar, but it felt like it, as the only other people inside were parked in front of the video slot machines along the far wall.  We spent the next couple hours chatting with the bartender [has a nephew in Madison!] and marveling at the amount of cash the 'regulars' kept pumping into the slots.  After the draw, we thanked him for letting a couple of yanks crash the party, and made our way back to the campsite.
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"Pop quiz:  Who are the forsaken?"
"Have we even heard of them yet?"
"Yes.  They're the Aes Sedai who joined the dark one and were sealed by the Dragon at the end of the War of Power.  Remember the writing from the inside of the dungeon mentioning Lanfear?"
"Who are they?"
"It's a person. A woman; the first forsaken, the only one who didn't have a name given to her but instead chose her own.  She used to be a lover of Lews Therin Telemon? Before he fell in love with Ileyna?  The writing suggested she's loose."
"Oh well DUH that's who's with Rand and Hurin right now; Selena or Selene or whatever."

When you have hundreds of hours on the road, it helps to have something to pass the time.  Bringing the audiobook version of a 13 volume, many thousand pages long book series is a good way to do that.  Making it a book series with about a million characters and a passenger who can sleep in the car, well, maybe that was a bad choice. Sample conversation when we have hours to pass and no more planning to do, and the conversation we had on our way out to Gros Morne National Park.
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Imagine every second is a year.  Think of all you've done in the last year [in my case: how many go-lives? Marriott nights? bottles of beer?] and compress it to a single second.  Every minute is just under an average lifetime.  Recorded human history isn't much more than an hour; agriculture is two and a half hours old.

These mountains are 31 years old.

Formed from the mantle inside the Earth, and not from the crust, the rocks are so alien that vegetation can't grow on them. [A side effect of the no vegetation thing is wickedly strong wind! It was difficult to stand up at the end of our hike, as the wind was absolutely relentless at 50+ mph.] They are estimated to be a b[with a B]illion years old.  The Tabletop mountains are the crowning achievement of the national park.

When confronted by such mind-bending numbers, we break it down in our minds like this:

Shallow Run, tucked in on the edge of the national park, is where we've called home the last few days.  Western Brook Fjord, home to the 'purest water in the world' is nearby.

Nestled at the base of these mountains, left over from the last ice age.

Bethany and I, lacking boat passes, wanted to enjoy another hike.  We didn't want to take the basic path that led down to the ferry, so we took the path out to Snug Harbor.  What they didn't tell us was that it required remembering all the skills we learned in 2nd grade playing Oregon Trail to be successful:

There's cold, and then there's mountain snowmelt cold.

The only way you can recover from numb feet and wet clothes is a beach stroll in 40 mph winds.  At this point, it's almost quaint.

We plan to spend a couple more days in Newfoundland, then catch the ferry up to Labrador. It's going to be a whole new level of "remote" for this trip. We're looking forward to it!