Newfoundland Trip Diary

August 16-31, 2000

Fisher village on eastern shore of the Rock

After landing: photo by Robert

16.08. 10am leaving Boston
6pm meeting Mike, Rachel, and Tom in Montreal

At the border, the customs officer doesn't notice as he switches from English to French in the middle of conversation.

17.08. 8:30am leaving Montreal to Val David climbing area (Mike, Jon, Robert, Paulina, Steve and Catherine)

Val David seems to have a lot to offer in terms of cross-country skiing in winter - a system of trails

routes at Val David: Mike leads 2 pitches (5.4-5.6) trad, Robert and Jon toprope easy route in the morning, then 5.8*** Frids?, another to the left of it, 5.10 (Steve, Catherine, Robert, Mike, Paulina tries and gets about 1/3 up)
4pm leaving Val David
8pm arrving Quebec City. Dinner in a creperie, walk around the old city (very stylish and beautiful), look for a place to stay. Fat chance (all booked up), deciding to go to a campground nearby
11:30pm arriving at a campground only to find it closed for the night. Drove another 5? miles through sparse suburbs to a piece of land marked "for sale", put up tent and went to sleep at around 1am.

Robert was so tired that he fell into sound sleep immediately. I was kept awake by weird sounds: a clap, then a thump, like a large ball falling on the ground, repeated irregularly... Then the howling started, the source of which I can't quite place. It didn't sound like wolves but then again, what do I know about what wolves sound like? Two voices, one much higher-pitched than the other... unpleasant memories. I was scared shitless, and was really going to go sleep in the car, when the heroic thought: "How can I possibly leave Robert to sleep in here all by himself?!" prevented me from doing so. Then it was morning.

18.08. we pack quickly (we get good at this) and drive back to Quebec City for morning croissants and some chores (send flowers, find an outdoors store); instead of quickly going about our business, we spend hours trying to find an outdoors store in a place which we thought should have tons of them, with no luck, and finally leave the city at 1pm, angry and frustrated. We drive like maniacs through Quebec and New Brunswick. We stop for lunch with a local twist (poutine) at a town called Bic (population 2.5). Poutine turns out to be just that: fries with cheese and gravy. Hm... New Brunswick has no highways, we press on and reach Nova Scotia long after dark. Finally, around midnight, or maybe later? we stop on a side road off 104 and put up our tent on a small clearning in the forest right there and then (hoping that nobody checks these roads at this time of night - and they don't).

photo by Robert

19.08. We drive like maniacs all the way to North Sydney, taking the shortest possible route, which is tricky since all roads are scenic. 2:30pm boat is supposed to leave 4:30pm boat leaves In the meantime, we make reservations for a return ferry from Argentia (journey time: 14 hrs) and for B&B once we get back. The ferry is definitely the largest boat I've ever been on, and everything looks extremely cool so we make lots of pictures.

On the boat, they have showers, how's that for luxury - we take full advantage, other than that the 6 hour long journey to Port-Aux-Basques is noneventful and relaxing. We make it to the nearest campsite (J.T. Cheesman's) after 11pm, and stay the night. 20.08. Drive to the visitor's center of Gros Morne National Park, then we lose much time registering for the north rim: the hike is quite an investment with 2 maps, backcountry permits, and boat reservations for both of us.

The park warden tried at length to talk us out of it - seasoned hikers only, map & compass skills etc. etc. Finally, around 4pm we go sea-kayaking in the bay near Green Point campground. Before one can go kayaking though, one needs to build the kayak, especially if it's a 30 year-old folding East German beauty like the one that Robert inherited from the sadly departed to Germany Alex. Here we ran into problems as Robert tried to knock parts that didn't fit into place with a hatchet... before taking a breather and realising that they actually do fit the other way round. Oh well. Finally, we're on water with our fingers crossed and it's late (~5pm?), so we just paddle around the bay to look around two corners of it on either side... when we spot a man from the local 2-house village running on the rocky shore shouting at us something we can't quite make out. After a little paddling about and noticing that not only the man hasn't given up on trying to follow us on the coast, but two others have joined him, we cautiously approach them from the ocean. It turns out they've been warning us of a big storm coming from the direction they thought we were headed towards... God, we must have looked tough and cool if the local fishermen thought we were heading out to the ocean somewhere where storms happen, when we were actually just checking out the surroundings of the bay. So we dutifully paddled back to shore and - you guessed it - went to sleep.

21 - 23.08. North Rim Traverse

24.08. Hot showers in the morning are indeed heavenly; breakfast at "The Fisherman's Landing" again is orgasmic and involves fresh juice and full english breakfast, although their idea of hash browns is slightly different from mine; laundromats are helpful; returning the transmitter to the visitor's center; drive to Trout River Pond through the Tablelands - a unique place where the Earth's Mantle is visible, and therefore where nothing grows, the pond is another fjord-like formation; on the way, a biker sees us - the oncoming car - just in time to sverve and brake and fall off his bike. Luckily he's fine but needs help to put his bike back up, so we grab - him and Robert push, and i pull from the other side - only i pull with my right hand on the exhaust pipe... oops!

With my right hand burnt, Robert has to take care of me again, and we continue to the Pond, set up camp at the local civilised campgrounds, and try to put the kayak together using 3 hands only - it turns out we've lost the axel on which the rudder turns, so we use two nails instead, ductaped at the bottom so they don't fall out, and so we set out; I can't really paddle as my hand burns and stings, so I have to dip it in cold water then we decide to make a sail out of Robert's green nylon anorak, one of the paddles serves as a mast, the hood goes on top of the paddle, and the bottom gets tied to a rope that goes around me so either i or Robert can play with the sail, the wind dies. We stop for a picnic on a shore from which there is no road anywhere, just the beach and the forest behind it, and contemplate the awesome desertedness of most of Newfoundland.

Then we paddle against the headwind to see around the corner of the pond, it all looks beautiful, but it's a long way (15 km) to the other end, so we turn around and put up full sail, now full back wind will bring us home in no time, we go really fast breaking the waves and feeling extremely cool...

8pm dinner at the campground: chicken soup and buns, we make fire, then the rain starts and we go to sleep

25.08. showers in the morning are still divine, breakfast is corn flakes with milk bought the day before, and just before 10am we're on the road again towards the North Shore of Newfoundland (~330 km). My hand is much better and something tells me today I won't be able to avoid paddling :)

3pm We get caught in some most horrible downpours on the road, the car slides on water and hits the sides of the truck ruts, so we decide to stop at the Irving. I finally get to send flowers, we have burgers and the sun comes out. The route 340, which we take later is one of the most scenic drives I've been on - it's literally weaved through a million small islands to minimise the amount of construction for the road, the landscape just asks for sea-kayaking. We're finally on New World Island, in the Dildo Run (don't laugh) provincial park, which is totally empty of people. So we drive on to Twillingate, and stop on the way to hike up the very strenious White Hills (elevation 304 ft). Mushrooms (beautiful boletes) grow right on the trail, and so we indulge our picking demons, get caught in a storm again, run to the car and drive for nice fish dinner at the "Cod Trappers" in Twillingate.

Our evening catch

Our morning meal

9pm back at Dildo Run, sleep.

26. drive to Terra Nova ~3-4pm set up kayak and set out to a "distant" bay to camp overnight - our first overnight on the Blue Alex. We sail with mostly tail wind, and get there early to discover a pretty civilised kind of wilderness :) , hang up our food, start the fire, and watch the sun set... how romantical!

27. paddle back to the Marine Interpretation Center against strong head winds, see the most amazing jelly-fish ever (just under a meter in diameter), back at 5pm I realise I left my camera back in the backcountry... oops, the nice lady at the reception promises to find it and send over to me (that would be nice!). Showers, umm... And drive again all the way to St.John's, the capital of Newfoundland. We ended up staying in the most unlikely place - a very nice B&B run by a young Russian guy, one of the 4 or so Russians in Newfoundland... oh well.

28. get up late to enjoy a real bed - the first one in two weeks - shower, have some breakfast and go sightseeing: Signal Hill, the local history museum, Hava Java cafe, the ships docked at the very picturesque natural harbour. Drive to Argentia, taking the "scenic" cape route which is a disappointment. Sleep over in the Marine Atlantic waiting lounge. Sucks.

29. 6am The loudspeaker wakes us up for a long day of sitting around on the boat. We watch a lot of unconsequential movies and play go. As the tenth hour out at sea passes, I feel very nauseous from the waves... fortunately, my stomach wins over my vestibulary system, and so we do have dinner. Also, the sun is setting and so the wind is dying out. I didn't have my camera to capture this most amazing sunset over Nova Scotia's appearing coastline.

10pm we're at Alexandra's B&B in North Sydney, a place cheaper and far less pleasant than Misha's Gower House in St.John's.

30. 8am Robert leaves "to get some cash to pay for the room" and he's gone for 40 minutes, which doesn't rise my suspicions at all :). Finally I hear steps that stop right before the door, and sometime later somebody - who could it possibly be and why? - strikes a match. Finally, enter Robert with the smallest birthday cake ever and 23 lit candles on it! Thank you, Bobicku!
We have breakfast, my parents call, we leave again to see the John Cabot (really Giovanni Cabotto) trail in the Cape Breton Highlands park. It's a bit of a disappointment, but a very pleasant scenic drive (if only people didn't think so highly of it...)
After lunch at the "Rusty Anchor" we basically start the drive home, although it will continue to be scenic for a while to come. It turns out that my birthday is the suckiest day of our trip. We just drive mindlessly for hours, see maybe one picturesque place with pink granite and slate on the shore, I learn to make flat stones jump on water, and we drive, drive, and drive some more all across Nova Scotia, until Robert gets extremely tired and we finally stop, 8pm, at an Irving station without even a restaurant. But that's okay since we have some food left, so we take out the stove and the thermos, and a local weirdo thinks we're having a roadside seance and wishes us to "longlive and prosper, both of you". Then we drive on through Moncton and start looking for a campsite, but, as before, end up just setting up tent on somebody's meadow freshly cut for hay. It's approaching 1am.

31. Cars start passing us rather too often around 7am, and so by 8, we're out of there. Breakfast in St.John, capital of New Brunswick, not to be confused with St.John's, capital of Newfoundland (these people don't have much imagination, do they?) at 9:20am, at Reggie's, a very friendly non-chain self-serve restaurant. Around noon we pass the border and gain one hour. All of sudden people start driving about 30km/h slower. At Bangor we stop for burgers at 1:30pm. Heading now to the North Face outlets in Freeport. 6:30pm leaving Freeport with some new gear (mainly socks :) ).

9pm arriving Boston. Back to work tomorrow...

Upon arrival at the lab 01.09.00 I found the guides to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland that I ordered by mail before departure. Very useful, those guides. :)