Kathleen's Window: Terra Nova National Park and a Coastal Trail Hike

Friday, July 12, 2013

It rained overnight at Kona Beach. By the time we left in the morning, it had stopped but continued on and off during the day. We continued east across Newfoundland on Trans-Canada Highway One. There is only one road that goes across Newfoundland, so to get anywhere, you have to take it. There are large interior wilderness areas with no roads, but smaller roads go north and south to the coasts. We got off the highway for fuel at Grand Falls-Windsor and discovered that the Salmon Festival is starting this weekend. Lots of campers were lining up to get in the campgrounds. Apparently it's mostly a music festival and this years headliner is the Eagles. 30,000 people are expected to attend. Really big for Newfoundland. There are only 500,000 people in the whole province and that includes Labrador.

The central part of Newfoundland is mostly boggy and great moose country. We didn't see any, but a sign warning motorists to watch out for moose stated that 660 moose/vehicle collisions occurred last year. We drove through a section of highway with moose fencing. It has a gate that allows them to get back behind the fence, but not to get out on the highway. Moose were introduced to Newfoundland in the beginning of the 1900's as a food source and spread rapidly. They estimate there are 125,000 now and they have reached a point where they are browsing so much of the forest's understory that it can't grow back fast enough.

Our next fuel purchase found us paying the most so far on this trip. It was $1.38 per liter, or about $5.25 a gallon. The gas stations are very crowded since the mass of cars are traveling on the same highway. Summer is in full swing, and Newfoundlanders love their camping trailers. The vast majority of the campers in the campgrounds are from the province. We've never seen such a stream of campers as we did coming from the opposite direction as we drove. A lot of them were heading to the Salmon Festival.

We reached our destination of Terra Nova National Park by mid-afternoon and lucked into one of the last sites. It was still overcast, but the weather forecast had changed from four days of rain to four days of partly sunny. Wow, we thought weather forecasting was tough back home! Just behind our campsite is a small store and internet cafe. We walked over and used our computers while we had the last rain shower of the day! Unfortunately it spiked the humidity, so not only was the temperature in the 70's instead of the 60's as predicted, now we had humidity.

This morning, Saturday, July 13^th, we set out to hike the Coastal Trail. Our campground is on Newman Sound, although we are in the woods. The trail goes through the woods, briefly onto two gravel beaches, past a boat dock and ends at the visitor center and dock. Then we had to retrace our steps. We started out through the boreal forest with lots of spruce trees, moss, ferns and wildflowers. We saw lots of evidence of moose, by the droppings, and there was a sign that there had been a bear sighting. The sound is quite far south of the ocean. Newfoundland has long fingers of land that reach out into the sea, with lots of coastline and small fishing villages. So it felt more like hiking around a lake, but it is still saltwater. At the first dock we noted how clear the water was, and could see huge starfish clinging to the pilings and rocks.

Coastal Trail along Newman Sound

Yup! Rocks.

Nice beach but the water was rather brisk.

Newman Sound, quiet as a mill pond

Labrador Tea

Abandoned egg, looks like a woodcock nest

By the time we reached the visitor center it was in the 80's and humid. The flies were following us and we were glad to get inside for a while. Maryland was having cooler temperatures than we were today! Greg said, “How far north do we have to go to get cool?!” We have been prepared to have cool and rainy weather here. I guess we may have it yet.

Terra Nova Visitors Center

Touch Tank in Visitors Center. Hard to touch for long - the water is so cold your hands go numb fast.

Roses outside Visitors Center

Faithful pet river otter

Slightly used whale skull

We retraced our steps, got showers back at camp, and used the air conditioning for the first time since last December in the Everglades. Shouldn't the air be naturally air conditioned in Newfoundland? Thankfully, it's cooled down this evening and we're able to open the windows to sleep. The Moose Tracks ice cream Greg brought back from the cafe helped too! Tomorrow we head towards St Johns again, with a possible detour north up one of the arms of land to catch a hike that is said to be one of the top 25 in North America and Europe!