Day 43, Sunday August 4^th

Day 43 starts off with a mixture of sun and cloud.  We plan on heading south to Norris Point, a drive of about 8 kms, to do a tour of the aquarium, and then do a hike to take in more of Gros Morne’s beautiful scenery.

Kevin and a crab at the aquarium

We head out on our first quest around 10, stop at a nice lookout and visit a small museum showing an early home from the turn of 19^th century.  From here we head to Norris Point to visit the Gros Morne aquarium, the aquarium is a joint venture between Parks Canada and Memorial University of St. John’s.  The aquarium is focused on research on supporting the local fishing industry.  The tour was excellent.  The main attraction at the aquarium was the two blue lobsters.  A normal lobster has 3 colour pigments, red, yellow and blue.  In the case of the blue lobster they only have the blue pigment.  Catching one is a million to one chance.  Our guide told us that due to the publicity of getting their latest blue lobster the facility was inundated with calls from fishermen asking if they wanted special lobsters they had caught.   

Roma on the docks at Norris Point

From the aquarium we walked across the road to a restaurant overlooking Bonne Bay for lunch.  We enjoy another excellent meal overlooking the water.  After lunch we returned Roma to our accommodation in Rocky Harbour and the 3 of us headed out to the south end of the park for a hike.  There are a number of hikes throughout Gros Morne, the one that we have chosen to do is called the Green Garden hike and features a hike across the Alpine vegetation down to the coast.   The hike will take about 4 hours, but will take about an hour to get there.  En route to the trailhead we spot a seal sunning on a rock. We believe it is a grey seal.  The interesting item was that it was just after Dawson mentioned that we had not see a seal yet and within a minute we are provided with one.

Seal

Beautiful waterfall at the beach

The hike proves to be well worth the drive and the hike.  We spend about 1 hour walking through alpine vegetation, walking on top of rock directly from the earth’s mantle.  We then start to head down to the coast through thick spruce and fir bush.  This type of bush is called “Tuckamore” here in Newfoundland.  We are well paid for our efforts with a gorge view down the coast of sea stacks and rugged coast line.  We get down to the shore and walk about 600m to look at a small waterfall just off the beach.  We spend some time taking photos.

Dawson and Kevin Green Garden hike

Julie and Dawson (note spires in background)

Julie and Dawson on Muskoka chairs green garden hike

It is now time to start thinking about heading back, we make our way back up to top of the shore line but before we start we enjoy the use of the Muskoka  chairs which Parks Canada have placed there.  We have come to find that this is a common sight here in Gros Morne, and they are an excellent idea.  We are all of the opinion that one of our photos with the chair should be used for promoting the park.  We complete the hike in just over 3 hours.  From here we are off to Deer Lake with Kevin where we will pick up a rental car and Kevin will head back to Millertown as some people still have to work.

Kevin and Julie green garden hike

We pick up the rental car which is actually a van due to the high demand for rental vehicles and a disruption to the ferry service due to the grounding of one of the ferries a couple of days earlier.  The trip back to Rocky Harbour is a much better one than on Friday night.  For one thing it is not raining and 2^nd the sun is shining.  Just south of the park we see a silver fox crossing the road, our animal sightings have started off very well on this trip.



Lobster cove lighthouse sunset

We arrive back in Rocky in time for dinner and learn that Roma has had a good afternoon having a look around the south part of the harbour.  We head out for dinner at the local restaurant, Earl’s.  It is nice restaurant that has received good reviews in trip advisor.  Roma has the Moose dinner, Julie the Moose soup and Dawson an order of Cod cakes.  All good although Roma states this will be her last Moose meal she will be moving back to seafood.  Just prior to the meal being served the sun set starts so Julie heads out and gets some great sunset shots.

We head back to the suite and head off to bed as tomorrow is another big day.

Cheers

Dawson and Julie