We camped at Green Point, about halfway between of the park Rocky Harbor and Western Brook Pond with Rocky Point being largest town in the park offering resturants and boat rides on Bonnie Bay and the Western Brook Pond being the most scenic fjord.
We got our campsite at 7am the first day available back in February, as recommended by the Newfoundland tourist representitive we met in DC at a travel show – rigth on the ocean. You can see in the picture that we didn’t connect the tent to the car and used the car as storage…much better approach. The stairs led down to the rocky beach, it was large rocks and really hard to walk – but nice to have the waves crashing as background noise.
Bonnie Bay
Being closer to the main town, we booked sunset cruise on Bonne Bay – perfect evening and the highlight was the moonrise as well as meeting some other visitors – all from Canada. This was right during the peak of the trade war, of course being Canadians they were very nice as we were apologitic about the whole thing. We kept on the lookout for whales and mooses – but only saw a couple of eagles.
Western Brook Pond
Western Brook Pond is located in the northern portion of the park and unlike Bonnie Bay – is not on the ocean and is fresh water. When the glaciers melted 12,000 years ago, a land bridge of a couple of miles was left behind. The captial had to remind a couple of people not to be looking for whales – its a freshwater pond. The pictures don’t convey the scale – the sides of the cliffs were 2,300 feet above the water.
Kitchen Party
We finished our time in Gros Morne at a “kitchen party” – in Newfoundland the people would gather in kitchens with makeshift musical instrucments for drinking and singing folk music. The first couple of songs were traditional Newfoundland songs, which was great, but luckily they transitioned into songs that everyone new (Country Roads, etc) and handed out instruments. It was a good time.
Corner Brook/Bay of Islands
We had a good first couple of days in Green Point but on our 3rd day, the rain moved in so we re-visited Deer Lake – raining there too and not much to do so we went to the next town of Corner Brook. Partly sunny there and we were able to scout out the town a bit as this was our stopping place for a few days later. When we returned on our way out of Newfoundland, we drove along the Bay of Islands out to Bottle Cover and stumbled upon the landing point of Captian Cook. Back in town, we connected the dots between the old pulp and paper factory, a park sponsored by the paper company around an old pond and dam, and our hotel – the Gyn Mill Inn “Mill” being the get word. Our hotel had been a place that housed the executives for the paper company back in the 1920s.
After leaving Corner Brook – we had 2 solid days of driving/ferry to get to Quebec City – Canada is big!