The IT Nerd

Our adventures continues in Gros Morne National Park. But before we got to that, my wife needed to do some laundry as she was running out of clothes. So a quick search of Apple Maps lead us to this place that was 11 minutes away from our hotel:

Here we got a full dose of Newfoundland hospitality. An older gentleman (Matthew I presume) helped us to start a load of laundry and even supplied us with liquid detergent. He then offered to keep an eye on our clothing while we looked around. Alternately, we could use his WiFi. We chose to do the former. Here’s some of the scenery taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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Here’s a travel tip from my wife:

If you are up for a walk down a very steep road called Farnells Lane you can check out the Historic Train Site and Museum while you wait for your laundry to finish:

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By the time we returned to the laundry, my wife’s clothes were done. Now if I were thinking, I would have done some clothes as well. But I wasn’t thinking. Thus I would have to do some laundry a couple of days later. In any case, after a quick pit stop here for coffee (which by the way has some great coffee and tea):

We returned to hotel to drop off the clothes and then headed out to the park for some more hiking. After a one hour drive inside the park, we got to the Tablelands which is an area of the park where you can see what the Earth’s mantle looks like. So, we got a guided tour from a Parks Canada guide of the first few kilometers of the trail:

Then she turned us loose to see these sorts of sights:

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It’s a pretty barren place where not a whole lot grows. But it is very cool and you can hike up to the top of the Tablelands if you want. But there are no marked trails to get there. Thus consider it to be at your own risk.

By the way, this is the amount of ground that we covered today:

Our next stop from there was dinner at a place called The Black Spruce which is inside Neddies Harbour Inn:

Now my wife was insistent on going to this place despite the fact that it was a long way inside the park in the middle of nowhere. And I had problems understanding what the big deal was about this place. Not to mention why we needed reservations seeing as this place was in the middle of nowhere. Well, since my wife is the foodie around here, I’ll let you hear it from her:

One of the highlights for me was our reservation at the award wining restaurant called The Black Spruce which offers fine dining that prides itself on its impeccable service. Everything here is made from scratch using local produce and comes out of the kitchen of Chef Jason Lynch and co-chef Joy Newman. My darling husband and IT Nerd that he is could not understand why one needs a reservation when we are driving to a restaurant that is literally located in the middle of nowhere. Well, he was truly befuddled when we arrived and saw all the cars in the full parking lot. The reason one makes this trek to this “middle of nowhere” restaurant situated in one of the most beautiful places on earth is the food. I noticed the herb garden on the side of the restaurant and noticed the pots of basil growing inside the restaurant. The restaurant is filled with stunning artwork and one enjoys faces the mountainview on one side of the restaurant and the charming town on the other side. I am just sorry that lobster season is over for Newfoundland. However hubby and I made do with their housemade pasta with brown butter sauce and roasted cherry tomato and I had seafood crepe served with asparagus and roasted cherry tomatoes. For dessert hubby ordered their steamed chocolate pudding for hubby and panna cotta served with blueberry compote and the Bakeapple dessert wine from a local winery called Auk Island Winery in Twillingate, NL.

After dinner, I managed to get these pictures of Neddies Harbour:

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From there it was a long and dark drive back to Corner Brook. One thing that I should mention is that the roads in the park are twisty at times as well as narrow. You have to be on your toes at all times as a moment of inattention can result in a crash. That goes double for when it is dark.

Top Tip: Make sure that whenever you see a gas station, you fill up if you are below half a tank. The reason being is that gas stations are few and far between both inside the park and outside it as well, plus cellular coverage is sketchy at best. Thus you don’t want to run out fuel and be stuck someplace where help isn’t readily available.

Tomorrow is our second and last bike ride in the park. This one will be in the northern half of the park and won’t be as hilly as our first ride in the park. Stay tuned!

Today’s plan was to go up to Gros Morne National Park and hike up to the top of Gros Morne Mountain which round trip should have covered 16 km and take six to eight hours to complete. Great plan, but we didn’t exactly do our homework beforehand as you will see.

The first 4 km is uphill which means that you need to be in shape to do it. But it is worth it as you get to see this sort of scenery as evidenced by these pictures taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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Eventually, you’ll clear the trees and see the mountain where you will get to see some stunning views:

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But you also get to see this (click to enlarge): 

And if you don’t the hint that this isn’t a place for the ill prepared, there’s this (click to enlarge):

In our case, we brought everything that we needed to do this. Except ample supplies of water. We had each brought a 500 ml bottle of water and drank through about 75% of it just getting to this point. Thus if we come back, we’ll make sure to pack enough water to do the 16 KM trail. As it was, we managed to get this close to the mountain before turning back (click to enlarge):

You can see the people who continued on and what they have to deal with to complete the 16 KM trail. In our case, we managed to do 6 KM before turning back. I recored the entire hike using Runtastic Pro on my Series 2 Apple Watch. Here’s a look at what was captured (click to enlarge):

For the record, 380 meters is 1247 feet. That’s a lot of climbing.

We then decided to do some less strenuous activities for the rest of the day. Starting with a self guided tour of the lighthouse at Lobster Cove Head:

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We then went to see the remains of the S.S. Ethie which ran aground in 1911.

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It was time for some food for my wife, so on our way back to Corner Brook, we stopped in a town that was inside the park called Sally’s Cove where there was a place called the Snack Shack. Here’s what my wife had to say about that place:

I snacked at Snak Shack at the Gros Morne park where I had the cod cake with onion rings but made a note to try the local Moosemeat gravy the next time I pass by it.

The next time we would pass by it would be in a couple of days as that was going to be the starting point of our second bike ride in the park. We then headed back into Corner Brook to our hotel. After a quick shower we had dinner at the Crown & Moose which is inside the hotel. I took the opportunity to sample a local beer called Black Horse:

I will let my wife describe the taste:

Hubby tried the local Black Horse Ale that is only available in Newfoundland. For all you beer folks it is light in color and tastes like Samuel Adams.

I’d have it again is it wasn’t bad.

Tomorrow is another day of hiking and more. Stay tuned for that!

Now that we’re in Corner Brook NL, we decided to start with a bike ride through the southern part of Gros Morne National Park along The Viking Trail. Gros Morne is a 1.5 hour drive from Corner Brook and is a must see place if you come to Newfoundland as it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and offers a variety of things to do and see. One thing to note is that the park has very sketchy cell coverage. That limited the usefulness of Apple Maps as it needs an Internet connection to come up with a route to get you from point “A” to “B”. However, once it has a route, turn-by-turn navigation will still work if you lose Internet access. But it may not look pretty doing so because it has no way to download the maps to display on the screen.

Now the original plan was to do this route which I plotted out on Strava and downloaded to the Garmin Edge 520 cycling computers on our respective bikes. This route would have covered 50 km in an out and back fashion:

As you can see, there is a lot of uphill and downhill. All told, it would have been 2700 feet of elevation gain in 50 km which is a lot. But we were thwarted by the fact that there was a lot of road construction on a lot of the roads that were going to ride. Thus we had to cut it short to this:

This route covered 28 km and had 1165 feet of climbing which is still a lot. It took us about an hour and a half to compete. It may have been short, but my wife and I can say that it was far from easy.

Fortunately, the scenery inside the park more than makes up for the fact that we didn’t cycle as far as we wanted to. Here’s a few shots that I took with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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After our ride, we drove back our hotel in Corner Brook, showered and then went out to Jungle Jim’s for dinner. I had fish n’ chips while my wife had pan fried cod with steamed vegetables and Cesar salad. It was all good.

We’ll be back on Saturday to do another route in the northern half of The Viking Trail as we discovered those roads have less construction. But in the meantime, we have two days of hiking ahead. Starting with an attempt to climb Gros Morne mountain tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow to see how that goes.