Gros Morne National Park - Tablelands

 Aug 24‐25, 2024

Awoke early when there was a knock at the van door and a woman asked us to move because we were where they were setting up for some event later that day. That’ll get your blood pumping! Moved, got dressed, and headed to Gros Morne National Park, an almost 4 hour drive away. Thank goodness for audiobooks.

Smart - set up a fundraiser in the middle of the road going up to Gros Morne - she said it wasn’t a toll booth but a toll boot

Charming sculptures at the visitor center

Fabric art of the pitcher plant - provincial pant of Newfoundland

Lunch with the Tablelands of Gros Morne as a backdrop

Found a lovely spot along the lake for the night. There were several other vans, a short schoolie, and some tent campers there as well. 

The next morning we made our way to the Gros Morne Tablelands, which towered over the surrounding hills

Gros Morne NP contain some of the world’s best records of plate tectonics. The Tablelands are made of the earth’s upper mantle, beneath an ancient ocean, and was pushed onto the continental crust 460 million years ago when 2 continents collided.

The igneous rocks are peridotite, dense with iron (hence the rusted appearance of the outside), magnesium, nickel, cobalt, and chromium, and are poisonous to most plants. 

Serpentinite is formed by metamorphosis of peridotite

The pitcher plant does grow in the poor wet soil here - it is one of 3 carnivorous plants here - the soil is so poor that non-carnivorous plants have a difficult time getting the nutrients they need - even 10000 years after the last glaciation

Sundew, which leaves are covered in red glandular hairs-like structures that attract and digest insects

The white pine on the right is much younger than the 102 year old juniper on the left that grew under the challenging conditions here

           

Stunted trees such as these junipers are called tuckamores locally, krummholz in German.

Cool rock crack that was filled with magma at some point

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it could. The town of Trout River

Bought wood

Back to the lake for a second night, although this time we smashed a more secluded spot right on the lakeshore. Matthew went for a chilly dip