Travel Blog: Gros Morne National Park

The town of Woody Point on Bonne Bay is the gateway to Gros Morne National Park. The park's Discovery Centre lies just outside of town, and prepares the intrepid traveler for what they may see in this huge and geologically important area.

It was, again, overcast and a little cool when we arrived, and with the threat of rain, we took our rain jackets and our umbrella with us on our tour for the day, an Exploration of Gros Morne.

The park is actually named after Gros Morne Mountain, which is the highest point in the area. There are other mountains, called the Tablelands because they are flat-topped, right nearby.

Our arrival into Woody Point in the morning. The
Tablelands are still shrouded in low cloud that
burned off during the morning.

We set off on the tour with our driver, Merv, whom we had met in L'Anse aux Meadows on the previous day. He was following us with the bus to be our driver in all three of our Newfoundland ports. Our local guide this time was Gerry, who had spent his working life in radio, as an announcer and then in the marketing department for his station. He gave us quite a lot of information and told a few funny stories as well.

Our first stop was the Woody Point Lighthouse on Crawley Head. This lighthouse is a Parks Canada heritage lighthouse because of its architectural, historical and community importance. The original lighthouse was built in 1919, and was reconstructed in 1959 to make it more sturdy.

It was originally built to serve the fishermen and other traders in the area, and still remains a navigational aid to even the most modern cruise ships bringing tourists into Bonne Bay.

We headed next to the Gros Morne Visitor and Discovery Centre, where we also managed to get the required 'ticky-tacky tourist shot' of the ship.

Gros Morne National Park is 50 years old this year

There is a geological exhibit inside the centre which explains that Gros Morne is unique in the world for the geology that was exposed when the tectonic plates ground against each other millions of years ago and thrust some of the sea floor up in a sort of wrinkle. This is now the Tablelands, and there is no other place where this sort of geological time capsule can be found.

We were also shown an 18 minute film about the park in all 4 seasons and why people appreciate it so much. It is a very well presented film and certainly does make you want to come back again.

A couple of views of the Tablelands. We stopped at the
parking lot for a few minutes to see the red hills. There
are hiking trails here that anyone can use.

After our stop at Tablelands, we had a 45 minute drive around to Rocky Harbour. The park is very picturesque, but there are only so many photos I can post of trees and lakes. Here are a few of the best:

Our first stop after this scenic drive was at Jenniex House, a century home on a lovely viewpoint outside of Norris Point. It is more of a small tourist shop now, selling arts, crafts and things like homemade jams made from local fruit and berries. We noticed Crystal Serenity in the distance and realized we had driven 45 minutes around the East Arm of Bonne Bay to look back at Woody Point and the Tablelands.

We then drove on to Rocky Harbour, where we visited Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse at the headland outside of Bonne Bay. This is also a heritage lighthouse, which was originally built in the 1890s to provide a more prominent navigational aid to the local fishermen than having a rotation of people lighting an oil lamp on their properties. It had three lighthousekeepers between 1898 and 1970 when it was automated - Robert Lewis for the first 4 years, and then William Young and finally his son George.

The lighthouse isn't operational any more, but has been taken over by Parks Canada as part of Gros Morne.

Inside there is a display about the lighthouse, its history and importance to the local community. There are also some walking trails around the lighthouse. Apparently the sunsets here are amazing, but then they should be with nothing to see but the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the west.

As we drove back around to Woody Point, Gerry told us about a few things. The fishing industry had always been the most important one in Newfoundland, but once licences had been granted to offshore companies with big processing ships, the cod was fished out very quickly and the local industry died out. Even though there has been no commercial cod fishing allowed after 1992, the stocks still haven't rebounded and only recreational fishing is permitted. Lobster has provided another source of income for fishermen, and many people have their small lobster shacks and a supply of traps to take advantage of the season.

Moose hunting is also a very popular pastime, and moose season just started last week. There are something like 50,000 moose on the island, including in the park, and they tend to eat up a lot of the vegetation, so there are about 3,000 moose licences issued every season. It used to be that moose hunting was not allowed in Gros Morne, but they have begun to issue licences for the park to cull the herd out a bit. Being a butcher in Newfoundland would be a very lucrative job, especially in the autumn, as Gerry said that about 90% of the moosehunters are successful every year.

This is Gros Morne Mountain, in the centre of the park

The best local story that Gerry told us was of the train that used to run from St. John's across the island. It was supposed to be an express train, but since so many locals would take the train to one small community or another on the route, the conductor would have it stopping numerous times along the way. The train was nicknamed the 'Newfie Bullet' because it was always so slow. It takes about 14 hours to drive across Newfoundland, and it could take the train up to 5 days to finally get to the other side. There are, of course, all kinds of stories and jokes about the train, but this one got laughs from everyone on the tour: As the Newfie Bullet was approaching St. John's after one trip, a young woman asked the conductor if he could speed the train up to get in a little early. 'I'm having a baby and I'm afraid I'm going into labour', she said. The conductor replied, 'Ma'am, you should never have gotten on the train in that condition'. Her response: 'I wasn't in this condition when I got on the train!'

Once we got back to Woody Point, there wasn't a lot of time to explore the town as we had to tender back to the ship. We did pass some very cute waterfront houses, although we're not sure if they were permanent homes or weekend homes or glorified fishing sheds.