A QUIET FRIDAY.
Day 149 – The low last night was 63 degrees and we got a lot of rain with wind gusts. This morning it was very cloudy and humid. Hurricane/Tropical Storm Lee is on track to cause some damage in downeast Maine, parts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia before heading up the Strait of Belle Isle to make less of an impact on western Newfoundland. At this point, we are more concerned about our favorite area of Maine tomorrow. Stay safe everyone!
This morning we dumped tanks at the dump station and moved to a different campsite. The site we’ve been in will have new occupants arriving, but we still had a couple more nights here, so we moved to Site #35. When we checked in for the new site, we also checked to make sure we could stay longer if necessary due to the possibility of high winds on the day we’re scheduled to leave.
We had planned to go back to the farmer’s market today for more fresh veggies but changed our minds, since we won’t be needing them. (We’ve been going out more than we’d originally planned, so we still have some food left in the fridge.) Speaking of going out, we went back to the Old Store Cafe in Rocky Harbour for lunch today. They were so good last week when we went for lunch, we wanted to go back one more time. They were busy today. Lunch was very good; next time we’re here we need to remember this place.
The sky darkened and we could barely see the mountains through the clouds. It rained a little, then the sun came out later. The calm before the storm. The high temperature today was 70 degrees.
The Geology of Gros Morne National Park:
“Gros Morne National Park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. ‘What the Galapagos are to biology, Gros Morne is to geology,’ Britain’s Prince Edward declared when he visited Gros Morne. Long before Newfoundland was an island, it was a landlocked part of a great super-continent formed during Precambrian times. When the super-continent broke apart, the land plates drifted, and a rift formed that filled with water – the Iapetus Ocean. After another 50 million years, give or take, the land plates reversed direction and moved toward each other. As the landmasses were pushed together, Newfoundland, not yet an island, perched high and dry near the center of another super-continent. At that point, Newfoundland’s only distinctive characteristic was a mountain rib – the budding Appalachian Mountains that now rim North America’s eastern ridge.
Strewn among the mountains, now protected by Gros Morne National Park, was a colossal geological heritage: remnants from the world’s first super-continent and parts of the Iapetus Ocean’s sea floor. East of the mountain’s, the island’s central plateau portion was made up of a great rectangular swatch of the crumpled sea bed, 200-250 kilometers in width and length.
Between then and now, the eons added a few more topographical touches. The retreating ice sheet uncovered the Labrador Trough, scooped out the Strait of Belle Isle, cut fjords into the coastlines, and pocked the interiors to create myriad lakes, such as spectacular Western Brook Pond.” from Moon Handbooks, Atlantic Canada, 5th Edition, 2009