Here is how this story begins.
Len gets motion sickness. I don’t. Mostly.
Once, on a whale watch tour out of Boston harbor, the tour guide said the seas were a bit choppy so if a person was prone to motion sickness they should take Dramamine. My daughter and I did that and by the time we got out to the chilly, windy ocean, we were fine and the whales were spectacular. Though when we went out to dinner later that afternoon, Len was in a great mood because he’d explored the wharf area - but my kid and I were almost asleep in the bread basket. Whew! Sleepy!
Imagine my surprise when, back in January, Len booked TWO boat tours for us. Then again - Newfoundland is an island surrounded by the sea. Most of its history arises from its relationship with the ocean.
Len talked with his doctor who said in most cases Dramamine is the best so we bought some.
Our first boat trip was on chilly sunny morning on Bay Bull. (Bay Bulls first appears on a 1592 map!) We swallowed our pills and boarded the boat. We saw precisely one whale with her calf but they did a lot of rolling over and showing us their bellies before they would deep dive only to surface in different place later. It was cool to watch them swim and play in the sparkling water. The tough part was that my hands got so cold I bought mittens later. The Bay Bull boat explored Witless Bay Ecological Reserve where we saw zillions of puffins as well as other swimming, diving, nesting Atlantic birds. Two eagles occasionally swooped near the nesting puffins. When the eagles soared close, all the puffins would flurry off the cliffs to drop into the sea like fluffy black hail.
That tour lasted two hours. It was cold, fascinating, and we were fine. Afterwards we found the little café where I had that ginger carrot soup I mentioned a week ago. (Yes, our first Airbnb which really was a trapper’s cabin with a modern two-story addition on the back.)
Later that week we drove 400 miles to the Gros Morne National Park side of the province. We had reservations for the Western Brook Pond tour. (Newfoundlanders call lakes ponds; I don’t know why.)
It took more than an hour to drive from our Airbnb to the boat tour place. At the parking lot we took the Dramamine, then walked two miles TO the boat launch area. The path is well-maintained, this is a private company so they work harder to make themselves accessible. It was a very cold day and I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, a cotton shirt, a sweater, and jacket. Plus, my new mittens and my dork hat which has a chin string so it doesn’t blow off - even though it makes one look like a giant dork baby. All these clothes, plus walking 45 minutes, and we were still cold when he got to the dock area.
We got on the boat and I headed inside the cabin, out of the wind. I sat down in the corner of the cabin, it was over the thrumming motor. And I fell asleep. For two hours. I’d wake up every ten minutes or so, look out the window, use our binoculars to check for wild life on the cliffs – and then my head would lean gently back and I went back to sleep. The parts I saw were amazing. Len took a lot of photos. I read more about Western Brook Pond later.
Western Brook Pond is a Canadian fjord in Gros Morne National Park. Gros Morne is the most northern section of the Appalachian Mountains. It’s surrounded by 2,000’ high rock walls that were carved by glaciers. After the glaciers melted, the land rebounded (like an air mattress when an adult gets off it) and the fjord was cut off from the sea. The cliffs are covered with very little soil so the waters feeding Western Brook Pond are low in nutrients ergo - the lake has no vegetation and very few fish. It is some of the cleanest, clearest water on earth.
I did walk the two hours back on the path through the muskeg. We saw a caribou in the distance on that walk.
But yes, I went to Newfoundland and took a $60 nap.
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