20020603

June 3, 2002

Day 25

Start: Gros Morne RV Park, Rocky Harbor, NF 
End: 
Miles: 0

The low last night was 41f and the high today was 47f in southwestern Newfoundland. The skies were cloudy all day. Until after noon there was considerable mist being blown in by the west wind. The mist stopped around 1:00pm. It was a lousy day; perhaps it’s retribution for the past nice days.

We listened to Newfoundland radio as we were eating breakfast. Callers were being taken so they could give their opinions on the current political crisis in Canada (Prime Minister Chretien fired his Finance Minister, Paul Martin, this past weekend). One man who called thought that Chretien had gotten beyond his usefulness and that he should quit. He described Chretien as having the affliction that “the head swells and the brain stays neutral”. We both laughed at that Newfie-ism.

There are lots of little Newfie-isms. Usually, you hear a phrase and can’t understand it. You ask for it again and still can’t. Then you realize there’s a phrase in there that you don’t understand. You ask for it to be said another way. He does, and then you get it, but feel terribly foolish for not having made the connection the first time.

The accent can get past you as well. There’s some old Irish in it, some Scots, and god knows what else. 

The people are great, no matter the accent. They’re all friendly and willing to help.

We had intended to take the Western Brook Pond boat trip today. The weather, with the horizontal mist, didn’t look good. We killed time by gift shopping until decision-making time. Then the boat captain appeared and said he’d make the call when he got to the pond, the idea being that there might not be fog out there – he would go if it were only rain. Well, one of the problems is that you drive to the trail-head, then 
hike 3km to the pond (lake), then boat. On return from the two-hour trip through scenery like the fjords created by glaciers back when, you get to hike the 3km back out. We followed the boat operator to the trail-head, but with the mist, wind, cold, and poor visibility at the time, we chickened out and returned to town.

We had soup-and-sandwich lunch and drove around a bit. We got onto a clay & gravel road and mucked up the truck terribly. We’re hoping for a stiff rain tonight to wash off some of it. 

We stopped in at the local park visitor’s center, nearly running over a rabbit in the driveway. A large snowshoe hare. They have arctic hares here; this is the south edge of their habitat. We satisfied ourselves with watching a couple of videos on the park, since we couldn’t see any of it today.

We returned to the little house and settled in. The temperature climbed to 44f in late afternoon. At dusk, it hopped up to 47f before it started back down.

Spaghetti with meat sauce and salad and wine was the dinner menu in the little house. Later, the concert from London in commemoration of Queen Elizabeth’s 50th year as Queen came on. 

The weather’s supposed to be a little better tomorrow, but we’re going to stick to our plan and go north. If we can work it out, and the weather is better, we’ll stop back here to retry the boat trip.