CV - Ferry to Newfoundland

We took a ferry (with our car) from Nova Scotia up to Newfoundland, which ended up taking about eight hours. We met some people onboard which helped pass the time, since the ride was fairly rough and lots of people were getting sick. Even I got borderline queasy, which has only happened once before on REALLY rough water going scuba diving in Puerto Rico, although I blame it on the stinky and greasy french fries with gravy that David ordered for lunch. ::grin:: The port city of Port aux Basque was much more attractive than I'd assumed it would be with its colorful houses all over the shore. Our biggest concern was that due to delays we'd arrived over two hours later than we thought we would, and still had almost a four hour drive to get to our next destination. People kept warning us, "Don't drive after dark. Seriously, you will hit a moose." Just to prove the point, just out of the terminal we stopped at the information center and as we pulled up the attendant was out on the lawn. "A moose just ran by, I hope he doesn't run onto the freeway!"

Moose. Awesome. As long as we don't hit one, of course. Luckily, we had run into some line problems getting onboard the ferry, with someone ahead of us having some sort of problem that backed up our line for almost an hour. We were sweating it, but once we were finally let on board we ended up being 3rd in line to get off, so at least we were able to get going right out of the gate. We thought about stopping, but didn't want to pay for a hotel when we had a free room waiting for us. We called our hosts, and they were much more casual. "Be careful, but we make that drive at night all the time."

We made it all but the last half hour in daylight. The first moose we passed was on the side of the road, we could barely see it in the shadows until we were right next to him, just a big shadow looming on the periphery. The next one jumped right out in front of us and made me slam on the brakes - luckily I was driving far under the speed limit. He was massive, with a huge rack on his head. We scared him as much as he did us though, and he trotted awkwardly over the guard rail and disappeared into the night.

Our new couchsurfing hosts were terrific. One of them works for the Gros Morne National Park, and the other was a retired teacher who was managing a writers/music/theatre festival. They host a lot, so we were lucky they had room for us, someone else having just left that morning.

The next day we spent the entire day hiking, doing three different hikes in the park. An amazing lookout trail, where we saw three kinds of carnivorous plants including pitcher plants in bloom. As we were walking down that trail, rather briskly, David was ahead of me, and as I turned a corner a huge lady moose lifted her head out of the bushes not even two meters off the trail. (We decided to use Canadian measurements while we were there, but that is less than six feet.) She looked at me, startled, and I looked at her, startled even more. My first thought was "Find your escape route!", so I dashed past her along the trail so I wouldn't be separated from David. My second thought was "Get a picture stupid!" But it was too late. Once I was past her she went back to eating, so I was able to get a photo of her butt, but it isn't a pretty picture I'm afraid. I was tempted to go back around, but she was just too close, and I didn't want to risk upsetting her. Moose are big. BIG. Even the ladies.

We then did a hike down to the ocean, and then another to a place called the tablelands. The earth there has been thrust up from deep down inside the earth, and is such a rare and weird kind of soil that no plant on earth has adapted to growing in it. So it just sits there, reddish and barren and pretty amazing.

We hiked somewhere around ten miles that day, a good portion uphill, so we were pretty pooped. We still had some more fun in store, but I'll have to get back to that. We are finally caught up on the Olympics, but there are more airing right now, so I don't want to get behind again.