Western Newfoundland - Part 1

We left Moncton early and headed for Cape Breton. We stopped in Port Hawkesbury and visited with my cousins for a bit, playing a great game of clue and then continued on our way to catch the ferry in North Sydney. We almost weren't allowed on because we were a bit late sue to a ridicules amount of construction along the way. But we made it and were on our way to NL.
We left Port aux Basques right away and headed north. We were planning on go right to Cornerbrook but we got too tired, and it was late at night, and there's always the risk of wandering moose on the road at night so we found a little provincial park campground and got a site for the night. We set up our tent by the car headlights (it was around 11 pm I believe) and then settled in for the night. It was a nice little campsite but the ground was gravel, which wasn't that comfortable for sleeping. I guess you're expected to have a thick air mattress or something. The next morning Tim was freaking out because he THOUGHT it was 10 am and he wanted to get going. He was practically taking the tent down while I was still sleeping in it. We took the tent down, went to the bathroom to brush our teeth and stuff and then went to pay for the night. When he started up the car I looked at the time and it was 7:30am...7:30.... I guess I should have bought him a digital watch. I wasn't impressed at all because I didn't sleep well and then he woke me up freaking out. We couldn't even pay because the office wasn't open until 8. If you know me then you know how I value sleep. Anyway we waited until 8 and then hit the road. I slept until Cornerbrook and we went to Tim Hortons for breakfast. We then got some groceries and some other things, like flashlights (a silly thing to forget when you're going camping for a week) and then headed up to Gros Morne.

We got our first campsite in Trout River, definitely a great campground. The sites were grassy, private and spacious. We set up our tent and got everything ready. We checked out the discovery centre to see what scheduled events were happening that week. It was rainy so we didn't really do much other than that.

The next morning we went to a guided tour at the Table lands (also known as a geologists playground). I'm not going to explain what makes them special on here but basically there are one of only a few places like this in the world and geologists say it's the earth's mantle hardened on the surface. Really neat place especially if you want to see some pitcher plants and I would recommend the guided tour because it was entertaining and interesting and we were of course able to do some exploring afterwards on our own.
It was a bit chilly...We were going to hike to the top of the mountain but since we couldn't see the top we thought it probably wasn't wise. So we decided to go back to the discovery centre and have some lunch and then figure out our afternoon from there.

We decided to do the Look Off trail that leaves from the parking lot of the discovery centre. It was uphill the whole way but definitely worth it. I highly recommend it because the view at the top is magnificent.
We didn't see a moose at the top (a couple who were descending while we were ascending told us they saw one at the top) but we saw a rock ptarmigan!
By the time we got off the trail it was raining and cold so we decided to treat ourselves to eating out rather then trying to make some food back at the campsite while getting soaked. We went to a delicious restaurant in Woody Point, I think it was called the Lighthouse restaurant, and had a delicious meal of seafood chowder, fish and chips and caesar salad (we were hungry) and then returned to our campsite to shower and sleep.