I am That Road Trip Guy.
It’s the name of my blog, and it’s what I do. My wife, Karen, and I do not enjoy being in crowded places, so I tend to seek out somewhat isolated and unusual destinations when it comes to holiday planning.
The Road Trip has always been a reliable format and fits well when exploring and discovering Canada and beyond.
Canada is a big, beautiful country so you can’t go wrong visiting any of the provinces or territories. Anywhere in the Maritimes makes a great road trip, but we set our eye on Newfoundland.
Newfoundland is a surprising mixture of rolling hills, softwood and hardwood trees, coniferous and deciduous forests rising to rocky-topped mountains, particularly in the west.
It is also what we expected to find — picturesque colourful capes and coves, including numerous former outports.
Outport is a term used in Newfoundland to describe a small, isolated coastal community, many of them established by immigrant fishermen and whalers as far back as the 16th century.
We went specifically in June to see icebergs and saw more than we ever imagined, encountering them in every bay along the north shore.
The people of Newfoundland are among the best in the world with their purpose in life seeming to be to help everyone else. They were jovial and polite beyond all expectations. I couldn’t stop to take a photograph without someone slowing down to ask if everything was alright. They are a significant reason why any trip to the Rock should be a resounding success.
The approach to Norris Point in Gros Morne was so stunning with the snow-streaked mountains rising right out of the sound that it took me a day or two to realize I kept taking the same photo over and over again.
The Western Brook Pond boat cruise is a must in Gros Morne, although I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand the significance of Brook and Pond in the whole scenario. The landlocked fjord was a rare sight, especially to us being from Ontari-ari-ario.
The fjord was glacially carved, part of the Long Range Mountains, the northernmost extent of the Appalachians. Therein lay Western Brook Pond, a 16-kilometre lake with a depth of 165 metres… no matter what they call it.
Goose Cove was a bustling incorporated fishing settlement of just over 200 souls, another sleepy little slice of Newfoundland lore…
We-e-ll-ll-ll… as I was taking pictures there was a loud commotion on the hill directly behind me, and I turned and saw a truck speed down the grass hill, bounce across the road and careen into the bay. This was about 100 feet from me so I ran toward the truck. My initial thought was that an empty truck had rolled down the hill, but it had accelerated and sure enough there was a middle-aged woman sitting at the wheel.
Although she was surprised and bewildered, she appeared to be alright. By now several neighbours were onsite and they all looked quite calm (as though this sort of thing may have happened before), and after being assured she was alright instructed her to get out of the truck and walk toward them on shore.
Karen’s theory was the woman hit the accelerator instead of the brake and things just got worse from there.
I don’t know why icebergs were so important to me, they just were, so it’s hard to describe my feeling upon seeing our first one. It was massive, a virtual building floating in the water just off shore, but what made it even more mind-boggling was the realization that 90 per cent of it was unseen beneath the water. It also took a great deal of time to come to grips with the fact that I was looking at a 10,000-year-old piece of glacial ice. This truly was a miracle of nature and at that moment the entire trip was suddenly a monstrous success.
The Town of Trinity comes alive in the summer as tourists flock to the area, adding to the already increased numbers of summer residents — thank goodness we arrived before all that mayhem began.
Historical and interesting, to be sure, it was the colourful scene the village provided that stopped me dead in my tracks as we arrived. The town was so vibrant in the afternoon sunshine and weather had cooperated perfectly. This would have surely been a totally different and lackluster experience on a lesser day.
We joined a family of locals and their visitors at a weekend-long kitchen party on Woody Island. This was perhaps the best part of our trip as we got to live with people from the Rock. They knew all the songs and were having a great old time on the boat, singing and dancing and hooting and hollering and we hadn’t even reached the island yet!
The island resort certainly had that nautical, fishing village look to it so I knew I was going to enjoy our short stay immensely. In this case, the rain added to the ambiance and authenticity and with the outside temperature lingering around 10C, the common room with its roaring fireplace felt cozy indeed. In the evening the Newfoundland music was just as much fun as the people who performed it.
In St. John’s, we hired a cab and asked to be taken to Jellybean Row where many of the brightly coloured Victorian row houses are located. The driver (who was from Ontario) knew immediately where it was and dropped us off at the top of Gower Street.
Some date back to the 1860s but the colours were rather drab and boring in those days. Amazingly it wasn’t until the 1970s the neighbourhoods were brought to life.
As we walked we realized it was more like Jellybean Town because more than one street treated us to a blast of colour, like a box of Crayolas exploded, covering them all with fresh, bright colour.
The houses were all immaculately maintained and wooden. No vinyl siding in this town!
The doors were different colours than the houses, and the window frames were coloured differently again with a few white houses stuffed in the mix but not many.
Newfoundland was a revelation to us, from the laughable solitude of the Deer Lake International Airport, to the ice-clogged bays and ice jams.
We were surprised to find that as long as it was sunny, 2C in June was really not that bad.
We discovered places like Clarenville, a large town we had never heard of but soon discovered was the centre of the universe for hundreds of kilometres. Others we came upon by chance, you know, like Come By Chance and, really now, how often do you go through a town called Dildo?
There’s no need to travel the world exclusively while adventure and intrigue lie close at hand in our own country.
Eric Whitehead has been on the road travelling for almost 60 years, so it was only natural when he retired that he became a travel writer. He has written 12 books to date, 11 of them about his travels. For more information, visit his website and blog.
