Gros Morne - The Lake Chapter

On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 20, 2018, we had reservations for a boat tour of Western Brook Pond, which is the only remaining fjord-formed lake in the world.

When the glaciers that carved the Ancient Appalachian Mountains receded here in Newfoundland, they left a gigantic fjord in this majestic valley:

At the time, the fjord was a bay of the sea, jutting in from the Strait of Belle Isle, which, stretching between Labrador and Newfoundland, connects the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the Atlantic Ocean.  However, as the glaciers melted and their weight lifted from the crust below, the land underneath started rising.  In this case, the uprising land sealed the lake-filled valley off from the sea, resulting eventually in a land-bound, freshwater lake with fjord characteristics.

From our parking lot, we had to walk 2 km to the boat dock on the near shore of Western Brook Pond.  As we arrived, we could see our boat waiting for us:

At the appointed hour, our boat left dock and cut through the wind-whipped waves on the lake toward the entrance to the fjord:

Our tour was narrated by a local guide, who pointed out the interesting features of the escarpments closing in on us from both sides.  One of the more fanciful features was, as he called it, the "Tin Man," which was a rock feature in the cliff that is said to resemble the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.  We thought it also resembled some of the giant sculptures of the two kings that guarded the entrance to Gondor in "Lord of the Rings":

The glaciers, and subsequent erosion by water and ice, carved beautiful canyons down through the cliffs, feeding water into the lower regions where trees and lush shrubs could thrive:

We saw innumerable waterfalls.  Here are four of them:

Too soon, we reached the far end of the lake and turned back, with a view down the fjord as the boat headed home

As we returned, the light turned more mellow and showed us more emerald green swaths along the feet of the cliffs:

We decided that this sunny weather called for a bright (but chilly) selfy:

As our boat approached its home dock, we looked down the beach, and what did we see, but...some RED CHAIRS!  Of course, we had to hike over to them and get our photo in them.  We had forgotten that Western Brook Pond is in a Canadian national park, and thus it could sport some red chairs.  We're lucky we spotted them!

Driving out to the highway after the boat tour, we looked back at the valley of Western Brook Pond and marvelled at what it revealed to us:

This wasn't the end of our day - not at all.  We had reservations up in Cow Head to attend a dinner performance of "S.S. Ethie," at the Gros Morne Theatre Festival.  The play tells the story of the S.S. Ethie, which was lost as it hit the shoals in this area:

While the ship could not be saved, all the passengers and crew were saved with the help of a bosun's chair rigged on a rope strung from the boat to the shore.  Some said a Newfoundland dog swam the rope to shore.  Others suggest that it somehow floated in.  But, nevertheless, all of the souls aboard were saved.  It was a dramatic story.

As we drove back down to our campground, we passed a lookout for the "S.S. Ethie," where we stopped to see what could be seen.  We found a path down to the beach, where a few fragments of the old ship can still be found in the shallow water - all that is left of that little ship:

By the time we got back to the RV, it was almost 11pm.  We fell into bed and were unconscious until the next day, which was a day to move up to St. Anthony.