Kilometres Remaining: 9,211/11,978
Up early for a long day of driving. Driving days are perhaps less eventful than non-driving days, but we do get the opportunity to see a great deal of the countryside. That is great when the countryside is not your own and it is all new to you. It is even better if you come through in autumn when there are more colours than you can imagine. Driving is however not as great if the weather is against you. The weather was certainly against us.
Leaving St. John’s it was clear and in my mirrors (sides, not rear view since we have crap up to the ceiling of the car) I could see a beautiful beautiful sunrise. I wanted to stop and watch, but I suppose that is my weakness with sunrises, sunsets, beautiful women, and all sorts of scenery, so we pressed on; otherwise we would never make it to our destination!
This marked us for once travelling in the correct direction. Our trip can be described like this. We headed north from New Brunswick and then accidentally took a right turn instead of left. Then we drove and drove and drove until we hit the ocean and could drive no more. That was St. John’s. Now we have righted our direction and are finally heading westward towards Alberta. There is a slight chance that we will miss the turn to Calgary, and will continue driving and driving and driving until we can drive no more and hit Vancouver. Then we will head back. Point is, we are now more homeward bound than before.
Back to the story. Not much to tell. We had to double back for about 600 km from St. John’s and then we were on a different highway heading north. This highway was called the Viking Trail after the settlement at L’anse aux Meadows, which would be a destination in the coming days.
We made it to Gros Morne National Park and drove through what seemed like an eternity of gorgeous mountainous autumnous landscape. This was where the trip got a little tricky. Our clear skies turned into rain, and not a little bit of rain, but a torrential downpour. Cars were grouped together huddling under the speed limit as we passed through the park. We did manage to find a brief clear patch where we could get a few shots of the untold beauty, but this was only a short and precious moment.
Nearing the exit to the park we stopped at a lighthouse very very briefly. The winds must have been gale force and we were lucky to remain on our feet. We took a few pictures, looked at some stunning landscape (including the Straight of St. Lawrence) and then retreated to Jerusalem.
The next few hours were spent driving first through the remainder of the boreal forest, and then through the bog. We passed village after village with only a few houses in each one. There was fire wood piled just about everywhere, leading us to believe that this area is wood heated. It was incredible that people would settle in such a place. There is no shelter and not really much of anything at all, except for the water.
Hours and hours we drove through the torrential rain and the wind. We learned that gas seems to always be above $1.10/L and it can be very hard to find a Self Serve Gas Station. Eventually we made it to St. Barbe, where we would be taking the ferry to Labrador. We checked to see if there was anywhere we could stay, but determined that setting up the tent on asphalt would not be that desirable. Instead we continued on our way towards St. Anthony’s.
This was an amazing part of the drive. So see the little villages scattered about was just incredible. It was also clear for a time, but the rain continued on relentlessly after that. We found our campground but no one was there. It was still raining well... cats and dogs. We drove around a bit and found a site that was pretty sheltered. Doing all that we could to keep the gear dry we managed to set up the tent. The ground was very hard (meant for RVs) so we could not get pegs up, and no sooner did we have the tent up than it started to migrate towards the trees. We tossed in what we could and I got the rope to tie ‘er all down.
The tent was a bit wet inside, but nothing we could not handle. We set up everything and were good to go. We were tented in again, and could not cook anything. We have had terrible camping weather... We hung out in the tent eating snacks and blog/journaling. Afterwards we managed to watch an episode of Castle (episode 2 of season 3) and I was happy to hear Castle (the main character, played by Nathan Fillion) to pull out the DR. He was talking about unicorns, and Santa Claus, and other such magical things like... Double Rainbows. It was fantastic.
Afterwards we huddled in the centre of the tent to stay clear of the edges and then went to sleep.
The sleep was ok, though I could not stretch out otherwise I would hit the edges of the tent, but I must say that I have never tented in such terrible weather before. The wind was pushing hard against the tent and the rain was pouring down for hours. Rain was hitting so hard it would push through the walls of the tent in the forms of tiny droplets. The wind was so bad that it flung rain up under the fly and into the vents of the tent. We stayed dry, but rain soaked the bottom sleeping bag by seeping through the front zipper, and rain seemed to leak in from all other sides. All was well however, we remained dry because the foamys we were sleeping on acted as rafts and though there was water on the bottom of the tent we floated dryly above it. We have since use the dryer machine to get things dried out before we attempt this again... but holy crap. What a night...
No comments:
Post a Comment