On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good morning everyone,
Sorry about yesterday’s misfire, we’ll complete Bill’s submission next week.
Today, we return to the Great White North!
The last group of photos from Newfoundland, mostly from the west coast and Gros Morne National Park, plus a few I like but didn’t include in the earlier submissions.
It was raining when we visited the Tablelands, but it would have been spooky even on a sunny day. It’s a long plateau of peridotite, an igneous rock found in the upper mantle below the Earth’s crust; the Tablelands is one of the few places on the planet where peridotite has been forced up to the surface. Very little grows there because the minerals in peridotite, like nickel and cadmium, are toxic to most plant life, so it’s an eerie, empty landscape, like the surface of Mars.
You can see its dark green color in the broken stones; the surfaces oxidize to that rusty yellow color. I know very little about geology; when I think of what lies beneath the crust of our planet I immediately picture magma: molten, angry, bright red. So I loved learning that under the mountains, under the oceans, the mantle that makes up most of our planet is, at least at the upper levels, actually — green.
Other side of the island from Gros Morne, but similar weather. I liked the reflections in this picture, and convinced myself that I wouldn’t really have wanted it to be a sunny day.
Finally, one last favorite picture. Twillingate is in the northwest of Newfoundland, and I loved this cemetery by the water.
JPL
It looks so cold. I’ve always been fascinated with old cemeteries and I wonder if you read any of the inscriptions.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The rocks are interesting. And the pic of the lake is beautiful.
Wag
I love the second photo. An excellent composition. Thanks for sharing.
arrieve
The pictures from Gros Morne are missing — maybe the form is misfiring? Or I was?
arrieve
@JPL: I always read the inscriptions, if they’re legible. In Newfoundland they tend to be “Died by drowning. Aged 18 years.” “Died by drowning. Aged 25 years.” “Died by drowning. Aged 33 years.”
arrieve
Pictures from Gros Morne National Park from my blog, if anyone’s interested. The weather was crappy most of the time we were there, but it couldn’t help being beautiful. I love having an opportunity to revisit Newfoundland this equally gray morning in New York. I’m suddenly craving toast with partridgeberry jam….
Libby’s Person
Many years ago I was lucky enough to visit Gros Morne on a geological field trip. I still get goose bumps thinking about it. A slice through the entire thickness of lithosphere – oceanic crust and upper mantle, pillow lavas to peridotite – laid out on its side like a slice of cake laid on a plate. The trail along the edge of the slice is 6-7 miles long (if I remember correctly) through a wild and gorgeous landscape. Awe-inspiring!
Amir Khalid
@arrieve:
Sad. But I suppose drowning is not an uncommon cause of death where people live by the sea and make a living from the sea.
Another Scott
@arrieve: [Years ago] J and I took a drive to Acadia, then the Bay of Fundy, and over to the eastern side of NS. Lots of foggy light houses, amazing tides, lots of mud when the tide was out. ;-) We took the Big Cat ferry back to Maine (fast, but lots of side-to-side motion that made us sick). Unfortunately, I don’t think the ferry runs any more.
Personally, I like seeing places with the way the weather “normally” is. It seems somehow fake to me when a place that usually has fog and clouds and rain is suddenly sunny. But I’m sure the locals enjoy it!
Great pictures. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty
@arrieve: Definitely worth a visit to your blog. Lovely pictures.
chris
Lovely pics, the ones on your blog too ;-)
@Another Scott: I’ll let you google the ferry because I fly into a rage just thinking about it. It didn’t run last year but is scheduled to begin in June this year.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Death by drowning was much more common in Newfoundland and Labrador than elsewhere.
There are only a few tickles where on the hottest days of the year, the water is warm enough to learn to swim. Pretty much everywhere, a few minutes exposure is enough for hypothermia.
As a result, very few can swim, and even with modern survival gear, the North Atlantic is unforgiving.
Barbara
Eons ago I had a crazy boyfriend who dreamed of visiting Newfoundland, and so we did, via hitchhiking and then taking the ferry from Sydney NS. When I started walking through the town of Port aux Basques (seaport where we landed) I felt like we had landed on the moon. It is such a strange and striking place. We visited and climbed Gros Morne, and also visited Terra Nova and St. John. For the most part, we had spectacular weather (it was late September through mid-October). I took no pictures at all, but I do remember vividly looking up at the sky at night and seeing more stars than I could possibly imagine existed. I would love to go back.
J R in WV
@arrieve:
The blog photos are great. Thanks for sharing!!
I know what you mean about having hundreds of photos from a vacation trip. I’m that guy, actually have done (low) 4 figures from a long tour in Spain and France. Hundreds in Tuscany, Arizona, New Mexico. The SouthWest is also ridiculously photogenic.
arrieve
@J R in WV: I’ve come home with more than 1000 pictures many times, even with serious pruning along the way. I still have hundreds of pictures from older trips — Australia, India, Iran — that haven’t been processed. One of the projects I’ve been taking on since retirement is getting everything organized.
Thanks to all for the kind comments!
Denali
@arrieve:
Loved your photos! You really have the eye! We visited NFL 2 years ago -the Tablelands and Western Brook fjord were among our favorite spots. We also loved Anse aux Meadows- we were lucky enough to have a sunny day there. Hope you have seen the musical Come From Away – the story of how the Newfoundlanders took in the many people who were stranded there in the aftermath of 9/11.