Scenery

Here are more pictures of some of the stuff we've run across along the way.

Before leaving Gros Morne for St. Anthony, we were blessed with some beautiful sunsets where we camped right on the beach.

We also had the fortune to visit Canada's version of Arches National Park (actually, it's Provincial). A different kind of arch (not landlocked), but fun nonetheless.


We ran into a friend from the previous night we had made at our camp site. He was traveling with his parents by car, and as fast as we were booking it north, they caught up to us. After a warm reunion, we left him at the arches. Our last site of him was in a headstand on top of the arch.


Vegetation

As we may have mentioned before, the landscape around here is interesting. In some places, it's wooded forest so thick you can't enter at all and in others, it's boggy marsh. The marsh is the more interesting to us, probably because it's more foreign, and we actually had the chance to sleep on a peat bog.

This is marshy territory where your steps literally sink in several inches. When someone walks by you, or you drop something, the ground literally shakes, as if a semi has just gone by. Freaky.

But freakier than that is some of the vegetation. The peat bogs, which spread over millions of years and actually take over treed areas (backwards from the traditional succesional process) are up to 15 feet deep, and contain water that is cold, acidic, and low in oxygen and nutrients. If bodies from millions of years ago have been found in them perfectly preserved, you might wonder how things grow. Some of them have taken to eating animals. The pitcher plant, for instance, creates perfect little pitcher-shaped leaves for trapping water, and with it, unsuspecting bugs that dip in for a drink. They fly in, get wet, and can't grab a hold of any firm ground to dry themselves off. Once they have drowned, bacteria that live in the plant help digest it.


Here is a close-up, looking inside the pitcher. You can even see some little hapless bugs down there. We'd feel sorry for them, except that one at least looks like a black fly. Good riddance!



Animals

So far we have seen several moose, and Nick saw a black bear barrelling down the mountain. Fortunately, it was barrelling down the mountain away from him. Not enough time for a picture, but here is a young male moose we saw off the highway in Gros Morne.

We also ran into some rather tourist-friendly birds at Western Brook Pond, a grand fjord in Gros Morne. We couldn't help resist the temptation after we bought some nuts.

The bumblebees here still appear to be in good shape too.


And of course, we are constantly blessed with sunsets to die for. Pictures don't capture it all, but hope you enjoyed the taste. Ta-ta!