Tablelands

Walking The Tablelands

Gros Morne has three dominant features: Bonne Bay, Gros Morne mountain, and the Tablelands. We had expected epic fjords and rocky forested mountains - but we hadn't expected the Tablelands. In the middle of green and damp Newfoundland, the Tablelands looked like a chunk of Arizona or perhaps even Mars. It turns out that this is because the Tablelands are a piece of the earth's mantle that was shoved up to the surface by plate tectonics. It's heavy in iron, so it's rust-red like the surface of Mars. It's also low in nitrogen and other plant-friendly nutrients, so the plant...
Yosemite

Two Days In Yosemite

Every year I visit my family in California in late March, and every year we try to find something new to see or do. This year, we decided to see Yosemite National Park. In a lifetime of visiting California, I somehow never managed to make it there. I've flown over it several times, but it's hard to see much detail from 30,000 feet. My mother and I drove eastwards from the Bay Area, passing whole hill-sides of windmills: The valley grew steeper and rockier, eventually coming right up to and sometimes even over the road: Finally we came across a...
Insectarium

Iceberg Beer And The Newfoundl And Insectarium

Most of our time in Gros Morne, the weather was spectacularly sunny and warm. We had packed for rainy weather, so had started running low on appropriate attire. On the second-last day, we hiked to a lovely set of waterfalls:  And on the way back got caught in a torrential downpour. Funnily enough, this is the one time we hadn't brought our full raingear, and we got thoroughly soaked. My Gore-Tex enhanced boots ended up getting soaked from the inside by water wicking through my socks from my water-saturated trousers. We gave up on the campground and got a hotel...