Morne-ful Departure Day

It's difficult to leave such beauty behind.

Our last day of playing tourist in Gros Morne took us to the Tablelands, a unique area in the southern area of the park.  If you are a rock buff, this place will sent you all a-twitter.  It is one of the few places where the earth's mantle has pushed up and created a mountain range of rock that usually resides 100 miles below the earths surface.

After all, how else do you explain an area that goes from this:

Lots of green stuff here...

To this:

Can you say "Nevada"?

And is is all due to this:

Peridotite.  Think Iron.

The earth's mantle is made up of rocks that are very high in minerals like iron and magnesium, which is toxic to most plant life.  As a result, this stretch of mountains sit's among the lush, adjacent mountains like a red-headed step sister.  We went for a hike along the base of the Tablelands...

The last area of the hike was over a wood sidewalk,
we presume to protect the area underneath

At the end there was a place to rest and take in the beauty

Beauty?  How about these two?

And then we went into a charming little town called Woody Point and had lunch.

The Jeep is much easier to park than Big Blue.

Nothing special here, just more streetscape.

And we saw this little lighthouse on the way out of town.  

It's this sort of authenticity that make the Maritime
Provinces so special

Alas we had to put Big Blue back on the Ferry Tuesday morning for our journey back:

Big Blue in line

It takes a big boat to carry Big Blue

We played Euchre on the boat on the way home, returned to the KOA in North Sydney, and played golf at Highland  Links in Cape Breton on Tuesday.  Wednesday was a full day of driving, and despite leaking oil like the Exxon Valdez, Big Blue motored us home to our cottage safely.

It was a great trip.  We now wait for the Big Truck doctor to give us a prognosis and repair schedule for Big Blue, and we will plan our trip west accordingly.  The big date for us is California on August 9th, so we have some time to play with.  

We hope the summer is treating you well!  We haven't seen temps above 78 degrees once.

We'll update again on Sunday.  Be good!