Now when you go to Newfoundland, and you must go, and you tell people that you’re going to leave St. John’s at 10:30 at night and drive 900-odd km through the night to get to Port Aux Basques to catch a ferry; to a person, they’ll say, “Look out for the moose!” They’re not kidding. The signs on Trans Canada Highway 1 or TCH 1, said there were 660 collisions with moose on the highway the previous year. That’s almost 2 a day.
So with a brand new Chevy Orlando loaned to us from GM and only a 24 foot Penske, you take precautions. Drink lots of coffee and pop, stop often to swap drivers, and best of all, get behind a tractor trailer with moose roller bars on the front grill. More about the ultimate in moose bars in a future post.
About 4:30am we stopped to get gas and snacks. We had been noticing there were a fair number of vehicles pulled off to the sides of the highway here and there and assumed there were just a lot of tired people who smartly pulled over to rest. Then at the gas station, there were several vehicles pulling ATV’s (or golf carts as I called them still waking up in the passenger seat). Hmm, then what’s with the camouflage and fluorescent orange fashion statements everywhere?
Well, it was the first morning of Moose hunting season, when 1000’s of hunters descend on Newfoundland via the inbound ferries and all the moose go on vacation on the return trip out. Apparently the moose population is so bountiful (guess they’re doing something right…) that it’s the first year hunting is allowed in Gros Morne Park. Now there’s a Trivial Pursuit factoid for you. The vehicles pulled over had driven early to their allotted area so they were ready to go at the crack of dawn or a rifle.
Now driving through this incredibly rugged and lovely land, we really did expect to see a moose (yea tourists, I know..) or at least a plethora of nocturnal wildlife. Here’s the tally, wait for it, I’m counting: one little bunny while still getting on TCH1 and one coyote about halfway through the night. On the plus side any eyeball muscles used in looking side to side are probably twice as strong and fast as they used to be; that and both vehicles and all crew left the island utterly intact and only somewhat dishevelled and smelly after 30 hours of running an event and driving.
Tags: canada, childhood cancer, inside ride, lori, national inside ride tour
