Trout River, Newfoundland

            A town of two rivers and a mountain by the sea. It got it all!

…even a great restaurant!

I’m  having a belated lunch at “Seaside Restaurant”:

It’s still great to just look at this picture – those fish cakes ….and the clam chowder… 

And all that with my easy-to-take-around-and-fit-the-content-to-the-right-mood Kindle…

Then there was also a little fishery museum.  I was out of luck, again, with fishing museums, so it was closed. But here are photos of the dried fish outside the museum:

I kept walking along the boardwalk and then beyond to where a small river, Manuel’s Brook, met the sea. Apparently all the rivers here emanate from glacially-formed ponds, in this case Manuel’s Brook Pond. The actual Trout River is on the other side of town. I crossed the small delta barefooted and shot pictures of seagulls, water and the play of the tide against the river flow in the estuary:

I never get tired of seagulls, not even after seeing bald eagles and puffins…

Trout River town viewed from estuary of Manuel’s Brook.

Every pond has a circumnavigating path, and every little sea town has a boardwalk or promenade along the water, and trails leading up to the hills around it. The views from above reveal the general character of the place in its setup:

One attraction about island towns is their colorful houses, but I was drawn to take this picture in black and white.

On the climb I met an older guy who was equipped with a topographic map of the area. Thanks to his map I know the name of that small river. Google could not provide me with that info. The guy was well-travelled. He walked all the Green Gardens trails plus the high walk along the coast. I knew I wasn’t ready for that at this stage, but nonetheless took a pic of his map with my camera.

Descending, the sun started to set. I re-crossed the town, this time walking on the boardwalk all the way to the little port on the other end, where another river was merging into the ocean. I believe this was the actual Trout River, as it comes out of Trout River Pond. That pond is situated where a glacial pond used to be, but was raised above sea-level when the glaciers melted. In actuality, it is kind of a sea fjord, and sets a natural border to the “city” on its southern side. I later found out these ponds – there is an upper and a lower – are actually surrounded by the Tablelands and the exposed earth’s mantle. They can be navigated by motorboats or kayaks. Something to look forward to when I return to Newfoundland…

The boardwalk

Caribou antlers, whale ribs and vertebrae and lobster’s traps by a colored house in Trout River.

Trout River is a fishermen village as it should be. Thank goodness that still exists. I remember how excited Rachel, Mary’s niece was about the colored houses in St. John’s.

Driving back, an orange warning light appeared on my car screen. I stopped at Woody Point to ask a passerby if he knew what it meant. He said he was good at other things, but not at all with cars. Nonetheless, he tried to help me search the book and was very kind. Bottom line, we could not figure it out, but there was probably no serious concern. Little did I know I’ll soon meet the man again in totally different circumstances…

Green Gardens were still expecting me the next day, which meant driving back all around Bonne Bay and repeating that ordeal in the morning, but it was well worth it, my first serious “vertical” for this trip.