Why We Love NEWFOUNDLAND
Planning a trip to Newfoundland requires some restraint. I’m not talking about budget, but geography. If you are too starry eyed in your itinerary plotting, the province will become a blurred landscape in your rear-view mirror as you log countless miles on the Trans-Canada.
A tempered itinerary will allow you to experience the painter’s landscape of metallic lakes, wind-bent tuckamores and sun-beaten fishing sheds. You can actually feel the tectonic shift from the precipitous cliffs of the east to the glacier-scraped miles dotted with “erratics” (boulders scattered haphazardly across the land from the ice age).
It’s important to refine what you’d like to chase: icebergs? puffins? lighthouses? whales? My wife and I were lucky enough to catch the last four puffins holding ground in Elliston on September 9, 2019. It was a crisp 8 degrees, with an angry wind that blew our conversation away. But observing the presence of these flyweights (puffins barely tip the scales at a fluffy 500 grams) was the penultimate on our trip. I can’t imagine the crowds (both human and puffin) that jam in for the annual July festival, but it would be fun to be caught up in the fever pitch. Nearby gift shops hawk puffin everything, from
