Vikings, Fjords, Whalers & Wind Storms // NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR EFRT 18

Welcome to another episode of The Epic Family Road Trip. Hey guys, so today we're on the Tableland Hike in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada. We did not expect the things to be so beautiful. We are standing on the mantle of the earth. This is one of three or maybe four places in the world where the earth's mantle is exposed. Pretty neat. We were just going along the highway and we saw that in the background. So Carol and I jumped up and said let's hike out there. It's almost a three kilometre hike, which we jogged, but it was worth it. We're waiting in the jeep on the jog. So as you may or may not know, we homeschool our kids, or as we prefer to call it, road school or world school. That allows us to travel together, but also get a good education while we're doing it. The kids follow the Ontario curriculum online, so they have teacher-led classes and they're able to get their credits for high school while we travel. But on top of that, we try to hit a lot of extracurricular activities. If we're learning about the history of a country, it's great to learn it from the books and to hear about it and read about it, but what better than to go and actually stand amongst the ruins of that piece of history or to really touch and feel it. So that's what we're trying to do. When we're in Newfoundland, we're not just here for a pleasure trip. We're here to discover the area, learn about it, and to visit some pretty cool historic sites. So the first one on our list is ancient ruins from Leif Erikson, a Viking. These are the Norse people that came to North America. They're thought to be the first Europeans to create a settlement on North American land, and they landed way up at the top of the ruins and the leftovers of what they call a winter camp that Leif Erikson and his crew made up there. So today we're going to tour around that site and learn from the historians on site. In 1960, there was a Norwegian gentleman named Helge Ingstad who showed up in the village of Lassa Meadows. Now, as a young man, he was a lawyer back in Norway, but he got tired of that life. Hey guys, we're just at the ferry terminal in northern Newfoundland and we are going to take the ferry across to Labrador and see some sites over there. Here comes the ferry that's going to take us across to Labrador. Absolutely gorgeous place, but man, we got here just at sunset or dusk and the bugs, some little tiny, tiny little blackflies just about their place set up and the boys quickly got a fire going to produce some smoke and try to smoke these things out of I'm pretty sure all of them now. The bugs have died down a little bit or experienced anything like that. We're expecting rain as well, being right on the coast here in Labrador, you never know what the weather's going to do, so we are taking down everything that's non-essential and getting it all packed away because we don't know, we might wake up to a torrential rainstorm, so we want to be ready to pack up and leave. We've been through that in New Zealand and this time we'll be prepared. So this area's got really rugged and spectacular beauty, it's really worth the visit despite the bugs that come in the evening. If you're prepared it's not a big problem and it's it's worth coming up here, it's so incredibly remote. I think there's one other person in this entire provincial park that's camping, or a couple, one couple, so you don't often get that when you go camping, you get this kind of remote beauty, so definitely come here. So tomorrow, depending on the weather of course, but if everything works out we're going to head north about 50 kilometers to a place called the Basque Whalers Camp. It's where the whalers back in the day came and got all the blubber and the oil and filled their ships with whale oil and would bring it back to Europe and that's what lit the streets of Europe and the UK back in the day before electricity was invented. There's also the tallest lighthouse in Canada apparently here between here and the whalers camp so we hope to stop in there and check that out as well, I think that'll be interesting. Now that it's school time we're doing a lot of educational field trips and I think tomorrow has a couple of really good ones now so for the time being we're making breakfast making some coffee and enjoying pretty decent weather but you can see it rained pretty hard last night we got a few puddles but nothing nothing uh we can't handle that's where everybody stayed high and dry so we'll uh we look forward to a fun day in Labrador. So for today's school lesson we're learning about the Basque whalers who came here to Labrador to um to get to harpoon whales and then to harvest their blubber which they boiled down on this island into oil which lit the lamps of Europe and these guys were just incredibly tough people and Red Harbor here in uh in Labrador became the one of the best places to to do this kind of work because say the whales were plentiful but also this harbor was well protected by this island so right in the mouth of the of the harbor is this island which we just took a boat right across and we're going to walk and explore the island this is where back in the 80s they discovered the ship that had sunk here by reading some old records back in Basque which is between Spain and France they they were going through some old archives and they read about some whalers that had their ship had sunk in Labrador and sure enough they found the boat and they found all these artifacts they did a big archaeological dig here and so that's what we're going to do is tour the the island. Hey we're back at the Apollo getting ready to cross back into Newfoundland. Labrador was amazing even though we were just here for a short amount of time but the weather was terrible in fact it's raining like crazy right now actually we got some decent weather even though it was predicted that there would be a big rainstorm it didn't happen until just now so we're getting on the boat and it's torrential rain but that's okay because we're leaving to get there safely. Now today while in Newfoundland we are in Gros Morne National Park and we get the opportunity to jump on a tour boat which is going to take us through an inland fjord now this is an incredibly interesting area as much as 40 glaciers moved through this area over the years carving out a gorgeous canyon very much reminded us of places like Milford Sound or Doubtful Sound in New Zealand and this is a hidden gem right in the middle of Gros Morne National Park and it used to be joined to the ocean but after the glaciers left the peat bogs and the whole land lifted because the weight of the ice was off and it lifted high enough that it cut this glacier this fjord off from the ocean and now it's a standalone fjord and incredibly deep clear beautiful water surrounded by high magnificent cliffs and waterfalls jump on board the boat with us and we'll take you through this incredible fjord in Gros Morne National Park. Today we're on a father-daughter date in Gros Morne National Park we're going on a boat ride on the way out of Newfoundland we're leaving Gros Morne National Park and heading to the ferry to get a ride back to Cape Breton um one of our instagram followers actually notified us and said um while you're there make sure you hit the insectarium so believe it or not we drove right past it so we turned around and went in and got to explore three floors of insects all kinds of insects from butterflies to big ugly bugs from all over the world and it was quite fascinating here's some video that will make your skin crawl but if you love bugs this is the place to be they're actually picky though they won't eat just any leaf so if you were to put in a lettuce or cabbage leaf they wouldn't eat it they uh they really like raspberry leaves that's what we feed them they also eat oak leaves and i believe it's rose leaves those are really the only three leaves that they distinctly like roll up your sleeves it's a big stick you might need two hands that's so cool if any of you guys are interested too when i take them back there yeah and then after one night in Portobasque we got up in the morning hit the timmies there grabbed a coffee and went down to the ferry terminal and got ready to load up onto the ferry and make the six-hour crossing across Cabot straight to North Sydney Cape Breton we're aboard the ferry rather large ferry that takes us to Cape Breton back to the mainland we had such a awesome time here in Newfoundland this is really a spectacular part of Canada this whole island this is our first time being here but it's so unique in the the the countryside is so beautiful and different and the people are so kind and and the vibe here is just laid back and really awesome the music is awesome everything Newfoundland Labrador we love you we will be back we've basically only explored your northern peninsula there's a lot more yet to see next time we come back we're going to come in the spring when the whales and the icebergs are going through iceberg alley and we'll get over to St. John's and all of Gander and all of that stuff over there on the other side of the island but for now we had such an awesome adventure here we really enjoyed our time in Newfoundland it's just a spectacular place the scenery is incredible the people are friendly the music is wonderful the food is amazing we want to do a lot more exploring in Newfoundland so we'll be back for sure someday but in the meantime we'll see you down the road