The Kittiwake Coast - The Road to the Shore

 After leaving Bonavista, we drove down the western side of that peninsula on Hwy 234 and 233 to join the Trans Canada Highway.  We then drove through the Terra Nova National Park toward Gander.  We needed to make a decision on whether to drive up the east side of what is called "The Kittiwake Coast".  So, we exited at Gambo and went to the information centre there.  Gambo is the birthplace of Joey Smallwood.  He successfully led the province into Confederation, and became the first Premier of the province when Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949.  The Visitor Centre has several commemorative pieces that recall his life and work, including a statue and a museum. The highway through Gambo is called Joey Smallwood Blvd.  After getting some information about the coast, and because we had the time, we decided to drive around it.  So, our next destination was north to Musgrave Harbour.  

Basically, the Kittiwake Coast is a horseshoe-shaped loop from Gambo along Route 320 and Route 330 from Gambo to Gander.  The east side of this loop is called "the Road to the Shore".  What we noticed was that the landscape here had changed from what we had seen previously.  A lot of the bays and ponds had large round rocks in them - almost like giant pebbles - which were more brown in colour than the grey rocks we had been seeing.  I am no geologist so don't explanation about this but it was an interesting contrast.

Our first stop was Dover because the Dover Fault is mentioned in the musical Come From Away.  This fault is significant from a geological perspective.  From the Internet:  The Dover Fault forms a tectonic boundary between northern portions of the Gander and Avalon Zones of the Newfoundland Appalachians and is one of the most important geological structures in understanding Newfoundland's geology and evolution of the Appalachian Mountains.  There is a lot more detailed information about this fault but I can't understand it.  We didn’t hike the trail up to the view point as, basically, all you would see is a view to the ocean where the fault exists thousands of meters below the ocean and earth's surface.

Continuing north, we stopped briefly in Newtown which is called the Venice of Newfoundland because it’s built on a series of tiny islands  While it was picturesque, having been to Venice quite a few times, the association was sort of lost on me except for the various small islands being linked by bridges.  However, the village is pretty and does have one of the architectural gems along this part of the shore:  the Alphaeus Barbour House which is a Queen Anne-style mansion built in 1904 by a local merchant.

We continued along the north coast through Lumsden, Lumsden Beach, Deadman’s Bay and Musgrave Harbour.  The last looked on the map like it might be a town with shops and other stops of interest but it was basically houses, a post office and a small independent grocery store.  The views of the coastline along here were quite impressive and, although they were called beaches, they were very rocky but did have lots of flat and straight shoreline.  Maybe that is what constitutes a beach here.

Then, we took the road south with our destination being Gander.  The west side of this loop is called "The Road to the Isles" which we will be exploring over the next couple of days after our overnight stop in Gander.