Sunday, August 25, 2019
Today, we extended our scheduled two-hour drive with a detour through Stephenville to visit the Fossil Trail. Upon arriving in Stephenville, we stopped at a local pharmacy for Jane to replenish her supply of magnesium pills. Once we noticed that the pharmacy also sold groceries, we bought a few food supplies, too. We decided to walk across the street to eat lunch at the A&W, cod sandwiches with root beer.
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| Cod & Root Beer |
After lunch, we parked along the main road on the edge of town and walked to the Fossil Trail which began along the side and back yard of some friendly folks’ house. The trail proceeded along Blanche Brook for about one kilometer before we encountered the fossils.
Long, long ago (305 million years), mighty Cordiatalean trees up to 160 feet tall grew in a tropical forest on a mountain range near the equator. At the time, the earth’s land mass was one large super-continent, Pangea. A great flood washed these trees down the hillside and deposited them onto a large river bed where they were buried by sand and gravel deposits and eventually turned to stone. After the forces of plate tectonics broke Pangea apart and the modern North American continent drifted to its current location, these fossilized trees have been re-exposed by natural erosion along the Blanche Brook. |
| Pieces of Ancient Fossilized Trees |
The tree fossils we saw were dark in color compared with the the light sandstone that had embedded them. Many were black (resembling coal) because of the fossilization process. We saw fossilized pieces as well as many long trunks embedded in the sandstone.
After the Fossil Trail hike, we drove the rest of the route without stopping until we reached the campground exit off of the TCH. There, we stopped at the local Esso for diesel fuel and beer.
We have come full circle around The Rock, now staying in the same campground, Grand Codroy RV-Tent Camping Park, that we stayed in on our first day here. We’re having a relaxing evening and prepping to drive to the Port aux Basques ferry early tomorrow morning. Newfoundland has been such a beautiful and friendly island that we’ll be leaving with considerable regret but hopes of returning in the future.
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| Fossilized Tree Trunk |