Corner Brook is a small city with a beautiful setting beside a fjord. It is located a little over an hour's drive south of the major tourist destination of Gros Morne National Park with its splendid fjords and and desert like tablelands.
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Overlooking Corner Brook beside wooden water pipe
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Corner Brook is a typical paper mill town and an atypical setting. The paper mill with its belching smokestacks is the one major blemish to the picture postcard scene. On the plus side, the city does not have the usual sulphuric smell of most paper mills towns because the mill does not use sulphur. However, the city often has a rather pleasant smell of freshly cut wood.
Providing a majestic backdrop for the city to the west is the Blowmidon Mountains, which still had snow on them in mid-July when I left. Route 450, called Captain's Cook driving trail in tourist literature, goes west from Corner Brook along the fjord called the Humber Arm. There is an Viking ship replica along the road (left by a movie filmed recently here), beautiful views of the area called the Bay of Islands, and the entry point of the Blowmidon walking trail. The road ends near Lark Harbour and the Blow Me Down Provincial Park, which is a small park on a hilly peninsula sticking out into the Bay of Islands. There is no public transport or tours available for this area from Corner Brook.
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Margaret Bowater Park swimming pool
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Margaret Bowater City Park is a small park on Corner Brook Stream which has a small dam. In the summer, which starts July 1st here, the city closes the dam's sluice gates and turns a section of the stream into a swimming pool with lifeguards, kiddie pool and concrete steps. The park is a popular recreational area and families are often here playing games like frisbee tag and picnicing.
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Waterfall on Corner Brook Stream trail
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The Corner Brook Stream trail network which goes through the middle of the city as well as outside of town. It has a number of well-maintained trails which a follow a cascading stream as it goes through a gorge, over a waterfall, and into man made lake. There is a beautiful panoramic view of the city and the Humber Arm from a hillside. The trail also follows an interesting large wooden water pipe for one section.
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Gros Morne National Park is coastal area where mountains meet the sea and ancient glaciers carved inlets, ponds, and tablelands out of these mountains like a great artist. Western Brook Pond is the main claim to fame here. It is an inland fjord where a narrow pond winds its way between shear mountain walls. There is an expensive ferry ride which takes tourists down the pond. The park service discourages hiking by not maintaining the trail with the best on foot view of the pond. When I tried to walk the Stag Brook trail, the path was blocked by a combination of thick mud, large puddles, and obstructing branches.
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I came to Newfoundland to see Gros Morne National Park. I chose to stay in Corner Brook because of the accommodations offered by Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. SWGC offers private rooms in the student dorms during the summer at daily, weekly,and monthly rates. The rooms have a bath shared with one other room, for me this was effectively a private bath because the other room was unoccupied. It has a beautiful setting overlooking the city, but this also means a lot of walking up and down hill to get from there to town unless driving. The rooms also have a suite refrigerator, access to well equipped hall kitchen, and high speed internet.
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The Paper Mill and downtown Corner Brook
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At Sir Wilfred Grenfell College is a music venue called the Backlot. I sure it is quite busy when school is in session, but when I was there during the summer there was only a live music performance about once every weekend. The bands who played here were for an audience mostly in their teens and early twenties and the music which I heard was notable for noise and energy level and little else.
The audience seemed to love it though. As an American, I was told by a Canadian, who was drinking a bottle of Corona at the time, that Canadian beers are better than American beers because they have more alcohol and are not not watered down like American beers without no discernible trace of irony.
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Gros Morne Park is not a wilderness at least not along the coast or Bonne Bay, the fjord that cuts the park roughly in half. It is dotted with small tourist and fishing towns. The tablelands in the south of the park are a near barren wasteland of reddish tinged tan rock highlighted by the background of lush green forestland which comprises most of the park. There was snow on the tablelands even though I was there in late June, this snow melts usually does not melt until late July.
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Published on Thursday July 12th, 2007
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Mon, Jul 16 2007 - 11:25 AM
 by eirekay
| Nice Photos! I hope you have time to expand - I found this area fascinating! |
Sat, Jul 14 2007 - 03:21 AM
by marianne
| Good photos and well written report. |
Fri, Jul 13 2007 - 10:44 PM
by rangutan
| Another great outdoor report. Too short, wish to read so much more about this place and it's fjords. [My reports are (sadly) very brief too!] |
Fri, Jul 13 2007 - 07:35 AM
 by ravinderkumarsi
Hi daniel,very nice report with wonderful photos in it,but I personally feel that you need to add bit more information in the first part of report ,just do some additions and it will be very good indeed.
ravi
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Fri, Jul 13 2007 - 01:13 AM
by davidx
| Information: |
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