Newfoundland - 2024

 This morning we headed to Quidi Vidi.  It is a small village within St. John's.  It has a cute little harbour and colourful houses.  It is home to many artists and the Quidi Vidi Brewery.  We really enjoyed just watching harbour life.  Many fisherman were coming home with their catches of cod and filleting them either in their boats or at their boatsheds right beside the water.  They throw all the entrails back into the water and the seagulls fight over them.  Then we had lunch and a flight of beer at the brewery.  Pete had battered cod tacos and I had fish croquettes.  The tacos were amazing.  We then hiked around Quidi Vidi lake, about 4 km.  Then we went to Fort Amhearst which is located across from Signal Hill on the other side of the narrow harbour opening.  It has another lighthouse and was part of the defence of St. John's.  We were back at the campsite by about 3:30 and enjoyed reading in the sunshine.  ...

 This morning we did some reprovisioning at the local Walmart and then parked downtown again.  We enjoyed a concert on the waterfront by a local youth and by a country singer called Justin Fancy and his bank.  He won the East Coast Music Awards last year.  Then we walked around downtown again and stopped for a beer and some shrimp and crap dip.  Along the harbour lots of ships were coming and going.  We had a very fancy ice cream cone and headed back to our campground around 3:30.  I then did some laundry and Pete hung up a line for drying.  Our campground is really filling up because of the long weekend.  The weather today was really great.  We read for a while and then went for a walk.  So ends another day.

 This morning we went to Signal Hill.  First we stopped at the Interpretive centre where they had a display and a very good movie about the history of Signal Hill.  We then had coffee in the van.  We hiked up to Signal Hill.  The view from there is utterly amazing.  You could climb the tower and got outside at the top.  They even fired the noon signal gun.  It was really loud.  That is the gun that they used to signal the town about ships coming in and also the time of day.  They would shoot it at 8, 12 and 6 everyday so keep the time.  We then hiked down to the water, back to St. John;s along the harbour entrance and back to our van.  It was lovely.  We were happy to have our rain coats along, mostly to protect us from the fierce wind, but also from time to time a light rain.   We had lunch in the van and then stopped at the Geo Centre near Signal Hill.  It pretty much was about the oil and gas industry in ...

 We hit the road around 8:30 a.m. and drove back out the 25 km road from Cape Race.  We then headed to Ferryland which was the first English settlement in Newfoundland founded in 1687.  It is currently an archeological dig site.  They are unearthing the 1687 village and are about 60% complete.  There is an interpretive centre full of the artifacts they have found which are plentiful and we had a guided tour of the dig site which was amazing.  We had lunch in the parking lot there and carried on to Cape Spear.  It is the most easterly point of NFLD and has the oldest lighthouse.  It is a very rugged but beautiful piece of coastline,  During the II WW there was a defensive bunker built to defend the St. John's harbour.  There were many soldiers stationed there.  We are now in a park in St. John's.  We will be hear for several days.  

 It was raining when we got up in the morning, but we ate and packed up and drove down the road to Salmonier Nature Park.  We had a great 3 km hike through the woods on boardwalks where we saw all kinds of native animals that are being rehabilitated after injuries.  It was so well done.  We saw a moose, great horned owl. bald eagle, lynx and many others.  We then drove to Mistaken Point where we stopped at the interpretive centre.  We asked the lady there if we should do the drive to Cape Race Lighthouse where the Marconi Radio and Telegraph centres were located that picked up the distress signal from the HMS Titanic.  She highly recommended going and she said we should spend the night there.  The drive took about 30 minutes and it was paved for about 1/3 of the way but the rest was a very good gravel road.  It was so beautiful.  Both the drive and the place.  The museam was very interesting about the titantic and we found our spot ...

 We got off the ferry at 10:00 a.m. and headed to our first stop at Castle Hill Historic Site.  It was a Fort built by the French in the 1600's.  Placentia was a city used by the French for its fishing grounds and by the Basques.  The fort was built to protect the city.  Eventually the English beat the French for control of the city.  Interestingly, 2 islands just outside the port of Argentia are still owned by France.   Then we stopped in the town of Placentia and had coffee there and carried on to Cape St. Mary's which is an Ecological Reserve for birds.  We got to see a colony of Gannet's nesting on a sea stack.  We were within 60 feet of them.  It was quite amazing, but somewhat tempered by the fog.  The cliffs are very high and very sheer and the hike was just over a kilometer. The driving is quite challenging as the potholes are grown to quite a large size!  There are better roads interspersed, but you have to keep y...

 We left our campground in Cape Breton around 9 in the morning.  We arrived in North Sydney by 10.  We had to do some reprovisioning and we had coffee in a nice park on the waterfront.  We got into line for the ferry around noon and made some lunch.  They had a nice terminal building to sit in, where we sat and read.  It was very warm in North Sydney, 28 degrees and humid.  We started loading at 3:30 p.m.  Everything takes a long time.  It is a very large ferry and brand new.  It is being leased and came from China.  Our cabin was lovely, 2 single beds with a TV and a bathroom.  We left on time at 5:30 p.m.  We stood outside until we couldn't see land anymore.  Then we went to the restaurant for supper.  It had lovely big round windows.  We sat outside for a while longer to watch the sunset, then went to our room to watch TV for a while.  We took our gravol pills and went to sleep around 10.  We bo...

 We left Mactaquac at 9 a.m. after sleeping for at least 10 hours.  We have taken sleeping to another level!  The time change is playing havoc with us.  We must be in our 60's!  Yikes.  We crossed into Nova Scotia and stopped at the tourist inform ation.  We got a great paper map of Nova Scotia which made Pete really happy.  We drove to Pugwash where we had lunch at an ocean front park.  A bear crossed in front of us on the road near Wallace, NS.  We entered Cape Breton around 3 and drove to the Bras D'Or Lake Campground for the night. We are sharing the campground with lots of Airstream trailers.  It's funny because in 2015 when Pete and I were in Nova Scotia the last time, we were camping with all the Airstreams in Louisbourg, N.S.  We are now within an hour of the ferry for Newfoundland.  Our reservation is for 5:30 p.m. tomorrow.  Happy Birthday to Mom tomorrow. Hope you all have a blessed Sabbath and a great...

 We left our campsite by 9 this morning and basically just drove all day.  We stopped for lunch at Grand Falls, NB.  It was beautiful there.  We also realized we had lost an hour due to the time change.  We stopped for the day at Mactaquac Provincial Park.  We stayed here in 1998 with the kids.  It is right on the St. John's River.  We had supper and then a short bike ride around the park.  It was quite a nice day today weather wise.  We actually had our lawn chairs outside for the first time.  

 We started the day with breakfast, then Pete had a walk/jog and I cleaned the van.  We had to wait for Lisa the park manager so that we could pay her for our site.  She arrived by 9 and we were on our way.  Just down the road was Upper Canada Village which was a representation of life in the 1860's.  It was really well done.  We especially enjoyed the functioning water-powered wool, grist, and saw mills.  There were a total of 40 period buildings, many of them moved to the location in the 50s as a result of the St. Lawrence Seaway project.  They all were manned by people in period costumes and playing the roles of the people of the 1860s.   We also toured the site of the Battle of Chrysler Farm (A time we kicked the USA's butt in 1813)  That was really cool to see. We left the Village at 12:30 or so and  continued on Highway 2 until the Long Sault Parkway scenic route which crosses about 10 islands in the St. Lawrence Seaway....