Tuesday | Aug. 11, 2015 @7:20pm
It’s one crazy day after another. I’m getting tired of it, although it has been good. This morning we woke up at 4am to drive to Cape Spear to see the sunrise at the most easterly point in Canada. The drive there was interesting as it was still dark out and we were driving on unfamiliar roads to a place that we had never been to. The map was only so useful and it seems Newfoundland is only so useful with their signs. We found our way there after only one wrong turn. We made it there in time for the sunrise at least. There are two lighthouses at Cape Spear and they are on a bit of a raised bit of rock. From there you can see the lights of St. Johns and signal hill.
After the sunrise, we drove to St. Johns with signal hill in mind. We got to the top of signal hill after driving through St. Johns and discovered that there were no open washrooms and we kind of needed one. Se we drove back down the hill and found a Timmies. Since we had already put some money in a parking meter, we walked around the old downtown a bit and took some pictures.
We arrived at signal hill the second time and started walking around the trails. There are a ton of old ruins of fortifications which were interesting to see. There was a great view of St. Johns and the narrows into the harbour, which we saw several ships go through. We could see a cool looking trail down below that required a long staircase down. It started at the top of signal hill and then made its way down almost to the water. The scenery was spectacular. The trail ended on Battery road which was a bunch of houses right on the water. Since I’m in better shape now the walk back up the stairs wasn’t that bad, although at the end I was pretty winded, but I think that’s because I was taking them two at a time.
At this point in the day it was still the morning and we had finished everything that we had planned for the area. So we headed to Trinity. That was a 2.5 hour drive on the trans Canada highway. I thought it would be pretty boring, but it turns out that a lot of the inland scenery in Newfoundland is more of that tundra like land with semi mountains and very few trees. That kept things quite interesting.
We got to Trinity and figured we would see a campground on our way in, but of course we didn’t. It seems people don’t really camp much in Newfoundland, which makes sense because a larger amount of the tourists who will be visiting come in by air. So anyway, we drove around looking for one and wound up in Lockston Path Provincial Park. It was a little out of the way, down an annoying dirt road, but the site we got was really nice for once.
After setting up camp I was fiddling with the tripod, trying to figure out a way to take video while driving, and I banged it off the window of the car and cracked the window…kind of badly too. That put kind of a damper on everything. We drove to Trinity to explore more but my heart wasn’t really in it. I did some googling around and will try calling a glass repair shop tomorrow to see if we can get the window replaced. Good thing we have cell service in this campground. Otherwise this would have been even more miserable. At least this is close to the beginning of the trip. It’s crazy to think that in two weeks we will still be on the island.
(I didn’t write much about Trinity in the original journal entry. It was a very colourful town, but also quite busy and touristy. I tend to prefer more authentic experiences, so Trinity wasn’t all that great from my perspective)
The Narrow Twisty Road 