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Published: July 21st 2013
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"Whenever I'm with him
Something inside
Starts to burning
And I'm filled with desire"
Martha and the Vandellas started us off on a journey that contained more heat at the end than at the beginning. We have experienced good weather throughout the trip other than the fog at Acadia, but today made it clear (pun intended) that good weather is not something on which you depend. Our main goal was to drive to the ferry that would carry us overnight from Argentia NL back to North Sydney NS and then drive to St. John NB. Since we had extra time before the afternoon ferry boarding, we decide to drive the coast south of St. John's, visiting the Cape Spear lighthouse and some wildlife areas.
The Avalon Peninsula south of St. John's contains the earliest settlements on the island of Newfoundland, and therefore some of the earliest English settlements in the New World. In particular, these included Ferryland and Avalon, the latter being a site of current archaeological interest. The entire coast is of the same rocky and inhospitable character that is so evident at St. John's, but with occasional inlets and protected
harbors where there are fishing villages.
When we reached Cape Spear Lighthouse it was pretty cool (in the low 60's
oF), but not yet raining, and we had a short visit there, watching several humpback whales off the shore. Shortly after we left it started raining, and rained for most of the rest of the day, with a biting wind that made excursions outside the car unpleasant.
We had failed to adequately do our homework about this particular area, and discovered to our disappointment that the puffin colonies we wanted to see were only accessible by boat, and we did not have time for that (and little enthusiasm for it anyway given the weather conditions). Fortunately, we saw some puffins on the whale watching cruise from St. John's, since seeing puffins was one of the prime purposes of the trip. Any who are interested in seeing these droll birds can check them out live at several live cameras such as this one:
http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/puffin-loafing-ledge-cam
After leaving the area around Ferryland, we headed directly for Argentia to board our ferry. As usual, you have to be there two hours early,
since that is when they start boarding. We sat in the car in the rain for quite a while, eating snack food and sandwiches which we had located with some difficulty at the nearby Placentia, since the entire infrastructure of Argentia includes a storage facility and the service-less terminal. After boarding, we proceeded to our cabins.I had reserved deluxe cabins, which turned out to be a wise choice. The lower level cabins are much smaller and may include 4 people in a cabin. As it was, we had a cabin for each couple and they were pretty comfortable, with showers and a big window on the outside world.
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