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Published: October 1st 2015
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Overcast day in Arnold's Cove. We pack up and have a hearty breakfast in the motel restaurant. We have plotted out a route that will take us up the east side of Trinity Bay, through the middle of the peninsula, and then down the west side of Conception Bay. We can either find a place to stay at day's end or push on to St. John's.
We start by driving into Arnold's Cove proper to have a look around. It's a pretty place, pretty similar to many other outports we have seen. I should mention that the town actually faces south onto Placentia Bay. There are many ducks in the harbour and several "Duck Crossing" signs on the main road.
We retrace our route back to the TCH. The reverse meteorological phenomenon occurs as we ascend: The day brightens and, once we're well on the way down the TCH, it turns out that it's a beautiful sunny day. It would appear that Arnold's Cove has its own microclimate, and it's mostly a dreary one.
We stop at a Tourist Information Centre on the way and get some great ideas and tips from the lady there. She tells us
not to miss the ice cream store in Bay Roberts.
We head north on highway 80, which will take us up the east side of Trinity Bay. We stop in Dildo, which is probably more famous for its name than anything else. (If you've followed the blog closely, you will know what "dildo" means in Newfoundland.) Dildo is a small but charming outport and very photogenic.
We proceed north through small outport after small outport. Eventually we reach the "heart" trio: Heart's Delight, Heart's Desire and Heart's Content. We stop at the latter to visit the site of the Heart's Content Cable Station. The very first Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was pulled ashore here in 1866. And for a period of almost 100 years, Heart's Content was the conduit for all electronic communication between Europe and America. Of course, the advent of reliable radio communications eventually spelled the end to this mode of communication, and the station closed in 1965. The museum is full of awesomely cool legacy equipment, with lots of dials, switches, vacuum tubes and patch cords.
At this point we head east across the peninsula. Arriving on the Conception Bay side, we drive through Victoria
and Carbonear, and then stop in Harbour Grace. This town was the launch point for Amelia Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932. Another interesting thing about Harbour Grace is that there is an old rusty steamer stranded aground at the end of the harbour. This is the S. S. Kyle, which had a long history of service in Newfoundland before it was pushed onto the rocks by a storm many years ago. It became such a town fixture that, when the government eventually tried to remove it, the town rebelled and insisted it stay.
We push on south to Bay Roberts. We are quite hungry by this time and we track down Sergio's Ice Cream Parlour, recommended earlier. It turns our Sergio's also offers fast food, so we have donairs followed, of course, by ice cream; our flavour selections are partridgeberry and peanut. The donairs are ordinary but the ice cream is all-natural and delicious.
We continue south and then east along the contour of Conception Bay. We pass through Holyrood, where we stayed previously. Eventually we join highway 2, a superhighway that takes us directly to the St. John's downtown.
So we are back
in St. John's, one day ahead of schedule. We check into the Quality Inn where we stayed last time and enjoy a leisurely supper at Rumpelstiltskin before retiring.
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