We made bacon, eggs, and toast for the maybe our first time ever camping. Too many mornings we've smelled bacon at others' campsites so we finally engulfed. Think we'll do it again...maybe even tomorrow.
After breakfast we headed into St. John's, which is 25 miles away, to get a coffee and pastry which we savoured while enjoying the views from Signal Hill, which overlooks the entrance to The Narrows, which is the entrance to the St. John's harbor. It's an ideal location that's been coveted by both the French, English, and Canadian armies since the mid 1700's through WWII. German U-Boats fired torpedoes into it several times trying to sink Allied warships.
There are only three British forts that still fire a noon cannon on a daily basis: St. John's, Bermuda, & Hong Kong. The cannon fire was originally used for sailors to set their chronometers so that they could calculate their longitude and latitude. A three minute delay in firing could cause sailors to be off course by 30 miles.
We were wondering what they call these dogs here?
The views are breathtaking in every direction; we probably spent close to 2 hours just walking around and soaking in the panorama.
Once I was certain I'd taken every possible photo of every direction we visited the visitors center which includes a museum as well as a film highlighting the 4 centuries of history of Signal Hill. Very fascinating.
Leaving the visitors center we descended the Hill just a few hundred yards and toured the Johnson Eco Center which is a natural history museum which focuses on the geology of this area. They have a very moving exhibit on the Titanic, which sank only 340 miles southeast of St.Johns. The exhibit was fascinating, filled with facts that have gotten lost over the years. Both the captain of the ship and the owner of the White Star Line were very guilty of greed, ambition, and poor judgment. Hard not to think of Donald Trump.
We closed our touring day with fish and chips/pouting at the Duke of Duckworth, an English pub that is the basis of what must be a Canadian version of Cheers. They brew their own beer and it and the food were delicious. We're on a mission to have seafood every day...so far, so good.
Returned to the campsite around 4:30 for a little R&R and of yeah, laundry...I'm out of clean underwear.
As always, thoroughly enjoying your travel posts:-)
ReplyDeleteThanks, finding wifi is a challenge around here, and once we head to the west coast I'm anticipating it will be impossible. Glad you're enjoying the posts.
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