Final notes

Woke up this morning at the airport. Steven already misses the gremlin. I probably should have mentioned that it was my aunt's old car and that she let us use it for the trip but in the excitement of hiding from my mom I forgot to mention it. As for Newfoundland, I figured I didn't mention enough about the culture. Because Newfoundland was heavily colonized there is very little left over of the first nations culture. They mostly speak English there and there is some remnant of the Acadian french culture left. This blend mostly shows itself in the accents of the residents. The people are lively and like to sing folk songs, most of which are ridden with accented words as well as words that only exist in Newfoundland.. In most of the smaller communities, starting a party is as easy as pulling the piano out onto the deck during the summer. Some might think that we've really given Labrador the short end of the stick here, but if you look at a map there's hardly anything there, it's mostly small fishing communities you need a boat to get to.

Arriving in Fogo

We came to Fogo by ferryboat late in the after noon. We drove the gremlin inland not sure what exactly we were looking for. Steven finally started to loose his sense of direction towards dinner time and we ended up passing the same house four times. The first time, a young woman was walking to the mailbox, the second time, she was examining the mail, third time, she was staring at our car questioningly, the fourth time she flagged us down and asked us if we were lost. I admitted we were and that we were looking for a pub. The girl, now introduced as Jessica, explained that there were no pubs for miles and that if we didn't have a place to stay then we could park the car and share the guest room. That night we drank some of Jessica's dad's homemade screech. I learned that is considered impolite to decline a glass of screech while Steven failed to learn what the bottom of a tumbler looks like. The next day we left after a hearty lunch we bid our new friends goodbye and made the long trip back to St. John's. We saw some fishing boats on our way down the coast, brightly painted and looking well taken care of; fishing is still important part of the culture here even if the legendary schools of cod are long gone. We arrived at the airport around seven in the evening after driving nearly non stop. We took the redeye home and slept nearly the whole way.

Onward to Fogo

We woke up at around seven in the mourning. We had slept in the car again as our return to St. John's was unexpected. we had a seven hour ride to Fogo ahead of us and Steven wanted to get going. I insisted on finding at least one small cultural museums and so we looked around finally finding one. I didn't catch the street name though. We learned that Newfoundland's economy was founded almost entirely on the export of cod. This was the source of instability during World War one. The economy is still based on cod. almost all settlement up to world war one was entirely due to fisheries. we discovered that there had once been a boundary dispute of Newfoundland and Labrador vs. Quebec. Steven wanted to get on the road as quickly as possible so I jury rigged a wifi access point from my phone and brought out my laptop to do some more research as we drove.

I read an article explaining the maritime climate of Newfoundland and how it was responsible for the persistent rain. The proximity to the sea also regulates the temperature making for very few exceptionally cold winters.

Climate graph of St. John's

I also discovered that the population density of the island was staggeringly low! The city of St. John's barely has fifty people per square kilometre and the rest of the island barely rises above 5 people/Km^2!

This staggering evidence also applied to Fogo and to this end I tried to talk Steven out of going all the way there. He would not listen.

We drove through the terrain of the east Coast, passing small clusters of buildings and houses every few kilometres. the hills were taller then I expected but I did some research and discovered that this was just typical of Newfoundland. It was part of the Canadian shield, a large slab precambrian rock. I still don't know what that word means.

Triumphant return to square one

                                                     signal hill

the "cute" Cabot tower

We came back into St. John's around four o'clock this afternoon, summertime makes for the longest days and with several hours of daylight left Steven and I decided to check out another landmark. We chose Signal hill, an old fortification which has been the sight of military watchpoints since the sixteen hundred due to it's strategic location. This was one of those places with a well kept old stone building and a nice view that made little difference to the modern military's operation. Though he hadn't had any screech yet Steven pointedly said that the cabot tower looked "cute".

The best back east

Today we visited Cape spear after spending the night hunkered down in an alley avoiding the wrath of my mother. She was none too impressed. but a four o'clock last night we got a call from mom saying that as long as we didn't get our selves killed she would see us when we got home. Cape Spear was an amazing place to be for break fast. At 52°37'W it is the place the furthest east in all of North America. From there, Steven's dangerous driving skills got us up the coast in three and a quarter hours but got us lost in some place called Musgravetown.

                                     Everyone in Musgravetown lives on Main st.
                                     unless they live on post office lane.


Leaving just as promptly as we had come, we decided to spend another night in St. John's to avoid spending the night in a horror-movie-esque quiet little town.

Across Newfoundland (ss10)

Landed in St. John's yesterday and have been exploring Kilbride while we wait for aunt Mildred's wedding to start. If so many as one person makes a joke about my aunty marrying a guy from a place called Kilbride I'll kill them. This considered the wedding is on their back lawn, the suburb of Kilbride is about as flat as Newfoundland gets, it is profoundly dull here with almost nothing to distinguish it from anywhere else. There is room for a fairly large wedding given how far apart the houses are here. Steve insisted we stop by the house we're renting until the wedding's over and pack the gremlin before our hasty exit from the after party. Mom doesn't know we have plans to see Newfoundland before we head back home. The plan is basically to see Cape Spear which is the furthest east you can get in North America, the strategic sight of fortifications at Signal Hill, where fortifications have stood since the seventeen hundreds. We also heard a song by the Arrogant Worms about some weird place names and Steve is getting all bent out of shape about wanting to go all the way to Fogo for some screech.

 this is our touring car, it sucks.

Oh well. I'll update again when we're on the road.