From St. John's to Twillingate

It was chilly when we we left St John's this morning!  (that's about 37 Fahrenheit).  and cloudy too.  But by the time we got to Terra Nova National park, the temperature had reached a balmy 50 degrees, and the sun kept trying to peak out.

  It was great weather for our planned hike - an easy 10k along the rugged seashore.  There where only a handful of hikers, so it was very peaceful, with plenty of opportunities to admire the trails, the beaches, the rocks, the gulls.

The end of the trail provide a perfect spot for a picnic, with only the seagulls for company.  It was blissful!








 

 

  Joe got artsy....

Spring is really just starting here:  There were a few beautiful flowers, but most are just starting to bloom.  (the ones on the left are Canada Mayflower - as the name indicates, they tend to bloom in May.  But we are very north.....)

 these are my favorite!

 On the way, a little red squirrel chirped at me very loudly, because I was apparently disturbing his lunch!

There was fresh evidence of moose nearby, but the moose itself remained elusive.......

We then continued Northwest, past the town of Gander:  We did not stop, because there is nothing to see there, but we felt warmly about it, because we recently saw "Come From Away" on Broadway, which tells the story of how the town got together on September 11th 2001, to house, feed and take care of 7000 people, whose flights got stranded there when the air space over the US was shut down for almost a week.  (it's a GREAT musical, go see it!).  Anyway, the only thing Gander is famous for is a very long runway because, until the 60's, planes could not fly direct from Europe and had to refuel there.  It still does happen that in cases of emergencies, flights get rerouted to Gander....

But we continued on to Twillingate.  I think Twillingate is the prettiest spot we have seen so far (and that's a high bar!).  It's on an island (but there is a bridge - no ferry), so surrounded by beautiful water.

 The lighthouse sits high on a cliff, from which you can see icebergs float by.
(the white dots on the picture below - Joe did not have the super-duper lens.... will  have to try again tomorrow).  We may go back tomorrow morning and do some hiking around there because it is so pretty.

We had dinner by the harbor, and finally tried fried cod tongues - yep - cod tongues!  I actually asked the waitress "what are cod tongues?" and she answered "they are the tongues of cod"....  (actually that's not 100% correct, cod has no tongue, but it's a soft part of the back of the throat - which sounds gross, but is actually quite good).

The view was really lovely.
We have only 1 night here, so are hoping to see more of it tomorrow.  I really would love to hike a bit around the lighthouse.  The weather forecast looks bad- but we have been very lucky so far with the weather, so we'll see......