Travels with haRVy

We disembarked the ferry onto Newfoundland soil at 10:15 local time…a half hour later than Atlantic Time.

We didn’t need to be in St. John’s until dinner time, so we took the very long way around the Avalon Peninsula “Shore Road” to visit Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve at the southern tip. A sign stating, “Narrow Road 13 km” greeted us at the turnoff from the “highway.” Towards the end of that drive the fog got so thick that we couldn’t see the interpretive center just a couple hundred feet from the parking lot. We donned our rain gear for the one mile hike along the cliffs to “bird rock” where all our efforts were richly rewarded.

Literally thousands of nesting shorebirds including Northern Gannets, Murres, Kittiwakes, Razorbills, and Guillemots reside on the rock, plus nearby ledges, outcrops, overhangs and plateaus. We were able to proceed to within 50 feet of some of the colonies. It was quite spectacular (and noisy!).

I suspect that this little excursion, which included windy, bumpy, up and down roads across vast expanses of land, will prove to be a good sampling of what’s to come here on “The Rock.” It took us nearly 5 hours to cover a distance of just 152 miles!

Cloudy, misty, and foggy, cool to warm. 152 miles