Visiting Cape Spear and St John’s, Newfoundland

by The Beave · Published November 11, 2019 · Updated November 18, 2019

Visiting Cape Spear and St John’s, Newfoundland.

27 August (cont’d)
Somewhere South-Eastern Newfoundland.
…We drove through Dildo, Newfoundland, to get a photo of the sign. There was no way I could resist visiting the town. Then we passed through St John’s and up to Cape Spear, which is the most eastern point of all of North America. A giant parking sits on the cliff of Cape Spear and there were no signs anywhere that said we could not camp, so we had a beer and bedded down for the night to be able to crack the morning being the first two people in all of North America to see the sunrise!

No way I was pssing up a drive through this town. Dildo even has a place called Dildo Cove! A person can not even make things up that are so perfect.

Newfoundland has some pretty amazing town names. Here are a couple of more dandies:

28 August
My alarm went off at 05:30. I have not forgotten how much I dislike such times, but an alarm clock is a real refersher for the full disdain. Nevertheless, Not Larry and I got moving and we were out of Beatrice and on the edge of the coast to wait for the 06:13 sunrise. It was a cool moment to be the first people to see the sun rise on North America. And since Not Larry and I were alone at the point, we actually were the first humans to see the sun rise over all on the entire continent of North America on the day. The first! Somehow, that made it feel mystical, like we were modern trailblazers and our two sets of eyes being the first four to see the sun for the day, before 579,024,130 and an estimated 1 billion, 185 million, 048 thousand, 256 other eyeballs would acknowledge the day has begun.* Not Larry and I were the very first four eyes in over a billion to see the sun today!

* Numerical estimates on eyeballs may vary based on the amount of pirates waking up on North America on the day.

The the sunrise over North America on the 28th of August, 2019!

From Cape Spear, Not Larry and I drove down to St John’s and went to Signal Hill where we called a mechanic. Signal Hill has such an namesake as it is the site where the first wireless Trans-Atlantic transmission arrived in 1901, a Morse Code message that came from Cornwall, United Kingdom. Ironically, today on signal hill it is hard to get cell phone coverage, but with only a couple of signal bars, we called a man named Craig at City Tire & Auto in Mount Pearl. Craig agreed to let Beatrice come in the shop to get some attention as she is missing on a cylinder right now. He told us to come in at 13:00. In the meantime, we took Beatrice to Lester’s Lube to get her flushed with new oil.

Beatrice has been a little grumpy on the drive to St. John’s so we need to do our part and give our girl some attention.

As we pulled up Lester’s Lube, it seemed like the whole shop came out to look at Beatrice. The lady directing us in was in awe, staring at the skull with the deamon lights turned on. I played the horn as we were driving to the shop door and people screamed with excitement. The girl directing us in said, “I love this thing. These are my new best friends!” It was a lot of fun just to be in that shop with those people. Beatrice likes the spa. Not Larry told me that all ladies like time at the spa…

Next, we took Beatrice to City Tire & Auto where we left her for the day with our new friends Craig and Barry. Barry started working on Beatrice to get her purring like a kitten she is, and Craig arranged a shuttle car to take us to downtown St. John’s. A young man named Jarred drove us into town. Not Larry nicknamed me ‘Sugar Loaf’ on the drive in and even Jarred the driver started calling me the name. The whole morning was just great.

St Johns is so colorful. And I really like the skinny houses.

We went to The Rooms which is an art gallery/historical museum in the center of St John’s where we spent a couple of hours, learning. It was a great place to afternoon for the day. In the meantime, Craig called back from City Tire & Auto to tell us that he put new spark-plugs and a new coil in Beatrice, but he could not get the plug wires in until tomorrow morning. It turned out that one of our plug wires was broken off and that is why Beatrice has been miserable. It is no wonder that she has been cranky; Not Larry said that no lady likes to be out on the town when she is missing a part of her wardrobe.

Ha! What a great name for a store!

Since we had no ride and Craig had our Beatrice-transportation-house, we had to figure out what to do with ourselves. Craig said we could just stay in Beatrice at the yard of his shop and sent the Jared in the shop-shuttle the 20 minute drive to pick us up. Not Larry and I cleaned up in Beatrice in the shop yard, Craig went home for supper, and then he came back to his work to pick us up in his truck and drove us 20 minutes back to St John’s so that we could get to our dinner theatre reservation. Amazing. Craig truly took care of us. He was driving us around the city on his own time. Talk about a business going way above and beyond.

Not Larry and I went to The Carpenter’s musical at the Spirit of Newfoundland that included dinner. It was $100 in total which Not Larry treated me to! Fantastic! Dinner usually costs us $100, but we also got a show as well at the beautiful 111 year old Masonic Theatre. The drama was great and the music was fantastic. The lady in charge of the theatre event even took photos of Not Larry and I because we were dressed do well: Not Larry’s hair prettied, while she wore a beautiful yellow dress and her cowperson boots. I wore my dad’s black pointy-toe cowboy boots that he says he has had longer than me, plus I had on my sealskin bowtie and I was wearing The Cow jacket. Not Larry and I looked like a fun couple.

A good-looking couple!

After the dinner theatre, Not Larry and I headed to the famous George Street of St John’s to hit the run of bars….

I was Screeched in at Trapper John’s and I am now an honorary Newfoundlander. To be Screeched in, I had to eat a piece of bologna, speak some Newfoundese, kiss a cod fish, and drink a shot of Screech rum. It was a fun ceremony.

We had a lot of fun in the bars and I even found a Beaver sticker on a hand-dryer in a bathroom in one of the bars from when we passed through at Christmas time. Not Larry and I were befriended by a bachelor party and then we ended up in a bar that was really partying. There was a guitar player/singer on the stage and he sang scream-along for what must have been hours. It was a fantastic time. Not Larry and I were in the very front of the stage, dancing and pushing out lyrics as hard as we could at each other. People around me kept on feeling The Cow as they were curious what it was. Everything about the night was pure fun. When I went into the bathroom a guy stopped me and said, “Your coat, your cowboy boots that you even wear properly, your buckle, your tie… Can I take a photo of you?” Then two different cameras started taking snapshots of me. The paparazzi of St. John’s had found me!

A pizza and a $30 cab ride got us from St John’s back to Beatrice parked at City Tire & Auto in Mount Pearl. We crawled into our Beatrice-bed at about 04:00 and set an alarm for the morning.

29 August
An 08:00 can really startle a party slumber. Not Larry and I had showers in Beatrice before our house on wheels went back into the City Tire & Auto to finish off her doctor’s appointment. Not Larry and I were treated like family at the shop, and everyone was so pleasant to be around. We hung out in their lunch room as they worked on our lady. $678 later, Beatrice was purring like it was 1983. Not Larry paid for our lady’s mechanical-love. The guys in the shop told us to come and see them again at City Tire & Auto if we are ever back in St John’s. It felt like we really made friends there. I backed Beatrice out of the garage, played the horn twice, and we headed out for a drive around Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, as Not Larry used to live in Mount Pearl for brief time before she was a teenager. We drove by her school and I got photos of her in front of her old house.

St Johns, Newfoundland, Canada, has some serious color! The rest of the country needs to loosen up and let the colors fly!

Before heading out of Mount Pearl and St John’s, Not Larry and I got some supplies, including a cooler for the cod that would be in Beatrice for the ferry ride to mainland Canada. The ferry ride to mainland Canada does not allow RV’s to run their propane fridge/freezer on the crossing, so we have to ice down all of the fish in our freezer. We grabbed four more boxes of Newfoundland beer to add to our collection and headed for Argentia, Newfoundland. Ferry time.

There was a line-up to get on the boat when we arrived. Beatrice made us very popular with the people in queue. I was busy talking nonsense over the PA system to everyone who would look at us and we were playing Beatrice’s ‘Cavalry Charge’ horn as we drove in.

Beatrice created a lot of smiles!

When we got onto the ferry, it was so full that there were barely places to sit down. We ended up in the bar where a couple of guitar player/singers made music until very late. During a break, the musicians even came and introduced themselves to our table. One of the singers was very witty and told us, “Thanks for staying with us, though you don’t have much of a choice. You give a real meaning to a captive crowd.” I really enjoyed that.

The ferry band! There is a lot of music in the east. We are losing that in the west, but it is still strong on the east coast! A band entertains ferry patrons from Newfoundland!

Not Larry and I made friends with a couple of artists who live life as we do, but they are 25 years our senior. Robert Séguin, Linda Fausse, Not Larry and I chatted as if we have been friends for years. The energy was so good and we were having so much fun that a stranger approached our table to ask us how long we have known each other and if we would like photo together. It was really a nice evening and I feel like I learned a lot just speaking with our new friends. Robert and Linda have a small business and they have a van. They close their business to enjoy life on the road for a while and return to the business when they have to. They have created a partnership as she take the role of being his agent. They are so great. Not Larry and I ended up getting pretty drunk on the ferry while listening to the band, chatting with our friends, and crossing the Atlantic on a 16 hour ferry. Neither of Not Larry not I want to head back to mainland Canada quite yet, but time is moving us along and pushing us forward…

[su_note]Some great Robert Séguin quotes:
“When an old man dies, it is like a library that catches on fire.”
“I went to bed last night when I was 20 and when I woke up I was 60.”[/su_note]