All done in Newfoundland!

Having finished riding on Friday, my wife and I had the rest of the weekend to enjoy St. John's and the Avalon Peninsula. On Friday and Saturday night we stayed in a cute little cabin on the other side of Conception Bay from St. John's.

We drove to a nearby fishing village called Brigus for dinner. Sunset over the fishing harbour was beautiful. 

Maybe no one would describe fried fish as beautiful, but my fish and chips was certainly tasty!

For some reason, puffins had really captured my fancy, and so I persuaded my wife to check into puffin tours on Saturday morning. We drove to a place called Witless Bay and ended up doing a lovely little hike on the East Coast trail somewhat spontaneously.

When the forest broke we were on the ocean--you can see what a lovely day it was!

Just north of Witless Bay is Bay Bulls, where there are two competing tour companies, the O'Brien's and Gatherall's.

The tour companies offer whale and puffin tours, but whales have begun heading south by early September, so at this point it is pretty much just a puffins tour. At first we were not sure if even the puffins were still around, but we were assured we would see them, and so after visiting both Gatherall's and O'Brien's (they have a mafia-esque dynamic going on between them, or at least we had fun imagining it was such), we picked O'Brien's 2 pm tour. Honestly on a day as lovely as this, even just being out on the boat along the coast of Newfoundland was a pleasure!

Oh, and they have a bar on board, so you can be on a boat off the coast of Newfoundland on a beautiful day and enjoy a cold [Iceberg] beer!

After pulling away from the shoreline, it is a short distance to Gull Island, which 500,000 puffins call home for the summer. 

They come here to reproduce, finding safety in numbers. Actually, there is not a lot of safety, as the puffin colony is constantly harassed, and even as we sailed by we saw gull attacks, and in one exciting episode a puffin just escaped a great black-backed gull (which apparently eats 5-6 adult puffins a day, dislocating its jaw to fit them in!). 

Although we were able to see hundreds of puffins--in the air, water, and going in and out of their burrows on the cliff--photographing them with a cell phone was pretty much a waste of time. When I cropped and zoomed in on this photo, you can see them, but obviously not in any clear or crisp way!

Anyway, it was an amazing experience to visit the puffin colony and, other than finishing my cycle trip, for me it is the highlight of visiting Newfoundland! 

Whales are heading south now, so while they are no longer making these waters home, apparently you can still see those that summer further north passing through. So, we headed further out to sea to see if we could find any, but without luck. It would have been great to see a whale, but I was plenty happy with the puffins, and you could still see them in the air and occasionally in the water further out from the island as they travel a great distance to find fish for their young.

Eventually we turned back to Bay Bulls.

Back on land, we headed into St. John's for me to pick up a bike box to pack my bike in for the flight home, and then enjoy Water Street again.

With Water Street closed to traffic, it is a lovely place to be as a pedestrian on a gorgeous evening. We did some souvenir shopping and ate dinner before getting back into the car and swinging by some of the famous "jellybean row" houses on our way out of the city and back to the cabin.

On Sunday morning we packed up our cabin and headed north of St. John's to the neighbourhood of Quidi Vidi. There are nice trails here beside the lake.

But the real highlight of Quidi Vidi is the quaint fishing village.

We walked through an arts studio here and around the inlet before heading downtown to Newfoundland's provincial museum, known as the Rooms. 

Here we ate brunch on the top floor, with this view of the harbour. 

Next it was up to Signal Hill, which was packed on this gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Luckily we were able to find a parking spot. 

Signal Hill is another really cool spot in a city that evidently has many cool spots! Looking back down the hill towards St. John's is especially a great view. 

Last night we stayed in St. John's itself in order to be close to the airport this morning, so we checked into the City Hotel after Citadel Hill. We rested there for an hour or so--we had already had a full day and it has become quite hot!

Our flight this morning was at 7 am, so we did not want a late evening, but we also were not quite done enjoying St. John's. We had liked Quidi Vidi so much that we decided to head back down there for some dinner and drinks along the wharf.

I think Quidi Vidi is a real St. John's gem, and I had not even heard of it before coming here!

We ate dinner from food trucks, and then visited the Quidi Vidi microbrewery for a drink overlooking the harbour. Quidi Vidi was beautiful in the morning, but I think even more lovely at sunset, with the birds getting ready for night and the fishing boats trickling in. 

After too little sleep, we were up this morning and to the airport to fly WestJet direct back to Edmonton. For those who did not get enough seafood during their time in Newfoundland, you can grab a box from a freezer at the departure gates of the St. John's airport!

I was ready to go home, but really happy that my wife had been able to join me and that we had had the weekend to spend around St. John's. A relaxing weekend in St. John's and the Avalon Peninsula was a great way to celebrate and decompress after having completed my cross Canada cycling journey!

Exit 29 to Cape Spear, Newfoundland and Labrador

After yesterday's miserable rainstorm, today's weather was beautiful, and perfect for the final ride of my cross Canada adventure!

We began our day by sorting out rental cars--we needed to return the one my wife had picked up yesterday and get a new one from the airport--and then drove back east along Highway 1 to Exit 29, where I had stopped yesterday.

My wife dropped me off there and we agreed to meet up around 14:30 at a Tim Horton's on Water Street. She was planning to rent an e-bike and ride the final few kilometres with me out to Cape Spear, Canada's easternmost point.

It was a bit after 10:00 when I got started, and I had a nice ride for the 70 or so kilometres into St. John's. I actually did not make very good time--there are no especially significant climbs, but overall it is a rolling route and there was enough wind to make it tiring.

Once in the city, I left the highway and rode ten kilometres on streets and trails. 

St. John's clearly has a lovely trail network.

I reached the Tim Horton's about five minutes before my wife, and took the opportunity to eat a sandwich and drink a coffee. From Water Street to Cape Spear is some intense cycling. It is only 14 kilometres, but you climb (and descend) 300 metres! This makes for some embarrassingly slow climbing and some epic descending over really beautiful terrain.

As you near the cape you can see the ocean to your left and the lighthouse on the cliff up ahead, and it was here that it really hit me that I was almost done. Much to my own surprise, I started screaming into the wind as I climbed the last hundred metres or so. 

We parked our bikes at the park office and then headed on foot to the cliff over the ocean. 

My wife brought a small bottle of champagne for me to pop as we sat on the rocks and looked across the Atlantic. It was fifteen years ago that I had sat at the Pacific Ocean on Vancouver Island, and back then I had no appreciation for how good it would feel to be sitting here at the Atlantic now!

My wife offered to ride back to St. John's to get the car so that I could stay at Cape Spear and enjoy it, which meant I had a nice hour at the cape to relax and soak it all in.