Historic & Colorful St. John’s, NL

St. John’s, the capital of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (and yes, both doggos are from there), is Canada’s oldest and easternmost city. Roughly 1/3 of the province’s 500K population live in St. John’s and it felt completely different than the small communities we’d been visiting. It was extra busy while we were there because they were hosting families from all over Canada for the Canada Games, which are for the country’s top high school athletes.

Wildfires weren’t on our Newfoundland bingo card, but we had plenty in St. John’s. We’d planned to boondock on the Avalon Peninsula, but the wildfire I mentioned before continued to grow so we decided to go to our St. John’s campground early. We stayed at Pippy Park, a city park with full hookups, just minutes from downtown. We were in the open field section for Dishy, but the park has private wooded campsites as well. It is the place to be to explore St. John’s and we loved it.

As soon as we got settled, we headed to Quidi Vidi, the cutest little spot in St. John’s with a namesake brewery, to celebrate making it to our final stop in NL.

On Monday morning, another fire started on the south side of the city and got out of control. The Trans-Canada Highway (the main way in and out) was closed in both directions and a few neighborhoods were evacuated or on an evacuation alert. On Monday night, the fire department put out another 4 fires downtown. It was so hot and dry and I felt trapped in a tinderbox and considered fleeing. Michael convinced me that we were in the safest spot and they’d get it under control quickly. He was right and a couple of days later things improved and we began to thoroughly enjoy our 2 weeks in St. John’s.

The best place to start is Signal Hill because it overlooks the harbor and has amazing views of the city. There’s also a nice visitor center there explaining its significance in transatlantic communications and military history.

Even in a city, we find ourselves seeking out nature, and St. John’s has some awesome oceanfront trails. They are part of a longer backpacking route called the East Coast Trail. Our favorite was the North Head path that went through the Battery neighborhood (left) and along a chain section on the cliff beneath Signal Hill (right).

We also hiked the Sugarloaf portion at Quidi Vidi (left) and part of the Cape Spear portion (right).

Cape Spear is another must visit spot in St. John’s. It’s the easternmost point in North America (excluding Greenland) and is a popular place to be among the first to watch the sunrise.

There are 2 lighthouses at Cape Spear and you can tour the inside of the historic one.

St. John’s is known for its colorful Jellybean Row houses which go on for blocks.

We also enjoyed exploring the downtown core. Water Street is pedestrian only during the summer and it was fun to watch one of the Canada Game events.

The Rooms, NL’s art and history museum, and the Basilica of St. John the Baptist dominate the city skyline and we enjoyed going to both.

On our last day we decided to take a road trip on part of the Irish Loop. We stopped and hiked more of the East Coast Trail at La Manche Provincial Park.

And at the Ferryland Lighthouse.

And then it was time to sadly say goodbye to Newfoundland. But first, a hurricane! Our 16 hour overnight ferry from Argentia, NL to Nova Scotia was delayed 7 hours while waiting for Hurricane Erin to pass. This delay essentially erased one of the two days we had planned to drive through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to get back to the USA. But the ferry burned extra fuel and made record time, which was nice because the Cody kitty does not like ferries. And after a night in Nova Scotia, we pulled out at 5:30am for a 500 mile drive and made it all the way back to Maine in a day.