We leave St. John's for quieter places

It is time to leave St. John's.  We have enjoyed this nice city so much.  Fascinating history and beautiful scenery.  But we are learning that the views are everywhere.

We retrace our route back on the Trans Canadian Highway for about 60 miles.  We have realized that fuel is not at every exit, so we will not let our tank get below 1/4 again.  At the town of Clarenville, we leave the highway and head along the coast to Bonavista.

I have read a lot about a trail called the Sherwink Trail.  Chosen as one of the most beautiful hikes in North America. How did I not see the "moderate to difficult"  designation?   We see the sign and head off the road.  It is a cloudy, somewhat windy day, so we wear jackets and hats.  Good thing.    

We see some hikers coming off the trail.  How long did it take?  They assure us, only about 1 1/2 hours, though warn us there are many steps.  How did we not  notice that they were much younger.  First part of the trail....flat and easy.  One km signs comes up and we have been walking 10 minutes.  Easy.  Then comes the uphills.  And downhills.  And boardwalks.  We actually climbed a mountain.  Two km sign.... took us 50 minutes this time.

This is a typical stairway down. But there were plenty of them going up, too.  There we also uphill climbs with no stairs.  Three km, 25  more minutes this time.  But the trail hugged the coastline and it was pretty spectacular.

We started to hear a lot of loud birds and when we got to this point, there were a lot of birds atop that big rock.  I swear they were buzzards or vultures, so we knew we had to move faster.









We climbed so high, that the only way to go higher was to climb one of the trees.  Finally made it down.  It was about 2 hours total.  We were very tired, but had done the Sherwink Trail.  I am glad I did it today and not two days later.   I'm not sure I could have done this at age 73.

About a 30 minute drive to our campground for the night.

Nice lake behind our campsite.