Ah sweet vacation!

I'm finally on vacation! I'm at the end of day 2 in Newfoundland, and so far it's been fantabulous.

The trip on Thursday got off to a rocky start. Our flight out of Pearson was delayed by an hour and a half, and Jeremy's parents live an hour's drive away from St. John's in Bay Roberts, so after a day of working (I got everything done 5 minutes before I was due to leave), driving (I got to see Anne's former service station of employment AND take my new car on its first highway drive), flying (I sat beside a somewhat drunk snorer), and more driving, I got to go to bed at 4:00am Newfoundland time (2:30am EST). It was a tiring long day.

Yesterday was pretty low-key... We took some drives around the Bay Roberts area and I got to see Bay Roberts, Spaniard's Bay and Coley's Point. Fortunately we brought good sunny weather with us, and the scenery was really gorgeous. Driving the roads out here is a little scary (very twisty, just wide enough for two cars, no sidewalks) but since I'm not the one driving I don't mind. :)

Today we got to do the one thing that I wanted: whale watching! We drove out to Bay Bulls and did this tour, which included whale watching and going around the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. We ended up finding a humpback cow and calf in the water, and then another HUGE humpback way off of the shoreline. It was awesome! The thing was 30-40 feet long, and it was jumping around and everything. AND it ended up swimming under our boat a few times so I got a really close-up look. Unfortunately the splashing made some pretty big swells, so as I tried to go from one side of the boat to another, I ended up getting thrown off balance and I ended up hitting a bench with my shin. Oh well. We also saw thousands of little puffins and various other birds, and portuguese jellyfish... it was a pretty good tour.

We spent the evening here in Bay Roberts and Jeremy's parents actually live one block away from where the Klondyke Concert is going on. It's this big music festival-y thing where about 20,000 people all come and converge on the tiny town. It's been a riot - we're so close that the house is actually vibrating from the music, but I've had the treat of listening to (through geographic coincidence) Air Supply and Kim Mitchell, among others (as an aside, Air Supply was on my plane here! ooh!). Currently I'm getting ready for bed, and my window is shaking from BTO rocking it out. Oh old-time-rockers... I can defintely get enough, but I don't think they know where to draw the line. Too bad.