This morning we drove out to Signal Hill.
We were fighting drizzling rain all morning. The Signal Hill Tattoo was canceled for the day due to the moisture. We hiked several trails in the area and some some spectacular sites from he tops of the hills. St. John’s is quite a unique town. It reminds us of San Fransisco both in topography and buildings.
Hiking “off trail”.
What a gorgeous city.
I found a sport to rest amongst the rocks.
In the center I loved the marbles. It was impressive to me. I love marbles a lot and I wished I could have these for my collection. I decided I could make and bake some when we get home.
We went to the top of Signal Hill and learned about the cannons and the signal tower, Cabot Tower. We got to send a morse code message of our name from the tower and learned about signal flags. At one point this was heavily contended for and the hill changed ownership many times.
The hill was used to let companies know when their ships were coming into port.
We explored the Queens Battery and learned about the barracks and the cannon duties. Part of the XPlorer program was to find odd things in the barracks. We found a modern toothbrush, a flashlight and a padlock!
We also had to identify the oldest cannon.
Today they still fire the NOON cannon. We hung out and watched the cannon. It was really loud and echoed off the hills.
Next we went down the road to the GeoCenter. The GeoCenter is a building built around and into the hillside. This area used to be a quarry. The building offered a look into the history of the Earth’s rocks. The displayed of the rocks were superb.
We also did a program on stars. B dazzled the interpreter with his knowledge of mythology, stars and nebulas.
A giant prehistoric insect.
We learned about how they get oil from below the ocean floor and then compared different types of oils.
Another Titanic exhibit. I think we are Titanic experts after this trip!
The rocks were quite impressive. They had many gems as well.
There were lottos plant and animal fossils from around Newfoundland.
The giant rock wall was our favorite though!
We were allowed to spray water on the wall to make things stand out more. I liked looking for odd colors in cracks.
We also watched a 3D movie called Meerkats! It was super funny and reminded us of Meerkat Manor.
We spent the afternoon hunting Pokemon and exploring downtown St. John’s. The pokestops led us to see amazing street artwork all over downtown. It was cool to see so many stops after being in places where we barely even had cell signal most of the time.
The little park in downtown was PACKED with kids and adults playing. There were 3 pokestops in the park and all had lures.
We walked on by to keep exploring though. We got our past stamps in our Puffin Passports and received our cute little puffins.
As I said, the street are is amazing!
Several years ago the city commissioned artists to beautify the signal boxes with art. We liked this one called the Kraken!
We ate a quick dinner at No Name Pizza…so good it doesn’t need a name. It really was!
Then we headed to Cape Spear for an evening campfire sign-a-long. The fog set in very dense. We could barely see and were soaking wet from the moisture in the air.
I was running down the pathway trying to get ahead of Breighton and I took a fall. I skinned my knee up yet had to keep going to catch a Pokemon. Mom fetched the medical kit and cleaned me up.
The sing-a-long was great and the two staff members were very talented. We sang and laughed. We even taught them Moose/Alpacca! We had hot cocoa and s’mores over the fire.
My wipe out. Its been cleaned several times now and is feeling better. 
I didn’t want tape on my skin and was afraid of getting Night-Night bloody so Mom made a bandage out of gauze and half of one of Breighton’s socks.
