Cape Spear is the most easterly point in North America.

Chicken did not want to miss this one!

Cape Spear welcome plaque photographed at sunrise

Because of that fact, it’s also is the site of the first sunrise in North America!  We woke up at 4:30 AM and drove to Cape Spear to be the first ones to see the sun rise that day (July 18, 2011).  We had a blast!

David and Bear arriving in Cape Spear to watch the sun rise. See the moon in the background?  🙂

A little past 5:18 AM, there it was... what we'd been waiting for.. the first sunrise! 🙂

The weather was  perfect that day, we just enjoyed the show.  The lighthouse was very pretty glowing in the morning’s first lights.  It is restored to its 1839 appearance and shows how  a lighthouse keeper and his family would have lived in mid-nineteenth century.

Oldest surviving lighthouse in Newfoundland and Labrador

During WWII, the Cape Spear battery was constructed by Canada for the defense of Newfoundland, even though at that time,   Newfoundland was still not a part of Canada. (It became a Canadian province in 1949).   Allied forces used the bunkers to protect against U-boat attack, a very real threat in the North Atlantic. A German U-boat did fire two torpedoes into St. John’s Harbour in 1942, but no serious damage resulted. Most of the military site was destroyed after the war, but the tunnels and gun emplacements have been stablized, plaques erected, and walkways constructed to help interpret the history of the site.  The huge gun barrels are all that remains of Cape Spear’s war time armament.  They were knowns as disappearing guns because they could be lowered behind the concrete parapet for loading and maintenance.  In 1896 they were installed in Fort Mott on the Delaware River.  In 1941 the American government transferred them to Cape Spear as part of the wartime arm supply agreement.  After WWII, the carriages were dismantled and taken away from the site.

Remains of the WWII cannons

Did you know that whales don’t wake up before sun rise?  That’s what we deduced that day, because not one of them showed up before the sun was up.  After sunrise though, they were ready for breakfast!

Humpback whale feeding around Cape Spear

I even captured a whale tale for you!!! 🙂

Waves crashing where a flock of birds were resting just a moment before 🙂