St Pierre & Miquelon ~ Surreal…Part II

Thursday, July 25
Part I …Leaves us at the Hotel Robert with a room. Needless to say, after the roller coaster ride on the ferry, the only thing on my mind was the “bed”… no, not for sex either! 

Typical Street in St Pierre

Amazingly after a short 30 min nap, I was completely back to normal! Our mission here at St Pierre was three-fold. First, on the list, was to find a geocache. There was only one cache in St Pierre an another on I’le-aux-Marin's. With the two caches loaded in the GPS, we headed for the coordinates about 1-1/2 miles out of town. We would accomplish two things here. Visit the town in that direction and get the cache.
It was still foggy, but one could see a quarter of a mile and get a feel of the layout of the town. Our “carte” (map) also helped in locating areas of interest. Now on the way to the cache coordinates, we came upon the Island cemetery.

Very Ancient Cemetery...But No Relatives!

An alternate mission here was to see if we could find the family name of St Amant on any of the head stones. Our friend back in Berlin, NH ancestors origins were from this area. We did not find any St Amants here, but with hundreds of stones to look at, we certainly could have missed it. Soon we were out of town in the countryside. As we approached the coordinates, we knew that we were getting close by the cache hints and description. We were in a mossy wooded area just off the roadside. We searched and could actually see foot prints in the lovely green moss of previous geocachers looking for this cache. A half hour of looking did not reveal its hiding place. The last time it was found was in August of last year, most likely by a tourist during the tourist season. The cache was placed in 2004 and could have easily been degraded. We will list this as a DNF (Did Not Find)
The walk back into town was pleasant as we took our time and walked different streets to get a feel on the landscape. The fog wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t a perfect day for pictures either. The temperature was balmy. We had long sleeves and had brought a wind breaker. We stopped at the hotel to strip down a layer of clothes and continue to survey the little French town. You knew you were in a Territory of France …narrow streets, little Citrons and Peugeot autos.
Later in the evening, we linked up with Catherine and Leon for a splendid dinner at “Saveurs des I’les” restaurant. Leon and I spent hours talking about the Canadian and US Army. The Field Artillery comparisons were amazing! Apparently Helen and Catherine found something to talk about also as they didn’t  bother listening to the “Colonel” and “Chief of Smoke” going over the military missions. It was a great evening! We left the restaurant and walked the streets which were now filled with people. The night life is a part of the day that brings the locals to the restaurants and bars. Can you just picture the lightly lit foggy streets with music and laughter coming through the open bar doors? Is this Paris? And with this I bid you a farewell for tonight.
That is what we did and saw!