A goal of mine is to ride every skatepark in Newfoundland, and to do that, I need to stop riding the two mainland good skateparks whenever I drive the 7 hours over to St. John's.

With 48 skateparks on the island, you might be surprised to learn that I've only rode 27. This is because so many of the island's skateparks are located in or around St. John's, and the two skateparks of Mundy Pond and Mt. Pearl are so good that they wouldn't be out of place in Nova Scotia or Ontario.

Faced with always riding parks like Corner Brook and Benoit's Cove, it's hard to pass up actual legitimate skateparks whenever I find myself in St. John's any time between April and November, but it has to be done.

St. John's impressively has 8 separate skateparks for its 108,000 residents.

One of those skateparks is Quidi Vidi, where I imagine the conditions are rarely this pleasant, seeing as it's right on the shores of the lake. This is your average filler park that you'll find in cities nowadays, thrown together for 50-grand to provide something for younger riders who don't live anywhere close to Mundy Pond.

Quidi Vidi was fine. It's hard to air the quarterpipes because they're so small, but the individual ledges and rails were fun.

Score: 4/10

Next up was maybe going to be Torbay, except there was a news article about the skatepark being replaced in this McMansion-rich suburb of St. John's. Without any further updates I still had to drive up here, only to find the wooden ribs of a future cement park.

Replacing a subpar park with a new cement one? That is definitely some Avalon Peninsula shit. You aren't getting that past the isthmus!

I was slightly bogged down today as Isy had an obligation and left me with the dog.

Apparently he needed to be walked instead of simply lounging at skateparks?

So after Torbay we pulled into Flatrock, as I thought it would be nice to walk some segment of the East Coast Trail.

Parking down by the shore, I headed north and apparently this was a portion of the East Coast Trail that went right through a town?

This was my kind of trail segment!

Finally finding my way to the start of an actual trail, I set off on the Stiles Cove Path.

I half-heartedly want to hike every bit of the East Coast Trail at some point, but right now I only have a little nub of trail near Torbay and the trail that leads out to the lighthouse in Bay Bulls. Which means there's only ~535 kilometers to go!

It didn't take very long to reach a waterfall along the Big River known as "The Swirly". There were signs about how dangerous it is to swim here, but it's only now that I'm putting together that this is the dangerous Flatrock swimming hole where people regularly die.

The CBC reports that this place involves, "a place where water enters a circular pool from the raging falls above. It can create a strong, cyclonic undertow, which pulls people under the surface and toward a crevice along the edge of the water."

No thanks!

Next up was Murdering Gulch, except I had no idea because I missed the sign and now I'm sad because one of the things I like about Newfoundland is the fantastic names you find on their maps.

After another kilometer or so, I'd come to a strange plateau with gravel roads and beat down areas like I'd expect to find outside the heavily-populated Avalon. It looked like a great place to drive into and stealth camp, but I also wondered how busy it is with the local teenagers and ATV enthusiasts.

I reached the first stop on the Stiles Cove trailhead sign by making it to Red Head Cove, but figured that 3.1k and back was good when I had the dog in tow and still needed to hit other skateparks. Stiles Cove at 5.6k (and especially Shoe Cove at 12.3k) would have to wait for another time.

This was probably a good decision too, as the dog is a big ham and decided he had enough hiking when we were about 500m from the car. If dogs know 250 words, can't they grasp that you have to make every last moment on the Avalon count???

A cat would understand this.

15 minutes from Flatrock, I came to Portugal Cove South's Voisey's Brook - a sizable, though modular skatepark.

Where I'm usually not a fan of these Canadian Ramp Company steel ramps, they can be good when it's a place like Stephenville and they have enough money to get something more than the same basic setup that the Canadian Ramp Company sells every 1200-person town. Portugal Cove South was like Stephenville.

Parking the car close enough that the dog could see me, I enjoyed the unique objects like the spine, extended flat rail, and 7-stair handrail. The only problem was that the down rail was so low that it was somewhat sketchy to hop on, so I instead grinded up it for my Portugal Cove South clip.

I'll give Portugal Cove South a 5/10. It gets dinged for the lack of flow and lines in the street section.

Another 15 minutes of driving on Indian Meal Line, Broad Cove Road, and eventually Rainbow Gully Road, would bring me to the Rainbow Gully Skatepark in St. Philip's.

This collection of ramps was a really funny mishmash that I should have known was built in more than one part. A 2006 video shows some of these ramps including the bendy flat rail and that fun box with a slant, while a 2014 facebook post advertises the grand opening of the Rainbow Gully Park, which I must assume is when they added the 5-foot box jump and 7-foot quarter.

As someone who's always campaigning for skateparks to have larger surface areas and exclaiming how much I love Windsor's Atkinson Park because of this, you'd imagine I'd love St. Philip's. Except the objects are a little funky, basic, and boring. That fun box with the slant was enjoyable, but I don't think it would take long to grow bored of St. Philip's.

Score: 4.5/10. The crazy amount of space still bumps it up.

Racing away from the Rainbow Gully Skatepark as I was running late, I was overheated and really wanted to jump into Mitchells Pond as I passed by, but I needed to get back and pick up Isy.

Eventually meeting up with Rosie, we'd go downtown to some tiny bar for a social obligation she had, then I'd gasp for air as Rosie simply strutted up the hills of St. John's from Water Street up to the Georgetown Pub for karaoke night.

From there, we met this man outside, and now with Hollis, we all went to this giant and gorgeous old house on Bonaventure Ave to hit up a hot tub and drink more beers in the cool St. John's night. God it fucking ruled.

Living in Corner Brook, you often dream, weigh, and seriously contemplate whether you would trade it for St. John's, and while I always say no because I'd want to get off the island if I moved, it really should be harder to pass up multiple decent skateparks within minutes and nights at old homes with hot tubs across from weathered factories.

I was back at it the next day continuing the skatepark tour in Bowring Park, about 10 minutes southwest of downtown St. John's.

Bowring Park has to at least get a 6. One of the things I hate most about Newfoundland parks is that they're more like skate "spots" than skate "parks". I often find myself depressed, angry or despondent, but riding my bike is the cure 95% of the time...except in Newfoundland, where the parks are so small that it's like riding a street spot with people where you have to chat and mingle and everything else. I understand the camaraderie aspect of skateparks, but I need a place I can show up, put on my headphones and ride away the low feelings.

At least with Bowring Park, it's close to big enough and divided enough that you would be able to show up and ride without having to socialize too much if you were having a shitty day.

Plus I got my favourite clip of the skatepark tour here. Lol! I really should have saved that opposite pegs to 180 around the curved rail for my next section.

Bowring Park is indeed a 6/10 and the 4th or 5th best park on the Island of Newfoundland.

Ten minutes away from Bowring Park stands Southlands, where I suppose St. John's could also solve my problems by simply providing so many skateparks that there's empty ones in the middle of the day.

And even though I liked the rideable concrete blocks surrounding Bowring Park, at least here at Southlands I could bring the dog inside the fence with me.

Another thing I was enjoying about this skatepark tour was that it was bringing me to new places like Bowring Park & places I hadn't even heard of like Southlands. Sure, Southlands was scary with its curving drives and crescents clogged with new builds, but it's always fun to explore new lands and be able to say you've been somewhere.

Anyway, this McDonald's-ass park is a 3.5. Even though it was clearly built by a local metal fabrication shop, it's in the same league as the newer park in Quidi Vidi.

The skatepark tour wrapped up with the most comically bad skatepark of the bunch - Kilbride!

Hoo boy. Kilbride was fun in the way that unique street spots are fun. It was so funky and odd that I enjoyed my time here, simply figuring out lines and how to grind things.

Now throughout this weekend, Rosie kept knowing the skateparks I was visiting because they were all near the soccer fields and ball diamonds where she plays soccer and Extreme Frisbee. That wasn't the case here in Kilbride though! Haha, now I was getting into the obscure parks.

Anyway, I have to give Kilbride a 1.5/10.

Even after riding 3 skateparks today, I still didn't have my fill and went for a ride around downtown as the sun was setting on this fine weekend in the capital.

I also went up to the abandoned Booth Memorial High School, which I knew wasn't long for this world with the hot real estate market in St. John's.

Located right along a route that I always drive in St. John's, I've always wondered why this amazing rail isn't in the video parts of any of the 5 or 6 super talented riders from the Avalon. Assuming it must be a bust or there's bad runway or something, Booth Memorial's rail still tempted me as I must've drove past about 50 times over the last decade.

It was now or never as I knew this rail was likely to be demolished by the next time I'd be in St. John's. And while I didn't grind through the whole flat of the kink rail, I was happy to finally put some pegs on it.

Booth Memorial would be destroyed on October 6th, 2019.

The next morning it was time to say goodbye to our Airport Heights AirBNB that Isy grabbed us, which was suburban and hilarious and I loved, especially as Rosie drove up from downtown to sit and eat Afghan takeout in our finished basement the one night.

Not surprisingly, we didn't stop at any skateparks on the way home.

These six skateparks would give me 33 out of 48, and I didn't even get to Shea Heights or The Goulds. Plus they've now built what looks like a great new park in Kenmount Terrace.

More to come with regards to Newfoundland skateparks eventually, but not for a while.