It’s a good thing there weren’t many other cars on the two-lane road in Central Newfoundland I was driving merrily along when I caught sight of this sign, because I executed a rubberneck that put Linda Blair in The Exorcist to shame to make sure I read it right.

For the life of me I can’t think of a caption that does it justice.

Yes, it says Dildo Run Provincial Park. (And yes, I pulled over to take the photo, Mom.)

Upon studying a Newfoundland map a day or two later, I realized there were a number of other tiny towns with titillating names: Virgin’s Arm, Beaver Cove, Conception Bay, Happy Adventure, and the deliciously dirty Come-By-Chance. There’s also a town called, simply, Dildo, Newfoundland. (Had I passed through, which I unfortunately did not, you can bet I would have loaded up on T-shirts and souvenirs for my equally pervy friends.)

While I highly doubt Newfoundland settlers decided to name their towns during hormone-hazed, post-coital bliss, when you see so many monikers with a naughty-ish connotation you can’t help but wonder about their origin (while, if your mind resides in the gutter along with mine, laughing hysterically). When I looked on Dildo Run Provincial Park’s website for a little history, though, I found none – just more hilariously horny-sounding names: Blow Me Down and Butter Pot, also provincial parks.Here, some other little-known delights I discovered in Newfoundland.

Newfoundland has its own time zone – and it’s a half-hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time. As if traveling across multiple time zones isn’t confusing enough, in Newfoundland (and part of Labrador, which together make up the province of – you guessed it – Newfoundland & Labrador), you have to grapple with a head-scratching half-hour difference, in addition to however many other time zones you cross. It’s at once confounding and awesome, especially when you come home and, in my case, have to explain why you’re nodding off into your appetizers at dinner with friends: “Sorry guys, I am just so tired. My body clock is four AND A HALF time zones ahead.”

Newfoundland also has its own version of the Loch Ness Monster. She’s called Cressie, and according to locals of a small town called Robert’s Arm, she’s a serpent-like creature who lives in the murky depths of the town’s Lake Crescent. Unlike her exponentially more famous cousin in Scotland’s Loch Ness, Cressie keeps a much lower profile — there’s virtually no tourism built around her, save for this one sign.

Sure, this would be a real wise move with a mysterious lake monster.

But that didn’t stop me from looking for answers about Cressie with my new pal Doreen Canning (the same b&b owner who screeched me in, another terrific Newfoundland tradition). In town, we tracked down one of Doreen’s old friends, Rose, who invited us in for lunch. An hour later, I found myself tromping around the woods around Lake Crescent with Rose’s father-in-law, Robert (I don’t think the town is named after his arm, alas), whose firsthand story about spotting Cressie made believers out of both Doreen and me on the spot.

Robert and I blazed a trail through overgrown woods looking for remnants of old mine buildings, which, some say, have shafts that lead to the ocean – and possibly serve as an entryway between the lake and the North Atlantic that Cressie, which by some accounts could be a giant squid or eel, can swim through. We never did find the mines, or Cressie herself, for that matter, but it was a delightful adventure – even more so, because I had no idea that Newfoundland had its own version of the Loch Ness Monster beforehand.

Newfoundland (and the rest of Canada?) sells beer in eight packs. When I reached my hotel after arriving in Newfoundland, it was 1:30 a.m. – but just 9 p.m. my time, so I was still more hopped up than Honey Boo-Boo after a gallon of Go-Go Juice. My only hope for catching a few winks before daybreak? Alcohol. So I popped into the convenience store next door and headed to the beer cooler, where I discovered shelves filled with these:

It’s much better than Molson — and there are EIGHT cans!

That’s right: Eight-packs of beer. It’s a perfect solution for when a six-pack isn’t quite enough, but a dozen is a few too many. (And no, I did not drink my entire eight-pack that night.)

Newfoundlanders (and Canadians in general?) really love their straws. I don’t have a photo of this, or specific anecdotes. I just started to notice it, as is often the case when we travel and our sense of observation is a tad keener. Every time I bought a can of soda, I was offered a straw with it. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. No, straws aren’t great for the environment. But when you start to think about the legions of germs that have come in contact with a can of soda, and then putting your lips directly on that can several times, straws start to look a hell of a lot more appealing. (I’m not sure how beer would taste through them, however.)