Total Km = 265
Slept in this morning.
We were both pretty tired after our all night ferry experience. Woke to overcast foggy skies and “mist”. Started out over the moors of Scotland – whoops, wrong country - but it sure did look like that! On a minor road again, pretty bad potholed pavement. Needed to eventually stop and put rain gear as the mist turned to rain. Commented on the lack of traffic and how we could have been there stranded for days with no one coming along. Along the way we kept seeing the telephone poles fenced in and supported with lots of big rocks. Our guess is the ground is either too boggy or too rocky to get a good hole.
Saw lots of vehicles on the side of the road. We guessed most of them were stopped fishing in the small streams or maybe off picking berries. Stopped at an out of commission cement bridge built in 1928 and watched some fellows fishing for Atlantic salmon. It is restricted to fly fishing so Doug was ready to give them some pointers.
Rode into St Johns downtown area and had a view of the harbor. Several ships in.
Went to Bay Bulls and took a whale and puffin viewing boat tour. It was great. They took us out to Gull Island. There are supposed to be over 300,000 puffins breeding there. We also saw auks, gulls, murrs, etc. The sides of the island were solid with puffin nests. There was an area where an area of the island had sloughed as the puffins had built so many nests it destabilzed. No trees grow in this area due to the 6 foot burrows they have built. There is also a research camp set up on the island to study them. We learned that they are not very good flyers. They need to dive from the hill and catch the air flow to get airborn, they dive up to 50 feet to fish and have “teeth” on their beaks to hold up to 10 capelin fish at a time. When it is time to take flight from the water they need to ride the waves and flap their wings until the air current gets them going again.
After viewing two different islands of bird habitat we went whale seeking and were lucky enough to view a humpback surfacing/blowing and got a very good view of his tail. A great ending to our tour.
We are now at Armstrong’s B&B in Witless Bay for the night
Slept in this morning.
We were both pretty tired after our all night ferry experience. Woke to overcast foggy skies and “mist”. Started out over the moors of Scotland – whoops, wrong country - but it sure did look like that! On a minor road again, pretty bad potholed pavement. Needed to eventually stop and put rain gear as the mist turned to rain. Commented on the lack of traffic and how we could have been there stranded for days with no one coming along. Along the way we kept seeing the telephone poles fenced in and supported with lots of big rocks. Our guess is the ground is either too boggy or too rocky to get a good hole.
Saw lots of vehicles on the side of the road. We guessed most of them were stopped fishing in the small streams or maybe off picking berries. Stopped at an out of commission cement bridge built in 1928 and watched some fellows fishing for Atlantic salmon. It is restricted to fly fishing so Doug was ready to give them some pointers.
Rode into St Johns downtown area and had a view of the harbor. Several ships in.
Went to Bay Bulls and took a whale and puffin viewing boat tour. It was great. They took us out to Gull Island. There are supposed to be over 300,000 puffins breeding there. We also saw auks, gulls, murrs, etc. The sides of the island were solid with puffin nests. There was an area where an area of the island had sloughed as the puffins had built so many nests it destabilzed. No trees grow in this area due to the 6 foot burrows they have built. There is also a research camp set up on the island to study them. We learned that they are not very good flyers. They need to dive from the hill and catch the air flow to get airborn, they dive up to 50 feet to fish and have “teeth” on their beaks to hold up to 10 capelin fish at a time. When it is time to take flight from the water they need to ride the waves and flap their wings until the air current gets them going again.
After viewing two different islands of bird habitat we went whale seeking and were lucky enough to view a humpback surfacing/blowing and got a very good view of his tail. A great ending to our tour.
We are now at Armstrong’s B&B in Witless Bay for the night
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