Bays with Bulls and No Wits

 Hullo! Today we are moving back in the direction of St. John's. Our trip to Newfoundland is almost over. And we are in another weirdly named place... Witless Bay!

It is the Home of the North Atlantic Puffin! Um... have we not all seen enough puffins??

But you are in luck... because the puffins nest over on that big island in the background. We could get a boat tour to go there but... some tummies would not handle that all that well. There are actually 4 islands out there and they are named... Gull, Great, Green and Pee Pee... uh-huh... sigh. This is the biggest puffin colony in North America!

Whew... but let's see what else is here.

There are puffin chairs!!! Seriously... between the lupines and the puffins... the photography of this expedition has had a field day.

There wasn't much else to see in Witless Bay although we did learn why it has such a weird name. One of the earliest European settlers in the area was Captain Whittles. He then died and his wife and kids moved back to England... so it became known as "Whittles-less" which eventually morphed into Witless...

We drove up the coast a bit more and came to Bay Bulls. I'm not sure if this is related to the Running of the Bulls in Spain or... nope... Apparently, the name could come from the French Baie de Bois, meaning "wooded bay", or it might be a reference to the Dovekie, a common seabird known locally as a "bull bird".

It had an interested garbage can. I gather that Carnation Milk was a staple in Newfoundland kitchens before fresh milk deliveries took off. Which makes sense. Some of these places are seriously remote!

Bay Bulls had an interesting crosswalk...

And a war memorial with one soldier on it from the First World War (Private John Frampton who died 1 July 1916), and two from the Second World War.

We stopped here for lunch... at a restaurant!!!! No more hummus for us!

If you've been following along, you know that our picnics relied heavily on hummus and veggie sticks!

But today is salad...

And pasta!

Yum!!!!

And... a dessert... a chocolate dessert! Yum!!

One thing we finally got a picture of was... invasive Japanese Knotweed. It is EVERYWHERE in Newfoundland and a very nasty weed.

 It crowds out native plants and its roots can go very deep and crack house foundations.

We have tiny patches of it here but in Newfoundland, there were huge swaths of it everywhere. Scary stuff. Right... onwards!! We are almost done our trip...