When life gives you lemons, go ride Lemonade!

New Brunswick & The Bay of Fundy

We entered New Brunswick by crossing the island and taking another ferry to get to the mainland.  The tide was even lower but the ramps on both ends were concrete.  This made the boarding much safer and easier.

After the landing we headed up the coast on Highway 1 towards St. John.  That is St. John, singular.  I was not so politely informed that St. Johns, plural, as I had been saying it, is in Newfoundland.

The route up the coast is like Maine, scenic with views of the water and the hills.  But we are in St. John for the "Reversing Falls".  Actually it is a rapids but it does flow both ways.  There is a large bay that is accessed by the tide through a narrow gap creating a flood of water at each tide change.

Incoming tide flowing right to left.                                                      Outgoing tide flowing left to right.

In the Bay of Fundy because of its narrowing shape as it goes north the tides can change as much as 40 feet (12 meters) twice in one day.

 

 

While in St. John we went to the old town market.  It reminded us of several other markets we have been in, particularly the one in Helsinki, Finland.

It was clean and airy with food and craft stalls along the sides and in two rows down the center.

One of the things we had been promising ourselves ever since we had entered Maine was to have a traditional lobster dinner.  We finally decided to do it here.

 

 

 

 

We had the two for $60 CAN dinner with chowder, rolls, corn and a whole, fresh one pound (half kilo) lobster each.  We could have upsized it at $4/quarter pound but declined.  We didn't know if we liked lobster yet.  We found out that we much prefer crab and shrimp.  It was alright but nothing special, nothing worth paying that much for it.  It tasted somewhat like crab but was much chewier.  And trying to get the meat out of the body was much harder than with a crab.  The claws and tail were easy to open and eat but not the legs and body.

 

 

 

We continued on north along the coast past small fishing villages and signs warning of moose.  In the entire trip we saw hundreds of those signs scattered through the New England states of the US and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, but we never saw a moose.  Probably a good thing as they are huge with long legs.  But we are still too tall to fit through underneath one.

 

Near the top end of the Bay of Fundy is a geologic formation called Hopewell Rocks. It is a Provincial Park with visitor's center and all.   They are also called "flowerpot rocks" because of the trees and other vegetation that grows on top.  This is from the top of the stairs shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hiked out a wide flat trail to this staircase, descended it and were on the seabed.

We could wander up and down the coast between the rocks and over the mud.  The twice-daily tide's wave action has carved the shore into freestanding pillars.  Against the main shore it is forming caves that will someday be worked into more pillars.  Most all the caves were blocked off with a cable and signs warning of the dangers inside from collapsing walls and ceiling.  Other than that we could walk wherever we pleased.  There were also employees in uniform down there to help, answer questions and to herd everyone back up the stairs before getting trapped by the incoming tide.

 

This picture really shows the "flowerpot" look of the rocks.  Notice the person standing a little to the left of the far rock, near the center of the picture.  That gives an idea of the scale of the rocks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathy is several feet (1-2 meters) above the water and is in front of the seaweed growing on the rock up to the high tide level.  The visitor's center said that the tides here are at the 40 foot (12 meter) level.  There is a tide clock at the visitor center that indicates whether the seabed is accessible or not to visitors.  Visitors get about 2-3 hours of seabed with each low tide.

We had looked up the site on the internet and planned our visit to coincide with the low tide.  We did not stick around for the next six hours to get the high tide picture that would match the first one above from the top of the stairs.

We are now at the top of the Bay of Fundy and tomorrow we turn east and head to Nova Scotia.