Heading east from Saint John we were ready to leave the city and start to experience some of the Canadian National Parks. We had a great time in Saint John. The city was big enough to keep you entertained without being too big that it was a hassle to get in and out of. Both of us thought that it was a city that we could actually live in.
Keeping with our idea to not take the highway we took a secondary road to check out a fishing village called St. Martins, which was on the way to Fundy National Park. It took about an hour to get to and we really didn’t know what to expect when we got there. We thought it might be like the little touristy fishing villages that dotted the New Hampshire and Maine coast but when we arrived we were mistaken. St. Martins turned out to be an actual fishing village with only a small bed and breakfast for visitors who wanted to stay. Also as this was early in the season and it was low tide the town was deserted. Other than a small fish & chips shop not much was open. We snapped a few pictures in their small harbor. We were fascinated by the boats tied up to the pier albeit 20 feet below the pier resting on stilt like things to keep the boat upright at low tide. We will make sure to show pictures of this. It looks like after the boat gets tied up after a day of fishing while the tide is still high, stilt like things are swung over and under the boat so that when the tide goes out and the boat has no water to support it, the stilts keep it upright on the seabed floor. It was really cool to see. We found a small park near the harbor and had lunch before moving on to Fundy.
After a 2-hour drive or so from St. Martins we made it to Fundy National Park. Now for those that do not know the Bay of Fundy is a very special place as it has the highest tides in the world. The area of the national park has 53-foot tides, which really blew our minds. It was cloudy and foggy as we checked into our campsite mid afternoon. Shortly after setting up camp we wanted to check out the bay and started the drive to the small town of Alma located right outside of the park boundaries. The drive to the campsite was pretty spectacular in its own right. Since the road into the park comes from the north you are up quite a ways from the water and from the campsite to the water takes you down a steep hill, which gives you an amazing view of the water and the town. As it was still foggy we couldn’t see everything but what we could see was pretty great. We stopped at the park info center for a park map before heading down to Alma. (Side Note for those who want to visit Canadian National Parks in 2017. Since this is Canada’s 150th birthday this year all Canadian National Parks are free to go to. All you do is go online and order their National Parks Pass which gets you into all parks, monuments, forests as well as anything else that you would need the pass for.) We continued down the hill to Alma which was a very nice small fishing/lobster town. We walked around picking up some propane and stopped at their local coffee shop/brewery. We had a drink chatting with the owner and a patron before taking a short walk on their beach. It was high tide at the time so the beach didn’t look anything spectacular at the moment but we knew that would change in the morning when we came back. We hopped back into “Bubbles” and drove back to the campsite to make dinner and call it a day.
The next morning we woke up, ate breakfast and headed back to the beach. At this point the tide was out and it looked like the beach stretched out for at least a half-mile or maybe more. It was really incredible. As we walked out onto the beach Julie could not help say “This is so cool” over and over again. We walked around the beach and out toward the water. Just hour’s earlier water would have been above our heads but now here we were just walking there and taking pictures. We walked over toward the harbor taking pictures and video as well as watching guys with some heavy machinery doing work on the harbor bottom while the tide was out. It was very surreal that we were able to walk where we were right now. Over and over again we could not get over that we were walking right on the ocean/bay floor. Coolest thing ever, Julie said, everyone should go here. As cool as the beach at Alma was we wanted to check out a few other areas of the park.
Next up was Point Wolfe, which like many areas in the park was an old small mill town. The mill and all the buildings were long gone but some of the stilts that the pier stood on still remained. After a short 30 min walk from the parking lot the beach appeared and it was even more breathtaking than Alma beach. We were the only ones on this beach, which was located in a deep cove. After walking around for a while we found a small waterfall that created a brook that ran down the beach to the ocean. Looking up at the waterfall it looked like something straight out of Disney World. It was really amazing that this place was created by nature and not by human hands. It was that stunning. It was hard to leave Point Wolfe but we had more pressing issues at hand. We had brought tennis racquets at the beginning of the trip thinking that every now and then in towns that we passed we would be able to stop and play tennis for exercise. The only problem was that none of the towns that we passed had tennis courts. Finally though Fundy National Park had some. We drove over, changed and played 3 fun games of tennis. Julie and I both are not very good so we played what we called “mini games” where we only used half the court closest to the net. While the games were close I ended up victorious and took a victory lap. It was finally sunny out which made it that much sweeter. After tennis we drove back down to Alma for a beer and a small meal at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. We watched lobster men off load their boat as we ate. It really was the perfect ending to the day.
The next day we woke up excited for a new destination. Today we were off just up the coast to Hopewell Rocks. We packed up the van and in a few hours we had arrived. Hopewell Rocks on the Bay of Fundy is famous for their “Flowerpot Rocks”. The rocky cliffs surrounding this area of the bay is made up of mostly sandstone. This type of rock is very soft and breaks away much faster than other rock types. As a result due to this (and a few other more scientific reasons) just columns of rock have been left standing a few hundred feet out from the rest of the cliff wall. At low tide (when we arrived) you can walk on the beach and the bay floor around these columns of stone. As for some reason Hopewell Rocks is not part of the Canadian National Park system so we had to pay a small fee to enter. After paying we walked through the small museum on the area and learned about the Hopewell Rocks as well as the Bay of Fundy in general. We had thought it strange while at Fundy NP there was no signage of why the Bay of Fundy had such large tides but here at Hopewell Rocks it was all laid out. The basic reason of why the bay has such a large difference in tides is pretty simple. The bay is exactly the right size and shape. It starts out wide at the opening and narrow at the end and gets shallower at just the right pace. It also has to do with where its located on the earth and how the moon effects it because of that but generally its just the right size and shape. After finally learning this we left the small museum and headed down to the rocks. We turned corner after corner and finally we saw them….many of them. We came to the edge of the cliff where there was a staircase and looked down. We saw people milling around walking around the columns taking pictures and talking. It was a really cool thing to see. We walked down the stairs and onto the beach taking pictures and video. It was sunny yet there was fog rolling about in different directions which made for awesome pictures. For both of us it was amazing again that nature actually created this, not man. Everything here was just that beautiful.
Next up we travel further into the Maritimes…..Nova Scotia!
