Our first real day in New Brunswick was spent exploring the Bay of Fundy, at Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park before driving up to Fredericton to spend some time with Tabitha and Colton. It was another full day spent exploring, and a long day of driving. But I finally got my lobster!
The night in the geodesic dome was lovely - the best bed we’d had all trip. The bugs stayed outside, and we slept in “late” for this trip, until about 9 am. We had a leisurely start to the morning, getting ourselves organized to head back out on the road. I decided to try out the hot tub, as it seemed a shame to not use any of the facilities. But the bugs were so bad! I ended up sitting in the hot tub wearing my bug net! But it was lovely sitting out there in the trees, enjoying the morning sun. But not the incessant buzzing.
The only way to survive outside…
Although I did try without it!
But eventually it was time to head out and explore. We made a stop in Hillsborough, at the local bakery. Justine needed coffee, and we bought a couple of cinnamon buns to go. We made our way back to Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park, as we wanted to see the world famous tidal exchange. And it lived up to the hype!
High tide had been at 8:30 am, and low tide was around 3:00 pm. We arrived around 10:30 am, so about mid way through the tide exchange. Already, we could see a huge difference from what we had seen the night before. It is an amazing volume of water. We sat on the overlook and ate our cinnamon buns, before doing the walk down to the beach.
Within the park there are a short set of trails, which we walked to get the full sense of the place. There were a series of overlooks that gave different views out over the Bay of Fundy. Even within the hour or so that we had been there, you could see a huge change as the water rushed out of the bay. We walked along the trails, working our way down to the beach.
For the last part of the walk down to the beach, they’ve built this set of metal stairs, down from the top of the cliff to the beach. It all sits on a huge block on concrete sitting on the sand between two huge seamounts. I would have loved to have seen how they built it, racing the tides each day. It must have been something to see.
Even though the tide was only half way out, we were easily able to walk on the beach around the seamounts and explore the amazing rock formations. There were quite a few people out exploring as well, so it will take some work to remove them from my photos. Gotta love the new AI-based tools! We walked a fair ways out along the beach in both directions. The seamounts are amazing - so many different shapes and formations to explore. And it’s amazing to think how in a few hundred years, they will all be gone, and the ocean will have carved new ones out of the surrounding cliffs. I took so many photos of this amazing place, even though it was mid day and the light was awful. I’ll put a handful of the most interesting ones here, then put the rest in a gallery at the bottom of the page if you want to see the full assortment.
There were two park rangers out on the beach (making sure people didn’t walk out on the mud flats) that we chatted with briefly. They explained the lifecycle of the current seamounts, and told us that geologists think that there’s about 100,000 years worth of erosion before all the seamounts and the surrounding cliff faces erode away. Nothing for us to worry about. A long time for us, but a blink of an eye in geological time scales.
While exploring the beach, we noticed a ravens nest up on the cliff face. There were 3 young birds in the nest, making a ton of noise with their squawking! Mom and dad never came to feed them while we watched, but the babies sure made the rest of us know that they were hungry.
We walked the beach for a while before heading back up the stairs. Once up on the trails, the birds started to grab our attention. it was a long, slow walk back to the visitor centre as we tried to find all the birds that we were hearing. We actually found a few this time, including a few new life list additions.
The woodpeckers had pretty much destroyed this dead tree.
But eventually we needed to continue on our explorations. We made a quick stop in the gift shop to poke around, and then we hit the road. About 15 minutes up the road we stopped to check out one of New Brunswick’s famous covered bridges. This one was no longer in use, but looked to be in quite good shape. They had closed the road on either side of it, but it was still fun to explore.
From there, we took a turn off the main road and took a backroad that one of the locals in the coffee shop in Hillsborough had recommended. It took us off the beaten path, down near a tidal river and an old lighthouse. Sadly, the lighthouse was in quite poor shape, and was a lot smaller than I had expected. What was amazing was the way they had shored up the banks to try and prevent the erosion of the shoreline. Sadly, it didn’t seem to be working.
We continued along the Bay of Fundy, stopping to admire the views and taking some side roads to explore. We drove down to explore Cape Enrage, stopping at the nature preserve to admire the shoreline, then continuing on to the lighthouse. We didn’t realize that there was a fee to go out to the lighthouse, so we passed on that and continued on. As with every other day, we had over extended, and so it was close to 3:00 by the time we got to the small town of Alma, right on the Bay. So it was time for lunch!
Looking out over the rocky shoreline.
Before the trip, one of the “must dos” was to have a proper lobster meal. We had gone this long without doing it, so the time was right. We stopped at the Alma Lobster Shop to have lunch. I did it right and ordered the one pound lobster dinner, and Justine ordered the snow crab. It was amazing! And such a great setting, sitting right out over the bay.
After our amazing lunch, we headed across the street, to Holy Whale Brewing, a cool brewery in another old church. I had a flight of beer while sitting in their patio, enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine. But sadly, we couldn’t stay long, as we still had almost 2 1/2 hours to Fredricton. So it was time to hit the road.
The drive took us through the Bay of Fundy National Park. As with many other parts of the trip, I would have loved to have stopped in a few places to do some hikes, but we just didn’t have time. We will have to come back. It was a little more than two hours to Fredricton, and the drive passed uneventfully.
We got to the apartment that we had rented about 7:00, which was around the time we seem to have gotten to most of our accommodation’s on this trip. This one was associated with Graystone Brewing, and so we got a gift card for the brewery along with a four pack of beer in the fridge! It was a good perk. After getting settled, we had some dinner at a local restaurant that both Tabitha and the bartender at the brewery recommended. The food was great - exactly what we were looking for.
This spot was probably the best place to stay, if you were in one place for a while. It was really well set-up and appointed.
We went back to Graystone to use up the gift card before heading back to the apartment and calling it a night!
