The Gadabout Granny: Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick

Although this trip is almost over (I'll get home sometime next week) there are still experiences that I'm mulling over and would like to share.

After leaving PEI, my next stop was to see the tide change in the Bay of Fundy from the New Brunswick side; the best place for that was Fundy National Park. It's located near a tiny town called Alma, where you can see the tides on a different kind of shore. This one has fewer cliffs and is more level. That was apparent on the first day I was there. In the morning, I took a photo from a boardwalk along the beach at high tide, then went exploring for the rest of the day. When I came back that evening, it was low tide, and I was astounded at how much beach was visible, compared to the morning. I would have had to walk almost half a mile to get to the edge of the water! It's hard to imagine the amount of water that rushes in and out of the Bay of Fundy twice a day!

High Tide at Alma

Low tide at the same place

Explorations led me to several other points along the Bay: Cape Enrage, and Hopewell Rocks. I don't know where the name for Cape Enrage came from, but I loved the name. Although it was very foggy that morning, I found the location to be very intriguing. I love the blurring of the lines of the shore and beach with the water and sky. Cape Enrage was most notable for the hundreds of cairns on the beach. Some of them were very complex shapes while others were simple piles of stones. When I came back to Cape Enrage at the end of the day, the tide was out, but it was still very foggy. I wonder if the fog ever completely disappears from that section of the bay!

Cairns at Cape Enrage, high tide

Cape Enrage, high tide

Cape Enrage low tide

Hopewell Rocks was almost an otherworldly experience. The huge pillars carved by the action of the tide over thousands (or millions) of years would have been hard to imagine. At low tide, they stand up like sentinels guarding the steep, rocky cliffs. They have trees growing on top, so that at high tide, they are more like islands off the shore. I wasn't able to see them at high tide, but at low tide, they are most impressive. To get to the ocean floor, you have to walk down a 101 step staircase (and back up it again when you are ready to leave). That may be part of the reason I chose not to come back at high tide! But I loved wandering around those huge pillars and thinking about how they were formed.

Hopewell Rocks

Hopewell Rocks -- Staircase

That night as I was cleaning up my dinner things, I started thinking about all the things I had seen, my list of Must See things, and wondering if there was anything I had missed. I remembered a spot on the drive to PEI where I crossed a river at a Tidal Bore viewing station. I was on the way to PEI and didn't stop to see what it was all about. But I wondered if I had missed something I would later regret. My guide books were helpful in explaining the Tidal Bore, and I realized that I would definitely regret not seeing it once I got home. So after checking the map and discovering that it was only 200 miles back to that place, I ditched my plans to move on, and moved backwards instead. I was there at 9:30 AM ready to see what this Tidal Bore Viewing Station was all about. Although the bore can be as much as 4 feet high, the sun, moon, and earth were aligned in such a way to produce a much smaller bore. It was still impressive. At the viewing station, the water in the river rose about 15 feet between 9:30 and 10:45 AM. Can you imagine? That's a huge influx of water in a short time!

Base of bridge pillar visible

45 minutes later

The interpreter at the Viewing Station said that it was also possible to see the bore at another place along the bay on the same day, so I headed to Truro to their viewing station. This happened about 11:30 AM. This one was like a small wave coming into the shore at the beach, but it didn't stop and retreat; it just kept coming and coming and coming. And as I sat there along the shore, the river rose about 5 feet or more in less than 10 minutes. Whoa! That is an impressive sight, even if it wasn't the 4 foot wave that sometimes happens.