Northern Vacation- Day 5

(miniature) horsing around

After being treated to a yummy breakfast by Mae, and with our handy dandy personalized map in hand, we headed out to explore the Bay of Fundy coast.  If you have ever even been near the general Bay of Fundy area, I’m sure you have heard they have the most extreme tides in the world.  They really like to share that little tid bit of information and why not.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to appreciate the tides when most of the coast is fogged over.  But we were determined to try our hardest.  We drove towards St. Martins, they love their saint names up here, on some rather dodgy roads.  I don't know if it's that they have more roads or heartier shocks on their cars but on the whole, Canada didn't seem too concerned with paving.  Hey, at least it was a rental car that was going through all the bumps!  One the map Mae provided, she not only added the lighthouse we could visit but also a farm along the way that has miniature horses.  On the whole, miniature horses don't usually make the road maps; and the world is a sadder place because of that.  But we are never ones to turn down the opportunity to go traipsing through a field to visit the locals.  We parked and were greeted by a friendly border collie who seemed to be acting as our tour guide (he was still better than the pre-teen in Portland!).  We waded through the grass, those horses need to get eating, and came across the three little cuties.  When the horses making the map, I had the image in mind of a massive heard of lil horses galloping over the hills but I guess three would do it.  The border collie started to show off and annoy the horses by trying to play with them.  You guys might be of similar size, but I don't think a mini horse is going to play fetch with you- though if that happened, it would be amazing!  I thought for sure we were going to witness that dog get a swift kick but thankfully the visit turned out to be injury free. 

St. Martins & one of the bridges

We then headed over to the Quaco Head lighthouse.  Quaco was one of the previous names for the village and apparently only stuck to the lighthouse.  It seems that the Canadian lighthouses are a lot smaller than their American cousins.  While most of the lighthouses I have seen are pretty tall, this one couldn't have been more than five stories tall.  As we made our way down the path towards the lighthouse, we could hear the fog horn blasting off into the gray that lingered along the cliffs.  Obviously it was loud, but holy crap...it's REALLY loud when you get in front of it!  As I held my ears, I couldn't help but think of the scene from Pete's Dragon (oh yeah, I'm going way back) when Red Button and the scheming doctor are in  front of the fog horn when it blows and they can't hear a thing afterwards.  I thought that was going to be me!  But thankfully my ear drums did not rupture and soon we were on our way again.  We drove into St. Martins and almost drove right back out of it...it's that small.  There's not much to it but it does have not one but two covered bridges right off the main road.  If covered bridges are your thing, this area of Canada is littered with them.  (HOLD UP- I feel that I need to take this moment out to break some mind-blowing news...in the beginning of Pete's Dragon, Pete is hiding from the Gogans.  Well did you know that one of the Gogan sons is Jeff Conaway?  AKA Kenickie from Grease?  I had no idea!)  Where was I?  Oh yeah, covered bridges.  St. Martins was founded in 1783 and since then it isn't surprising that the village has a long-standing connection with fishing and ship-building; it only has around 300 residents.

Besides the covered bridges, one of St. Martins' biggest attractions are their sea caves.  They would pretty much be like any other caves but thanks to Fundy's extreme tides, during low tide you can walk out to them and explore.  On our first drive by them the water was still pretty high and the fog made them a bit hazy.    Hmm, so far this fog is a bit of a pain  Just up the road was the entrance to the Fundy Trail Parkway.  The Parkway is  fairly new; actually it won't be fully complete for a few years.  It has walking and hiking trails and plenty of overlooks.  Once it's finished it will connect up with existing coastal roads and there will be lodges to stay in and lots of other things to explore.  Maybe we should have waited until it was complete.  We stopped at a few overlooks and, surprise, there was nothing to see but tree tops and fog.  Hmm, I'm thinking we shouldn't have wasted our money.  We did finally see something when we came across Fuller Falls/Chutes Fuller.  We could hear the waterfall from the parking lot and followed the sound.  The steps down the the viewing platform for the waterfalls were NOT steps.  They were closer to the rickety bridge from Temple of Doom laid down a hill.  Oh I was not doing that!  Nicole on the other hand, had no problem with it.  She decided to take the plunge and headed down the fun house steps.  She survived, which was good because my cell wasn't working and she probably had her's down there.  Back in the car, we figured we wouldn't waste any more time looking at fogged over lookouts and headed back towards St. Martins.

Before

After

Passing back through St. Martins we noticed that the tide was going out and we could get to the sea caves now.  Sweet, time to get the full Fundy experience!  We grabbed our water walking shoes and headed out.  While the tide was mostly out, there were still a few rapids we had to wade our way through.  Nicole went around the long way; I thought 'nah' and went straight into the babbling water.  I was pretty much halfway across when I thought, this was a huge mistake.  It didn't help that the beach/ocean floor was made up of rocks.  I just knew I was going for a swim.  Perhaps Nicole had a point when she went the long way.  Thankfully, I made it to the other side nice and dry.  The caves didn't go too far back so it wasn't like we were off to go splunking.  But all the same, it was neat to walk around in something that is usually under water; most of the ground was covered in seaweed.  After we fully explored the caves, we headed off again.  On the slow drive up the coast, we figured we would stop off at Cape Enrage, it had a nice ring to it.  Turns out it's likely called Cape Enrage because of the outrageous entrance fee.  It's just a lighthouse and some cliffs, those are pretty much dime a dozen up here, and they wanted $10!  No thank you.  We just turned around, pulled over and I got out and snapped some pictures.  Enraged is right!

It was more Fundy floor exploring at our next stop farther up the coast at Hopewell Rocks.  If St. Martins sea caves were cool, Hopewell Rocks was super cool.  It was also where all the tourist were hanging out.  The nice thing about the way we travel is for the most part, we stay off the beaten path but when we do make it to the popular places, the crowds can be a bit much.  The walk through the woods took us to the beach access.  As we made our way towards the staircase that would take us down to the beach, a toddler and his family came up from the beach.  He was covered head to toe in mud.  Oh my, I hope not all of it was that muddy!  Then again he could have just had a spa mud treatment, you never know.  100 steps later and we were on the ocean floor again.  Thankfully most of the ground was pretty solid.  If you went out to where the water was, that was where the mud was hanging out.  During the drive up, I had noticed these signs that kept mentioning 'Chocolate River' and obviously that was intriguing.  Turns out the whole area is kind of Chocolate River because that's literally what it looks like.  Like a big glass of chocolate milk...hmmm.  The rock formations were the result of the Fundy tides and they were just plain fun to walk around and look at.  From the Flower Pots to E.T. and the Lovers Arch, each formation was unique.  Thank goodness we had timed the visit right and were able to explore them properly.  It would have been neat to be able to see them partially covered during high tide but if you can only pick one, low tide is the best.  


It was late afternoon by the time we headed out and our B&B for the night was over in Nova Scotia.  Once we picked up the main highway in Moncton, it was smooth sailing.  We were staying the night in Great Village at the Blaikie House.  The large Victorian house, which dated back to the 1870s, had been lovingly restored by the owners and it felt like stepping back in time.  What was even better was that when we pulled up and got out, we saw someone run across the street to welcome us.  It was one of the owners and he apologized for not being at the house but he was getting his sheep sheared across the street.  That's not an excuse you hear too often.  Though we had the house to ourselves, the owner had warned us that if we went for a walk we might not be alone.  A bear had been spotted in the neighborhood that afternoon.  Okie dok, won't be leaving the house until we run for the car- got it.  

Welcome to Nova Scotia

Now that we were in Nova Scotia the driving shouldn't be as long as it had been the previous days.  Tomorrow we were off to Halifax for two days.  All we had to do was hope the bear wouldn't be outside tomorrow morning hoping to bum a ride.