Tides of the Bay of Fundy

Last night we had a rather large rain storm.  Considering that Hurricane Leslie is heading towards the Maritimes, this much smaller storm did not really surprise us.  We have been hearing rumors that the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to PEI may close to truck traffic in the next day or two due to the Hurricane. And trust me, I would rather not be driving on that bridge if a hurricane is in the neighbourhood.  So as we are not that far from the bridge we decided to spend another day poking around Moncton.  Originally we were thinking of seeing the Bay of Fundy from the Nova Scotia side, but after reading that the "Flower Pots" are actually on the New Brunswick side of the bay, that was a huge drawing card to keep us here another day. 

So we drove down to Hopewell which is about 40 minutes from here.  It is a beautiful coastal drive.  Not that you are directly at the ocean, but you can see the water a distance away.  As we were coming into Hopewell, we saw this very unique home based business called "The Bird Garden".  The guy has a work shop underneath his store and he builds every style of bird house that you can imagine!  He even had one that looked like a retro camping trailer.  This picture is exactly what you would see when driving past.

 

Moving on down the road a bit farther we found the entrance to the Fundy Bay Tidal park.  For anyone who does not know about the Fundy tidal levels, the tides can rise up to 46 feet in about 6 & 1/2 hours.  That would be an extreme high tide.  Each day there are literally millions of gallons of water that flow into and then out of the bay.  During one tide cycle, more than the combined flow of the world's freshwater flows into the bay.  That is a lot of water coming into the bay and you can imagine what that force of that has done over millions of years, to the cliffs surrounding the bay in New Brunswick and also Nova Scotia.  Hopewell is famous for the formations of the tides "eating" away the cliffs and forming what they fondly call the "Flower Pots".  The "pots" are only seen at low tide.  At high tide only the tops of the "pots" are seen.  Apparently at high tide, a person can kayak around this area.  But not being kayakers, we walked the beautiful trail down to the top of the cliffs and then the stairs to the ocean floor.  This is a picture of the stairs that are partially covered at high tide.

 

 



Here we are on the ocean flour at the "Flower Pots"

 

It is hard to describe the look of the rocks.  You can see a definite line where the tide mostly is and then the higher mark where the tides will go during a full moon, which is when it will get the highest.  The rock is almost in layers....and me standing in the "hole"

 



 

 

We spent awhile down on the ocean floor and then went up to the top again, where we shared a delicious bowl of seafood chowder and a crab wrap!  The seafood chowder had lobster, scallops, crab and some white fish like halibut.  All I know is that it did not have disgusting slimy clams or oysters!!!

 

After we had lunch we headed down the coast to see if we could find a lighthouse.  We stopped in at a craft shop and a very nice woman gave us directions to the lighthouse and most importantly,,,, a very nice small winery (I will get to that in a minute!).  We drove along the coast and had views of rolling mountains on one side and marshlands on the Bay side.  After turning at a "fork" in that road that had and old abandoned bank on the corner,,,,, it was called "the Old Bank" and that is exactly what it said in a nice sign on the building. 

 

We made our way down to Cape Enrage which has a working lighthouse.  This lighthouse is situated on a towering cliff on Barn Marsh Island and is overlooking the Bay of Fundy. The current lighthouse is over 150 years old and is no longer manned by a lighthouse keeper.   It was automated in the late 1980's.  The last lighthouse keeper was Noel Justason who was the keeper from 1978 until 1988.  That is my history lesson of the day!  Here are a couple of pics!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now to the winery,,,,  We saw no grapevines at all so knew when we stopped that this was going to be fruit wines, which are generally sweeter than your regular chardonay type wine.  We tasted and bought a lovely dry blueberry (unoaked) and a slightly sweeter cranberry wine.  So I am signing off to make dinner and have a glass of one of those wines!

 

Happy birthday to Kelly (today the 10th) and in case we don't have wifi tomorrow, Happy Birthday to Marline (the 11th tomorrow).

 

Lori and The Tard!