I'm going to do this entry a little differently and have pics as I go along. You can ignore this first one until the end.
We had breakfast downstairs and had some ok eggs benedict and french toast. They had some hommade rhubbarb jelly that was very nice.
At around 9am we were good to go and left towards Fundy. We took a little time to look around St Martins (the town we stayed at) for a bit before leaving.
Fundy Bay has the largest tidal shift in the world, which we learnwd more about later. Fundy National park encompasses an area of the bay and the nearby Acadian forest region. Before the national park is the Fundy Scenic Parkway, which was privately owned until 3 years ago when the province took over management.
Entrance fee was 13 CAD a person and we hit up the information center which was a shipping container with 2 guys waiving at us. They were very helpful and friendly, circled areas on the map to see, what not to see (based on the tide) and one of them who was also a teacher gave us a quick historical rundown of the area which was great.
The trail is very well maintained with park and walk views of the coast or waterfalls. A trail for hiking or biking goes along the coast. At the East emtrance where we were headed is the Walton Glen Gorge. It was a long hike to get there with ups and downs 1.5km. On the way back i flagged down a golf cart carrying a couple back. They had these running every 15 minutes or so and this saved us a lot of steps, stairs, and general incline.
There are some tour buses going and the predominant theme is retirees/silver hair. This whole trip I think being the off season, kids in school = older folks coming out to play. When we were coming back from a waterfall area someone at top shouted down to us "You made it back!" And it was one of the visitor center guys. Turns out he was running ahead of the tour bus to make sure safety regulations were followed. That climb only 15 people max could be on the stairs and there were 40 in the group.
Had a lot of fun. Next was the actual National Park. It has a couple tide related things like beaches and caves that are accessible during low tide but cut off at high tide. We didnt have much time and we asked at the visitor center what to do for not so hard hikes. He recmmended one that was marked "Medium" on the map and said it was fairly eazy as a lot of it is boardwalk. What would have been more accurate is a lot of it is wooden stairs.
It was actually extremely beautiful though. It was Dickson Falls, a series of waterfalls in its own microclimate. That is a climate in an area differemt than the surround one. You go way down some steps into an area fairly covered by the above canopy and theres a noticeable temperature change. It was cool and wet and moss was growing on everything. Theres a red spotted salamander species somewhere down there but we didnt see it.
We got back up, Sarahs a trooper. And went to get gas and food before leaving the park. Gas was a pay ahead and i was at just over half a tank. So when asked how much I guessed at 20 liters which was about right as far as what i needed. Its at 1.98CAD/liter. I think after conversions thats about 5.35 USD/gallon.
We got food at the Alma Lobster Shop which is a restaurant/fresh seafood shop. We went with a Lobster Roll with chowder and Fried Scallops with Poutine. The chowder was good and a step up for sure from yesterdays. The lobster roll was good and had a light mayo based sauce in it. We both agreed Reds was better though. That gal was right she ruined us for scallops now.
The rest of the day was mostly driving. 3.5 hours to our hotel is Atigonish Nova Scotia. We did refuel at a Petro-Canada (chain name) and they had a keychain goose advertised that you can buy for a buck when u fill up. I was extremely excited for it only to find out they were sold out. So now its my goal, hell or high water to get that goose keychain before we leave. I want that goose...
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