Walking on the Sea Floor and More

Monday: Hopewell Rocks and on to Nova Scotia. Today I walked on the ocean floor. High tide will be up to 58 feet above my head. Remember the funnel effect from last week? The further up Fundy Bay we go, the higher the tide. It’s really remarkable. What surprised me the most about this part of the sea floor was that there were no sea shells. The surface was pebbly rocks with a small amount of muddy silt the receding tide had deposited, no sand. The boulders were covered with seaweed.  Here the tide comes in and goes out at about 5 feet per hour. You don’t want to get caught with it coming in! In the 45 minutes or so we spent walking around, the tide was noticeably lower than when we arrived, a couple of hours before low tide. Amazing stuff in this world Heavenly Father created for us. We spent the night in Glenholme, Nova Scotia. Don’t try to find that city on a GPS device, Mapquest, or on the map program I have. Google earth found it, though. We had to use an actual map and directions from the campground guide book to find it.

Tuesday: We drove to Joggings, Nova Scotia another site with the extreme tides on the opposite side of Fundy Bay. We got there too early because the tide had just started receding an hour or so earlier. We did walk down to the little shelf that was just exposed for a few feet and took some pictures. We were only there for about 10 minutes and could already tell the water was lower. We would have had to wait an hour for the tour of the fossil site. It was cold and raining, so we drove back to the campground. We also saw Five Islands (picture with the lighthouse) which was interesting. What we didn’t know was that at low tide we could have walked to the islands.  Most of the best things to see in the Bay of Fundy area happen at low tide. How can you be at several places within a few hours time frame?

That small dark spot are trees on top of a pillar that will look like those at Hopewell Rocks.

Wednesday: Freeway driving! I love driving on small country roads, but there can be too much of a good thing. We were on curvy 2 lane roads all day yesterday, fun, but hard on the driver. We visited the Halifax temple which is always a highlight. We stopped by the Masstowne Market on the way home. It’s basically an indoor market plus. Besides the expected vegetables and flowers they had a bakery, restaurant, and deli. It was next to a fish market built like a lighthouse. The lighthouse had a nice view from the top even on this rainy day. It’s supposed to be spectacular on a sunny day.

Thursday: We went to Truro, NS and saw some neat carvings. The elm trees that used to line the streets died, so they had artists carve the dead trunks. The best thing we saw was the Glooscap Heritage center about the Mi’kmaq Indians.  In legend, Gooscap created the landscape we see today. We also took a hike in Victoria Park and saw some waterfalls. Fun stuff.

Friday: Our last stop in Nova Scotia was the swinging bridge in Tidnish. We could see steep cliffs below the water, and although it was relatively calm, we could see water flowing in both directions, but this area isn’t on Fundy Bay where those extreme tidal waters flow. It’s close to Northumberland Strait, so it was just a stream entering the bay.

We’re back in New Brunswick, Moncton to be exact. On our way we stopped by Sackville where we visited Swan Pond and Waterfowl Park.

Saturday: A quiet, rainy day. We drove to Magnetic Hill. We drove down the hill which had another hill that went up at the bottom. When reaching the bottom, we put the car in neutral and it backed up the hill. The water in the water bottle remained flat, but the terrain certainly looked like it went down then up, and it felt like we were going uphill backwards.