St. John to Moncton
Today's plan was to match our itinerary to the Bay of Fundy's tides. We wanted to catch the Reversing Falls at high tide around noon and the Hopewell Rocks at low tide around 5:30. The trick was arranging the trip in between.
We made it to the Carleton Martello Tower a few minutes after its 10:00 opening. From the outside, it looks pretty plain, but it has a very interesting story to tell. It was built during the War of 1812 to protect St. John from land attack from the south. Its design was copied by the British from a fortress that had held out for an unusually long time against them. They subsequently built more than 200 such fortresses around the world. A small force could hold out almost indefinitely in its hayday. A concrete command centre was added to its top to act as a fire control centre for defence of the port in WW II.
High tide was at 12:36, so we wanted to return to the Reversing Falls by around noon. It was a bit anticlimactic after observing the turbulence of the previous day. Because the water was much deeper, the rocks were covered and there was far less white water. But you could see a very strong current with strong whirlpools and eddies. The water would pile up in front of the islands, then spill around them. An interesting observation was that there were hundreds of cormorants and gulls feeding as the seawater flowed inland. They would drift with the current for a while, dive down for a meal, then fly back to where they started and repeat the process.
Next stop was the Fundy Trail Parkway. Here we found the beautiful coastal scenery we had been looking for. This is a multi-use park of hiking and biking trails, lookouts, and a scenic drive. It could easily be a destination on its own by hiking different trails or sections of the main trail each day for a week. Right now, it is a dead end road of about 12 km, but it is planned to continue another 20-25 km to link up with the road in Fundy National Park. Here you can see the fog rolling in off the ocean.
From the Trail, we set out through Fundy Park for the Hopewell Rocks, famous for their appearance as flower pots because of the erosion by the high Fundy tides. Along the way, we passed the town of Alma right at low tide and found the whole local fishing fleet high and dry.
We knew that the Hopewell Rocks site closed at 5 and we weren't going to arrive until after 5:30, but we were not sure what "closed" entailed. How could they block people from walking on the beach? We decided to just go and see what we found. What we found was this sign and about 25 cars parked outside the gate. We figured that if they could all go in, we could too. What danger could we face that was any different from when the gates were open?
After walking around the gate we passed through a few easily surmounted obstacles. You could tell that they had to put some obstacles in place to cover their bums, but they fully expected people to overcome them and didn't want to make it too difficult. We followed the path to the top of the cliff, meeting numerous people along the way. We navigated the steep path and 99 stairs down to the beach. I wouldn't say the place was crawling with people, but there were well over a dozen. It was quite interesting down there, but it was all in the evening shade which didn't help with the picture taking.
We made it to the Carleton Martello Tower a few minutes after its 10:00 opening. From the outside, it looks pretty plain, but it has a very interesting story to tell. It was built during the War of 1812 to protect St. John from land attack from the south. Its design was copied by the British from a fortress that had held out for an unusually long time against them. They subsequently built more than 200 such fortresses around the world. A small force could hold out almost indefinitely in its hayday. A concrete command centre was added to its top to act as a fire control centre for defence of the port in WW II.
High tide was at 12:36, so we wanted to return to the Reversing Falls by around noon. It was a bit anticlimactic after observing the turbulence of the previous day. Because the water was much deeper, the rocks were covered and there was far less white water. But you could see a very strong current with strong whirlpools and eddies. The water would pile up in front of the islands, then spill around them. An interesting observation was that there were hundreds of cormorants and gulls feeding as the seawater flowed inland. They would drift with the current for a while, dive down for a meal, then fly back to where they started and repeat the process.
Next stop was the Fundy Trail Parkway. Here we found the beautiful coastal scenery we had been looking for. This is a multi-use park of hiking and biking trails, lookouts, and a scenic drive. It could easily be a destination on its own by hiking different trails or sections of the main trail each day for a week. Right now, it is a dead end road of about 12 km, but it is planned to continue another 20-25 km to link up with the road in Fundy National Park. Here you can see the fog rolling in off the ocean.
From the Trail, we set out through Fundy Park for the Hopewell Rocks, famous for their appearance as flower pots because of the erosion by the high Fundy tides. Along the way, we passed the town of Alma right at low tide and found the whole local fishing fleet high and dry.
We knew that the Hopewell Rocks site closed at 5 and we weren't going to arrive until after 5:30, but we were not sure what "closed" entailed. How could they block people from walking on the beach? We decided to just go and see what we found. What we found was this sign and about 25 cars parked outside the gate. We figured that if they could all go in, we could too. What danger could we face that was any different from when the gates were open?
After walking around the gate we passed through a few easily surmounted obstacles. You could tell that they had to put some obstacles in place to cover their bums, but they fully expected people to overcome them and didn't want to make it too difficult. We followed the path to the top of the cliff, meeting numerous people along the way. We navigated the steep path and 99 stairs down to the beach. I wouldn't say the place was crawling with people, but there were well over a dozen. It was quite interesting down there, but it was all in the evening shade which didn't help with the picture taking.We had planned to get to Amherst, Nova Scotia tonight, but the day was just too full. We stopped in Moncton for a bite to eat at 7:30 and decided that was enough for today. We got checked into our hotel about 9.
Today started out cool, breezy, and foggy, which precluded some neat pictures from the Martello Tower. Although it warmed up to about 20 degrees again, it still felt pretty cool whenever you were open to the breeze.
posted by Celeste at
6:11 p.m.
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