August 10: More Fundy, and a second province (and baby’s second oil change)

The sticky bun wasn’t as good as I’d thought it was going to be, but that’s okay. Today wasn’t a stellar day for food all around, alas.

However. I saw some really unusual scenery, and that part was great. After I left Alma this morning, I continued north on the coast road until I reached the turn-off for Cape Enrage, which has got to be one of the more unusual place names I’ve run across (says the woman from Puyallup [g]). It’s apparently got to do with the area’s French heritage, although why the French were so angry there still escapes me.

Anyway, it’s a very winding, very narrow road (when I was coming out, I saw a motorhome coming in, and I did wonder how they managed some of the “I’m going to rear-end myself” turns, or if they had to turn around, and wouldn’t that have been fun). The road led to a very windy bluff overlooking the Bay of Fundy, and, as the tide was headed out this morning, I got to see quite a bit more land than I would have otherwise. When the tide goes out here, it goes OUT. There’s also an adorable little lighthouse (no Fresnel lens, alas), and a gift shop, and a zip line, and a few other attractions, all for the grand price of $6 Canadian (about $4.50 U.S. given the current exchange rate, which is one of the reasons I could afford this part of the trip to begin with). No, I did not ride the zip line. I have no desire whatsoever to ride a zip line, let alone one that runs over a rather steep cliff.

A beach on the road to Cape Enrage. See the high tide marks on the cliffs?

The lighthouse at Cape Enrage.

From the deck at Cape Enrage.

And another view from Cape Enrage.

Fireweed! Just like at home.

They’ve been taunting me with these signs ever since Maine — and I have yet to see a single moose.

A few more miles farther down (or up, I guess, since I was headed northeast) the road, I came to what looked to my skeptical eyes like another Trees of Mystery (my standard for tacky roadside attractions). But I’d seen pictures of what they were showing off here, and I wanted to see it, whether it was as hokey as the admission gate and gift shop made it look, or as magnificent as the photos of it I’d seen. The reality was closer to magnificent than tacky, I have to say. The Hopewell Rocks are the famous “flower pot” rocks of the Bay of Fundy, and I do mean famous – I’d heard of them even over on the west coast before I left home.

I was lucky – the tide was just before its ebb, so I could actually see them. Apparently they’re almost completely covered with water at high tide, which is pretty impressive when you get a good look at them. They’re huge, as you’ll see in the photos (lots of people for scale – the place was seriously busy). Anyway, you walk down a ½ km trail to a series of metal staircases that lead you down to what’s billed as the ocean floor [g], and you can actually walk around among the huge formations. It’s really pretty impressive, if a bit hard on your shoes. I had to wipe mud off of mine when I got back up – there’s a setup at the top of the stairs made for it, complete with water sprayers and boot scrapers.

The Hopewell Rocks at low tide.

And more of them. They are so odd-looking.  Oh, and that gray stuff is seaweed.

The metal stairs going down to the “ocean floor” where you can stroll among the flowerpot rocks.

A view of the “ocean floor” at Hopewell Rocks.

I’m glad I went to see them, and I’m really glad I landed there at low tide so I could see them.

After that, I drove on up towards Moncton. I found a really awful hamburger along the way (there wasn’t a whole lot of choice, I was hungry, and I didn’t feel like picnicking), then filled Merlin’s tank once I got to Moncton, for the first time since I crossed the border. The gas station did not have pay at the pump, which was weird. And gas cost me about $5 U.S. more than the same amount (about 8 gallons) would have south of the border, once I did the calculations from liter to gallon, and factored in the exchange rate, so it isn’t bad, all in all. The lady where I went to pay was very helpful when I asked her about where I could take Merlin to get his oil changed, and even produced a city map and marked my route to the place on it for me. The fellow at the oil change place also took the map and marked my route to the highway on it for me. Nice people!

And so I drove on east to Nova Scotia, and stopped at the welcome center to ask about campgrounds. The upshot of that is that I’m in a very nice provincial park campground a bit north of the town of Amherst, not far from the northern shore, in a lovely quiet wooded site. It’s windy as heck, but the trees seem to be keeping the worst of it above me. Very pleasant, and there are showers, too!

Self-evident [g].

There are almost as many Baptist churches in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as there are in Texas, but they’re much bigger and older and fancier here. This one’s in the town of Amherst, NS.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

August 11: Tidal bores aren’t boring, and neither are lighthouses

What a name. It’s on the northern shore of Nova Scotia.  And no, I didn’t notice the historical site part of the sign until I was looking at my photos this evening.  Oh, well.

I drove past a lot of mudflats today [wry g]. But first, I needed to come back down from the northern shore (not all that far from the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island, which I am sorta saving for last before I start heading west for good – and I can’t believe I just wrote that) to the town of Truro, where two things happened. One, I stopped at a Tim Horton’s for hot tea (I miss being able to buy unsweet iced tea at McD’s so much — Canadian McDs only do sweet tea, blast them), and burned my tongue on it so badly I ended up putting ice from my cooler in it to make it drinkable. And two, when I started Merlin back up after getting the tea, one of his dashboard lights came on.

The stupid manual didn’t explain what it was, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that it was simply a reminder thingy. The thing was, it was trying to remind me that Merlin needed an oil change, except that he’d just had one yesterday. So I drove on into Truro, found a Ford dealer, and threw myself on the mercy of a young man who just happened to be walking out of the service department (he did have a Ford service uniform on). He said, oh, the place you had it changed must not have known to adjust the reminder thing after they changed the oil, and then less than three minutes later, he’d done it. I didn’t know Merlin had a reminder thing, because apparently it comes on at 5200 miles post the previous oil change or something. At any rate, he didn’t charge me, and I was on my way.

I missed my turn once I got back on the freeway, too, and ended up taking a slightly different route back over to the Bay of Fundy. Which turned out to be a cool thing, because I drove by a tidal bore interpretive center that I would have missed otherwise. The tide being completely out, I didn’t get to see the actual bore, which is supposed to be the biggest one in the world, something like nine times as tall as the average man, but the exhibits were very interesting, especially the one about a storm a century or so ago that combined with high tide and basically wiped a lot of the communities along the bore off the map. The exhibit panel was titled, “why is there an ocean in my living room?”

The bridge over the tidal bore at the place the name of which I apparently didn’t make a note of, sorry!

This is apparently what one does during low tide at the highest tidal bore in the world. It’s called mudsliding. This photo is from the interpretive center there.

Once I got to the actual bay again, the tide was still really low, and that far up into the bay, you could actually walk clear across it from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick (or the reverse), if you could walk the whole distance in less than four hours. Which, of course, is impossible. But it’s so weird.

Looking out over the mud flats of the Bay of Fundy to New Brunswick.

This was the view from the first lighthouse, which I apparently didn’t get a photo of [smacks head a la V-8].

I saw two lighthouses along the way. One, at Burntcoat (a weird name, but apparently a corruption of something French), was a reproduction and not a functioning lighthouse, but the second one, at Petit Riviere, still had its Fresnel lens, which was very cool. The ladders/staircases to get up into the lens room of the second lighthouse were built for people with considerably longer legs than mine, though. Other than that, and the glimpses of the wide mudflats that are the Bay of Fundy at low tide, the scenery was bucolic and hilly, and the road was a bit rollercoastery, which was fun.

The second lighthouse of the day.

And the view from the lawn around it.  The flowers are just thistles.

And its sweet little Fresnel lens. Are you tired of photos of Fresnel lenses yet?

I arrived in the town of Windsor about 3:30, and decided to stop because a) there was an inexpensive campground on what I think is the county fairgrounds (it’s called the exposition grounds) and b) there was a laundromat nearby. The last time I did laundry was about ten days ago, on Cape Cod, and things were getting kind of desperate [wry g]. Anyway, I now have clean clothes again. Important details, as my ex used to say.

Since I’d picnicked at lunch, I ate dinner out tonight, pan-fried flounder, a baked potato, and mashed turnips and carrots mixed together, all of which was very tasty (I’d never actually had turnips before). Oh, and caramel ice cream for dessert.

Then I made a reservation at a hostel in Digby, about 100 miles down the coast, for tomorrow night, because it’ll be Friday in high season and I was a bit worried about them having room for me. On the way tomorrow is Annapolis Royal, and a whole bunch of history about a time and place I know very little about. I can’t wait.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

August 12: History, lots and lots of history, oh and two gardens

Today was a very full day, even though I drove less than 100 miles for the entire day. I started my day at Grand Pré, which means Great Meadow in English. It’s one of the first sites of the expulsion of the Acadians, back in the mid-18th century. It’s a UN World Heritage Site as well as a National Historic Site, and the museum there tells the story of the Acadians.

Before today, my entire knowledge of the Acadians is that a bunch of them wound up in Louisiana and became the Cajuns. Now I know a lot more of the story, and it was moving and sad. I’m not sure what all to say about it without putting my foot into it, except that I kept thinking about what’s going on with the Syrians today.

The other two things were that I’d had no idea that the Acadians reclaimed lands from the Bay of Fundy in similar ways that the Dutch have in their country. It was fascinating to learn about how they’d done it over a period of over a hundred years, and so long ago. And then there was the Longfellow/Evangeline connection – yes, she was fictional, but apparently his poem brought a lot of attention to what had happened to the Acadians, and so she’s become something of a cultural symbol.

The gardens surrounding the memorial church, etc., were lovely, too.

Anyway, I learned a lot at Grand Pré, some of which I was not expecting to learn.

The Evangeline statue and the memorial church at Grand Pre.

Part of the gardens at Grand Pre.

The Longfellow bust at Grand Pre.

Looking out over the polders/reclaimed land at Grand Pre, complete with the two red Adirondack chairs that seem to exist at every viewpoint in the Canadian national parks.  ETA:  I am informed that in Canada, those chairs are called Muskoka chairs.

A view back from the lookout towards the memorial church at Grand Pre.

And so it was on to Annapolis Royal.

I drove past this today, something else I’d never known about before.

Annapolis Royal is about fifty more miles down the road, where I visited two National Historic Sites, Port Royal, which was supposed to be a living history site about a French fort, but which, according to a fellow visitor who went on about it for quite a while, was no longer what it was because Stephen Harper had eviscerated the National Parks. The site was still there, but the re-enactors are apparently no more. It was still really interesting, though.

The reconstructed fort at Port Royal.

Inside Port Royal, which was sort of the Canadian French version of Bent’s Old Fort.

Those window panes are made of animal hide.

My first turned leaves of the trip. Holy cow.

Then there were the historic gardens in Annapolis Royal, which were really lovely. No Longwood, granted, but then I expect not many gardens could stand up to Longwood. These were smaller, and have been there since the 1930s, and were absolutely filled with glorious flowers.

The perennial borders at the Historic Gardens.

Unlabeled (I wish I knew what variety these were!) oriental lilies at the Historic Gardens.

A reconstructed Acadian house at the Historic Gardens.

My last stop of the day was at Fort Anne, right on the river in Annapolis Royal. It’s the oldest National Historic Site in Canada (so now I’ve visited their first national park, Banff, last summer, and their first national historic site today), but what struck me as funny was that they were refurbishing the officers’ quarters/museum in the fort, and at the moment it’s all covered with modern-day waterproofing plastic film.

The tyvek-wrapped officers’ quarters at Fort Anne.

The powder magazine at Fort Anne, built in 1708 and the only entirely original building at the fort.

The view from Fort Anne, down the Annapolis River.

Fort Anne is a classic on-the-waterfront star fort, just like Fort McHenry in Baltimore, although it’s considerably older and there aren’t as many buildings. The redoubts definitely looked familiar, though. The museum had an absolutely gorgeous needlepoint tapestry inside. I never did find a date when it was done, but apparently it’s fairly recent. It’s spectacular, too.

Half of the dropdead gorgeous needlepoint tapestry at Fort Anne.

By the time I left Fort Anne, I was pretty tired, so I drove the last 25 miles down to Digby, where I’m ensconced in a very nice hostel, with wifi and showers. I will continue on around the coast tomorrow, and probably wind up in Halifax in two or three days.

I can’t believe it’s been eleven weeks today since I left home. Criminy.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.