New Brunswick - Fredericton and Bay of Fundy

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After a relatively early morning (9.00am Ha Ha) we set off for Fredericton, the Capital of New Brunswick. New Brunswick has a number of tourist routes including the River Valley drive. It was full of the yellow, red and green leaves that made up the fall colours. Along the way we stopped in at the town of Grand Falls in which the centrepiece of downtown are the falls themselves. In our travels the falls are usually a little way out of town, so this was a touch unusual. WE eventually arrived out our host’s place for the night. Dom and a very pregnant Nancy were lovely people and Dom gave us a brief night tour of downtown Fredericton. It was very quiet at night, but the nice old buildings under the lights created a charming atmosphere.

Morning brought about an opportunity to explore the town in the daylight and picked up a guide and completed a self guided walking tour. I was nice to take in a few of the sites at a very leisurely pace. The York-Sunbury Museum was one of the places we checked out. It had many exhibits from the 1800’s for both the English settlers and the Arcadians (The descendants of France that originally settled the area. After the American Revolution many of the English Loyalist from the US very given refuge in the area and the British Government deported many of the French population to Louisiana, thus the rise of the Cajun Culture in New Orleans. The Museum is also home to Coleman’s frog. A stuffed frog from the early 1900’s which was fed on scrap food and booze until it grew to about 20kg. It’s as big as a medium sized dog. We had a quiet afternoon, taking the opportunity to get some needed rest time. On Thursday nights the local art gallery has an entry by donation night and we decided to go have a look. Some very talented artists had their pieces of work on display, however much of it was not to our tastes. I guess we still need to work on our culture a little.

The next day brought about all sorts of adventure. We set of f for Prince Edward Island via the Bay of Fundy, which has the largest tides in the world. The adventure started trying to get out of Fredericton, where We missed two different turns in about 10 minutes and tagged an extra half an hour onto our day. The second was when I (Mick) pulled off the road in the Fundy National Park to take a couple of pictures of the trees with their fall colours. I got back in the car and went to take off when the car started to slip sideways. It seems I had parked a little too far over on what was a very soft shoulder. Every time we tried to get out we slipped further sideways into the ditch. It was time to call a tow truck to get us out. Other wise the car would have ended up on its side or roof in the bottom of the ditch. An hour and a half and $100 later we were off again. By the way the pictures were pretty shit and definitely not worth the hassle. We eventually got to the Fundy coastline and stopped in at a rhubarb and blueberry winery. Their products were pretty good and we walked out with a dry rhubarb wine.

Ultimately we went to check out Hopewell Rocks, where they have up to a 14 metre difference in the tides. We got their just after low tide so we got to walk along the ocean floor which was pretty cool as well as check out a few of the rock formations. We finally left f or Prince Edward Island, all be a few hours later than scheduled.

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