New Brunswick

---

We left the good old USA and crossed over into New Brunswick. The border crossing was no problem, just had to answer a few questions and they waved us through. We finally found some cooler weather with days in the upper 70s or low 80s and nights down in the 50s usually with a nice breeze. The park we stayed at was Century Farm Family Campground with an ocean view in the small town of St. Martins. We could walk right down to the beach and could observe the tide change on the Bay of Fundy. The tide changes 24.5 feet from high tide to low tide on the Bay of Fundy. St. Martins is known for its sea caves that are accessible at low tide. We had really bad Wi-Fi so we had to go to a restaurant to check our emails. We didn’t use our phones in Canada because of the roaming charges of $1.50 a minute. Needless to see it was difficult to be unplugged most of the time.

We made a trip into St. John which wasn’t very far, but the roads were really bad so it took about an hour. We visited the Reversing Rapids which are created by the collision of the Bay of Fundy’s tides and the St. John River. The difference here between high tide and low tide is 28.5 feet and completes the cycle about every 12.5 hours. At low tide the St. John River thunders down 14.5 feet to the Bay of Fundy and causes a series of rapids and whirlpools. As the tide begins to rise the river slows and finally stops flowing completely during a 20 minute span which is called slack tide. This is the only time that boats are able to navigate the rapids. As the tide continues to raise it reverses the flow of the river and the rapids form again going up the river. This reversal of the river can be felt as far as 80 miles up to Fredericton. Nature is amazing! While in St. John we also visited the St. John Market which is basically an indoor farmer’s market with some tourist stuff added in. We got sticker shock here so only treated ourselves to some ice cream.

We backtracked a bit and went to St. Andrews so that I could go on a whale watching cruise. The town of St. Andrews is very cool with lots of unique character but not very accessible for someone with knee issues with stairs everywhere. I could only get on a late afternoon cruise so we had lunch and walked around a bit and then waited for the cruise on a bench while people watching. The cruise was around 3 hours long, but we were even a bit longer because we found so many whales. The boat was really fast so it got us out into the Bay of Fundy quickly where we started seeing harbor seals and harbor porpoise which are actually small whales. Finally we started seeing the larger fin tale whales which the biologist said are the second largest whale. We never got to witness a huge breach, but each whale would come up and blow three times in a row and then would be gone for 10 minutes or so. While down under they would either move in closer, move away from us or sometime parallel to us. It was a great experience to see these creatures and made even more fun by witness the excitement of the children that were onboard.

The final thing we did here was drive the Fundy Trail which begins just a few miles from St. Martins. It is considered a great place for hikers with its many trails, but can still be enjoyed from the road with several pullouts.

The town of St. Martins has many beautiful bed and breakfast establishments. These homes were originally built by rich shipbuilders and later converted to B & B’s.

---