We had time today to have an elaborate apple pancake breakfast, yoghurt with fresh blueberries and lots of great conversation. Low tide wasn’t until 1:44PM and we made our way down to the beach to experience and photograph it.
Now we had time until today’s high tide at 7:57PM. We used this time to visit Bennett Lake, about 10kms from our campground where we had an extensive and fun kayak paddle across this beautiful lake, making it back against the wind.
Slightly exhausted and heated we went for a very refreshing swim.
Dinner was in Alma, the fishing town at the entrance of the park. We walked through the various shops and, no, ice cream was not the highlight of the visit. Rather, it was the lobster fishing boats getting ready to leave the harbour. They loaded crates of frozen herring and fish heads as bait for their lobster traps.
At the end of the day we went back to the beach we’d been at 6 hours prior to experience and photograph high tide.
We had to be out of the campground by 11AM as there was a big sign that they were very strict about this and charged for late departures. A pickup truck patrolled constantly and it felt a bit unwelcoming. We left on time and happily made our way to Hopewell Rocks where during low tide one can walk on the ocean floor to explore 2 km of shoreline. At high tide (36-46ft over the low tide level), the water rises to fill the caves and turns the flowerpots into rocky islands.
We hiked and photographed for about 2 hours, totally fascinated by these beautiful and huge rocks that made the people look like ants.
We went on to the Fundy National Park where we will be spending the next two nights.
Martin was driving from Shediac to Moncton while Ruth was busy looking through the tourist guide for ideas of what to see. We were excited about all the options we had. First things first, where would we sleep? We checked into the Camper’s City Camping and Seasonal Resort but were told that they wouldn’t let us go to the camping site until after 1PM although we had paid. We had lots of things to see so that wasn’t a big deal. First up, the University of Moncton Acadian Museum where we met Deborah Robichaud, a true Acadian and former director of the Museum. She was the featured artist and showed some of her jewelry. Our conversation soon turned to the history of the Acadian people and her immense knowledge of the subject fascinated us.
The museum is well worth seeing and clearly presents the history and more recent accomplishments of the Acadian people.
Next door in the library of the university is the Esther and Isadore Fine Collection of Inuit Art comprised of 242 pieces from the 1930s to 1975.
Some fresh but warm air would do us some good and the tidal bore was scheduled to happen at 3:54PM. The tidal bore occurs twice daily and reverses the flow of the Petitcodiac River when the higher water in the Bay of Fundy sends a wave upstream during high tide.
A few steps away is the RESURGO Museum which houses exhibits on the subjects of transportation, business development and the history of the Moncton area. We liked the experimental exhibits for children and the iPad equipped walkers that read barcodes embedded on a map of Moncton printed on the floor to give you information on those locations.
The historical section featured a Lutheran Bible printed in Nuremberg in 1747.
A special exhibition on rug hooking was also there, although we didn’t get much of a chance to practice as closing time was fast approaching.
Right next door was a very old cemetery and the Free Meeting House, restored in its original 1821 style. This was a non-denominational place of worship and bore witness to the religious tolerance in the Maritimes in the 19th century.
This was enough culture for the day and we were really hungry so off to Skipper Jack’s Seafood and Grill House we went for fish and chips dinner. Ruth’s plate also had scallops and clams.
Costco was next for gas and some groceries and to sniff out what Moncton’s Costco had to offer. It looked very much the same as ours.
After a great sleep and quick shopping trip at Walmart, we began our journey to Shediac, home of Parlee beach, supposedly Canada’s warmest salt water sand beach. Driving through Shediac, we experienced our first tourist town in New Brunswick with lots of people, cars and cute little stores. Our focus was finding the Adorable Chocolate shop and we were very lucky that it offered ice cream as well. Of course we treated ourselves to ice cream before we chose six chocolates to go.
The Parlee Beach Provincial Park campground was only a few kilometres away and we were lucky to still get an electric site on this huge campground. A 15 minute walk to the beach warmed us up for the not quite so warm water. We don’t think it was the 20 degrees that the gatehouse said it was. Nevertheless, our first salt water swim was glorious.
After the stress of preparing the mackerel, we slept like babies don’t. We decided to postpone breakfast and left the campground relatively early because there were many people leaving and we didn’t want to be in the queue at the dumping station.
We didn’t have to drive far before the brakes were squeaking to make it into the Fromagerie Les Blancs d’Arcadie parking lot. Fresh cheese curds, still warm, were irresistible! We didn’t devour them right away but looked for a perfect breakfast place in Caraquet.
Ruth decided on the right place for breakfast and ignored Martin’s critique. A perfect place it was. We walked a path towards the water and sat with the wind blowing not so gently through our hair.
We skipped the Miscou lighthouse and headed straight to Shippagan, home of the New Brunswick Aquarium and Marine Centre where we learned about the various fish and sea life in the area as well as saw videos on the development and advances in fisheries industry over the years.
New to us was that lobsters can have various colours. Very rare are albinos, which represent only 1 in 100,000,000 lobsters. The blue ones are 1 in 2,000,000. Regardless of their colour, all except for the albinos, will turn red when they are cooked as that base pigment is the only one that can withstand heat.
The harbour seals were cute but not cooperative for picture taking as their feeding was still some time away.
To speed things up, we took highway 11 to go to Miramichi, hoping to join the Headless Nun tour, but alas, this was not offered this year. We would have loved to be scared in a dark, mosquito infested forest. We had to settle for a simple walk in the mosquito infested forest on our own.
80 kilometers is all we made today. Obviously we didn’t spend all day on the road, but at the Village Historique Acadien learning about the Acadian people during the 18th to 20th century in New Brunswick.
As introduction we watched a 5 minute video that covered the history of these French settlers who first lived in what is now Nova Scotia but had to relocate to New Brunswick because of the French/English war. The open air museum featured the lifestyle of these Acadian people through the centuries.
We visited numerous buildings, some houses and some workshops where people in costumes of the time gave us insight into the lives and trades of barrel makers, blacksmiths, printers, workworkers, farmers, weavers, spinners and housekeepers at various times in history. We had a lot of fun talking to these people and learned a lot.
The Motel and Camping Colibri campground we chose for tonight is only about 5km away from the pioneer village and is large with about 300 sites, many with permanent trailers. We are in a smaller treed part of the campground.
Remember those mackerel fishes we told you about yesterday? They were still in the fridge and Ruth was dreading making them for dinner. Martin found a recipe online that sounded delicious and we improvised by BBQing them instead of doing them in the oven and adapting the recipe by using the closest ingredients we had. They turned out really well and we enjoyed them with a glass of red wine.
After homemade-from-scratch apple pancakes we made it 150 meters to the fishing dock to photograph the fishing boats and a single kayak that was being launched forever by a woman with tremendous upper arm muscles.
After this hard work, we obviously needed some nourishment. Speaking of apples, the little cafe and gift shop had wonderful fresh still-warm apple tarts available for $6.00. They were the size of small pies and we devoured a quarter each in the pavilion outside and packed the remaining half for later.
Well fed, we were determined to make it to New Brunswick non-stop today. That did not happen. This time it wasn’t apples but strawberries that caught our attention. Strawberries forever. This 5th generation family farm didn’t just have the most amazing strawberries we’ve had in a long time, but also strawberry wine and digestif, jams, pies and double strawberry ice cream. We tasted the wine and digestif and needless to say our van is now well stocked. A pie and two boxes of strawberries were also added to the load. The boxes of strawberries didn’t last very long but the strawberry pie is fighting with the half apple pie in the fridge. Unfortunately, they were out of the double strawberry ice cream!
Now we became serious, only looking right and left and didn’t even stop at the honey and honey wine making store. We said goodbye to beautiful Quebec for now and said hello to New Brunswick. Martin was happily entertained by four visitor information agents and came out with a library of brochures and suggestions for a campground and restaurant for the evening.
Highway 134 along the shoreline showed us small towns, some more successful than others. We switched to highway 11 (Trans-Canada) for part of the way, but other than trees on either side of the highway there wasn’t anything to see. We switched back to highway 134 and will continue to follow it because of the scenery and towns.
We found the recommended campground and enjoyed the engaging owner who presented us with a gift of two fresh mackerels which are destined to be lunch or dinner tomorrow.
Our dinner was fish as well. Fresh cod, done two ways at a lovely restaurant with a splendid waterfront, away from the road. The owner/chef of La Fine Grobe was from France and had studied linguistics in France and Saarbrücken, Germany. He came to Canada to teach, bought this property and started a bed-and-breakfast and restaurant.
We returned to the campground just before the rain storm hit, battened the hatches and went to a well deserved sleep.
The visitor center opened at 8AM and I enquired where we could get our flat tire plugged. The local repair shop was just down the street and for $10 Johnny plugged the tire. He didn’t have the tire pressure monitoring system tool either, so we’re still driving with the warning light on.
After the repair job we headed to the second Prince Edward Island National Park and went for a swim. A bit cold and Ruth had a crab climb onto her foot.
After the swim was a trip to Green Gables, the location on which Anne of Green Gables is based. We watched two short movies about the site and L. M. Montgomery’s life and then toured barn, house and gift shop in the rain. Once safely back in our RV we had lunch and then departed on the long drive towards Gaspe.
We crossed the Confederation Bridge into New Brunswick. The view from the highway is mostly uninteresting and we stopped only to switch drivers, coffee and ice cream and again later for gas. Once into Quebec the scenery is spectacular and we found a nice campground by the river for the night.
