Fundy National Park, New Brunswick

June 23, 2024

After having ventured Northward and Eastward since leaving Florida, we finally ran out of states. Nothing to do then but to make our way into Canada!

Julie had read up on other people's experiences crossing the border with an RV, and as you might expect from the internet, some of the stories were fraught with all sorts of calamities. Many said that you should pretty much throw out all your food, and cautionary tales of $500 fines for a single forbidden apple or bottle of bourbon were solemnly offered. Then there those who said if you had Texas license plates (we don't), the Canadian border patrol wouldn't believe that you didn't have guns, and you were sure to be detained until guns were found. And others said if your bad-luck lottery number came up, your RV would be subjected to an all-cavity body search where the entire contents of your RV would be heaped onto the parking lot for no reason whatsoever.

Of course, there were also plenty of people who said that going through customs was a breeze.

So, which would it be for us: all-cavity body search, or in-and-out in 60 seconds, or something in between? In anticipation of a likely in-between scenario where we might have an agricultural search of the trailer, we had cooked all raw meat and potatoes, eaten all the eggs, and used up or ditched any unlabeled sketchy fresh fruits and vegetables. Oh, and we drank some alcohol, too, to bring down the total quantity to the 2 liters or so allowed.

Is it a good sign or a bad sign that there is no wait? Maybe everyone is sailing through quickly, or maybe the border agents have lots of spare time for interrogation?

With feined confidence, we approached the customs booth. We made sure we didn't have on sunglasses (because everyone online said not to wear sunglasses), and Julie had the passports in hand. And then....about 60 seconds later...we were on our way! After answering where we lived (we gave an answer consistent with our license plates), what was our purpose for going to Canada (rather than say we just wanted to live there for a few weeks, we wisely answered "vacation"), how much alcohol did we have, did we have any weapons or marijuana, and a couple of other questions (nothing pertaining to any food we might or might not have had, surprisingly), our French-accented border agent simply said, "Welcome to Canada". We said thanks and Rick practically floored the accelerator before the guy could change his mind.

We passed the port town of St. John

Sticker shock at the Walmart grocery stop in St. John

Entering Fundy National Park

A small glimpse of the Bay of Fundy

Our campsite at Fundy National Park was very close to the bay, and we had what a marketing professional might advertise as a "partial view".

Our "bay-front view" 😉

Can you see the wave on the water through the trees?

Next to our campsite was a lookout overlooking the town of Alma

The next morning, we took the short trail to Dickson Falls. We were amazed at the technicolor green color of the moss.

We stopped for a look at Fundy Bay on our way back to the campsite.

It was near high tide in the morning

Same shot later in the day near low tide

After lunch, we hiked the Tracey Lake trail. While not spectacular, it was the quintessential "pleasant walk in the woods". With the loudest sound literally being our shoes hitting the ground, the only other things we heard were the wind in the trees and the chirping of birds. No cars, airplanes, dogs barking, or distant screaming children. The air wafted with an ideal Christmas candle scent of pine/spruce/balsam--whatever makes those candles smell so nice. We encountered a total of three other people the whole time.

The forest here was pretty dense

Pretty stream crossing

One of a couple of remote campsites on Tracey Lake

Tracey Lake

We were impressed that the park service provided firewood for these remote campsites--complete with log splitter!

Most of the trail along the lakes only had peak-a-boo views through the trees

Bruin Lake

Wednesday was a gorgeous sunny day, and we hiked the Matthews Head trail.

This trail had a lot of variety: sunny fields, deep forest, and coastline views

Some serious roots to navigate here

The park has placed Adirondack chairs at several points of interest

We really had to watch our step on this trail!

After the hike, we ventured further down the road to see Herring Cove Beach at low tide. Fundy Bay has the highest tides in the world, and you can read more about it in this interesting article.

A long way down to get to the beach

Walking on the "ocean floor"

We were surprised not to see any sea life nor hardly any shells. It looked more like a lake bottom to us.

The rocks were covered with a less than attractive seaweed

The seaweed felt like little rubbery capsules of water

It's a long way back up!

That evening as we were eating dinner on the deck, we were visited by Skippy, a cute little squirrel who climbed to the top of our French door, begging for a handout. He stayed up there for quite a while, chirping and twitching and looking like he wanted to pounce on us to get our dinner. Well, pounce he did, but the execution did not go according to plan. It looked like he thought he could jump onto the ceiling somehow, but that was a major fail. He ended up bouncing on the floor and scurrying off, humiliated and never to return (or so we thought).

Skippy the squirrel

Just before the pounce

While the rest of the continent was experiencing a heat wave the next day, we were quite comfortable outside on our deck as long as the sun was out. When the sun went behind a cloud, we needed to put sweatshirts on due to the fact that our campsite was so close to Fundy Bay and its frigid breezes. We took it pretty easy that day, and in the early evening we ventured into nearby Alma to the Tipsy Whale restaurant overlooking the bay.

Low tide!

Same picture next day at high tide

Our table overlooking the temporarily grounded boats in the bay

When in Canada, drink like a Canadian 😉

Rick had a tasty seafood stew

Julie had a classic lobster roll--yum!

We walked on Alma's boardwalk for a while after dinner, marveling at all the water that was missing.

Same picture taken the next day at high tide.

The empty mouth of the Upper Salmon River

The weather was pleasant while the sun was shining on us during dinner, but some clouds were rolling in and making it chilly. We decided to drive a few kilometers into the interior of the park to experience some of the "heat wave" where temperatures had gotten into the mid 30s that afternoon. (That's mid 90s for us non-metric Americans.) We found ourselves a short, quiet boardwalk trail to a little pond.

Dense forest opening to a small un-named pond

You could point your camera anywhere and get at least a couple of frogs in the picture without any effort

We stayed at the pond for about a half hour listening to the frog symphony, basking in the warm air, and watching birds come and go. We would have stayed longer, but Julie was getting eaten alive by black flies. They didn't seem to like Rick.

On Friday, we hiked the Laverty Falls Loop which traveled along a branch of the Upper Salmon River and passed a few waterfalls.

Some of the trail involved scrambling on the river boulders

Julie was tired of getting bitten by black flies (they seem to prefer heads and necks), and opted to don a fashionable head net

The orange hiker man led the way

Laverty Falls--the grand finale before the final slog uphill back to the trailhead

That evening, we had a repeat visitor:

Skippy's back...

...and he wants in!

Skippy got shooed away after eyeing some tasty cables underneath the trailer

On Saturday we took a walk to Alma to witness high tide and to walk around the town a bit.

The Upper Salmon River

The main drag in downtown Alma

First moose we've spotted this year despite all the Moose X-ing road signs we've encountered

Everything lobster

There is a google group email list which can send you an email when there is a new blog post. Instructions for signing up here: Subscribe OR directly join here: Google Group