Fun Days Hiking, Driving and Kayaking Along Fundy – St. Martins New Brunswick [July 9 & 10, 2018]

One of the St. Martins sea caves at low tide...

 

...and at high tide.

Our last stop on the Bay of Fundy was easily the best stop.  The tiny, scenic village of St. Martins, New Brunswick (population <400) has sea caves that you can walk to at low tide, two covered bridges, and one of the few kayak outfitters that will take you kayaking in the Bay of Fundy. It also is the entrance to the spectacular Fundy Trail and Fundy Trail Parkway.

The harbor and covered bridge (to the left).  Note kayak group that stayed in the protected harbor.

Other covered bridge (both bridge photos from top of the lighthouse Visitor Information Center)

The Visitors Information Center in downtown St. Martins is located in a re-purposed lighthouse next to the protected harbor.  A few feet to one side is a covered bridge, and a few feet to the other side is another covered bridge.  At high tide, the fishing boats float along side the wharf, and at low tide they sit on the muddy bottom of the harbor.  A classic Bay of Fundy scene.  We camped an easy bicycle ride away from the harbor, so peddled down a couple of times during our stay.

High tide in the harbor

Low tide in the harbor

Just outside of the harbor are the majestic St. Martins sea caves.  At low tide, you can walk across the gravel sea floor and climb inside the caves.  At high tide, you look across at the waves splashing against the cliff face.  The breadth of the caves is created by the constant pounding of the tidal motion and waves.  The height of the caves is caused by ground water seeping through cracks in the sandstone and freezing and breaking off chunks of the cave roofs.  The caves are quite an attraction and tour buses come from the city of St. John 42 km away to see the caves and to have the tourists eat at the two seafood restaurants located on the beach.  Both claim to have the best seafood chowder, but the best chowder this trip for us was made by our cousin in Weston VT.

Part of the Fundy Trail coastline

And this untouched beach

At one time, St. Martins had a thriving wooden ship building industry, with the 3^rd highest production in Atlantic Maritime Canada, producing a total of 500 ships.  You can learn about this rich heritage at the Quaco Museum in town.  When wooden ships were no longer being used, the region turned to harvesting the plentiful trees for wood and paper until the 1950s.  The area where a lot of the lumbering took place has been left alone since and is now part of the longest undeveloped coastline on the Atlantic Coast of the US or Canada.

Craggy cliffs

Over the years, a rugged 41 km hiking trail was built here, connecting St. Martins with Fundy National Park.  The hike has very steep ascents/descents and crosses several tidal rivers.  The demanding, isolated trail (or footpath as they say in Canada) takes 3-4 days to complete.

Crossing the suspension bridge over the tidal Big Salmon River

Tides that go out forever at Long Beach

Most recently, they have started building a motor parkway that follows the same coastline path as the trail.  30 km (19 miles) are done with overlook pull outs and hikes along the way.  In some places the mountain has been hacked away to provide cut-throughs for the road.  In others, you ascend a 16% grade, which you will descend when you return at the end of the day, a challenge when driving a many-ton motor home.  Scenic vistas of coastline cliffs and pristine beaches await around many corners.  It is an exquisite drive.  You can walk across a suspension bridge and you can use cable “stairs” to descend down the sides of cliffs for better views.

Kayaking Bay of Fundy!  It looks calm, looks can be deceiving

Yup, just 2 boats for this excursion

On our last day in St. Martins, we explored the sea caves by kayak.  You rarely see any pleasure boats on the waters of the Bay of Fundy.  The water is hypothermia cold, and the currents and tides are powerful and dangerous.  We were fortunate to go out on a kayak excursion with just one other tandem boat that also had experienced kayakers.  Our guide took us on a more challenging paddle than he would have taken novices.   We paddled around a point of land to caves that you can only walk to at the lowest tides.  Russ had walked to them the day before, the scramble to get to them on foot was beyond Dana and Tiki.

Cave with water in it

Same cave, no water, note the beach at the end.

Inside the cave, looking out

The paddling was spectacular and the views of the cliffs from the water were marvelous.  There are red cliffs of sandstone, and grey cliffs that are what is left of deposition from an ancient river that flowed there during the times of Pangea.  We learned even more about the geology of the region from our guide, supplementing the bits we have been learning along the way.  Once again, we wished that we had studied geology at some point in our pasts.  We pushed our nose inside a flooded cave, and beached our boats on a secluded beach for a snack and a rest.

View from the beach of that cove

When Russ scrambled around to see the remote cave at low tide, he looked back and zoomed in to take this picture

This is what he climbed on to reach the cove.

The view of the caves from the campground

The view of the campground from the caves

Well Known and Lesser Known Crazy Rocks – Bay of Fundy - Hopewell Rocks and Cape Enrage, New Brunswick [July 7 & 8, 2018]

Islands that you can walk around at low tide.

Have you ever wondered what an island looks like under the water where it descends to the ocean floor?  At Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick you can walk at low tide on the ocean floor beneath huge sandstone monoliths that have been carved by the Fundy tides.  You can return at high tide and see them as islands, topped by trees and greenery. 

Low Tide

High(ish) tide

Of all the Bay of Fundy sights, Hopewell Rocks is one of the most iconic.  Whenever you see something about Fundy, these rocks are almost always featured as one of the visuals.  People flock to this New Brunswick Provincial Park to walk on the ocean floor beneath (and through) these rock formations.  It is hard to imagine the scope of them.   

To reach the rocks, you walk (or can hitch a shuttle ride) through a pretty forest, with overlooks to the rocks below.  Then, when the tide is accommodating, you walk down 101 steps to the gravel seabed, from where you can walk in both directions looking up at these amazing creations.

 We spent several hours exploring this interesting shoreline at low tide, and as the tide was starting to come in.  You are "allowed" on the sea floor 3.5 hours before and after low tide.  We returned the next morning to see the rock formations as islands.  We were only 2 hours after high tide, but already some of the sea floor was exposed and people had gone down to walk among the rocks that were accessible. (We did, too.)

Nothing says “Bay of Fundy” quite like the Hopewell Rocks.   

Cape Enrage lighthouse keepers duplex and lighthouse

Further along the coast is a much less known but possibly more dramatic Fundy destination, Cape Enrage.  Cape Enrage is the location of a light house perched atop a wind-swept escarpment sticking high out into the Bay of Fundy.  Another New Brunswick Provincial Park, you reach Cape Enrage by way a windy (barely) two-lane road with steep inclines and blind turns.   

The lighthouse close up

The remote light house complex has been restored.  The lighthouse itself is still “working” so you cannot climb up inside it.  In fact, there are signs warning you about the possibility of damaging your hearing should the fog horn sound while you are in front of it.   

On top of a very tall cliff...

You can rappel down this cliff or "simply" walk down the narrow metal stairs to the beach below

The lighthouse keepers’ duplex homes are now a restaurant with a million dollar view.  There is a zipline that goes from cliff to cliff over the open water and rock climbing down the rugged cliffs to the beach below.  New Brunswick is a happening, high adventure place.  It was so windy while we were there that we did not attempt the long, narrow, steep, metal stairs down to the beach.  It was simply spectacular to be up on the top of the cliffs looking out at the view.

Oh, it was windy and cold.  You can see part of the zipline to the left of the photo.

Fossils in Nova Scotia – Bay of Fundy – Parrsboro and Joggins, Nova Scotia [July 5 and 6, 2018]

With hard hats standing in front of (and among fragments of) fossils at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs

Three hundred million years ago, landmasses were moving together to form what is now known as Pangea, one big continent.  Then later, pieces of Pangea would drift off forming the continents that we know today.  During the formation of Pangea, the Nova Scotia coastline of the Bay of Fundy became attached to what is now Morroco, and was located at the equator.  As the landmasses bumped into each other to form Pangea, horizontal segments of rock on the Nova Scotia Fundy shoreline moved and bent upward under the pressure forming hills and mountains. 

Pressure during the formation of Pangea pushed this horizontal rock strata at Parrsboro to vertical, and bent it.

The rock strata at Joggins is all tilted.  Different layers have eroded at different rates.

These rocks have become eroded over time as the Fundy tides have worn them away, and fossils of a bygone time have been exposed.  We started our fossil tours at the Fundy Geological Museum, in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.  Canada’s oldest dinosaur fossil was found in Parrsboro.

Dinosaur tracks on the side of a cliff.  The textured look is from cracked, dried mud turned to stone.

The bumpy thing in the upper left of the rock is a "cast" of a footprint.  The footprint was left in the mud, and the silt that filled it in turned to stone, making a reverse copy of the footprint.

It was a glorious, sunny day when we went on a fossil beach walk with the Fundy Geological folks.  We found a lot of trace fossils, fossilized dried and cracked mud, fossils of the ridges that water left in the sand, and (drum roll please) footprints of small dinosaurs.  The footprints were on the side of a cliff.  A dinosaur walked across some mud, and those footprints were eventually frozen in stone.  Pressure from the continents moving together forced that bit of stone up.  We found bits of fossils in rocks strewn along the beach.  After our guide described to us what we were seeing in the rock, she put the rock back down on the beach.  It would be covered with water at the next high tide.  It is illegal to collect fossils in Nova Scotia without a special permit.

The cliff is eroding, revealing this tree trunk at Joggins.

The nearby Joggins Fossil Cliffs provide a remarkable portrait of what life was like during the Carboniferous Age, when coal was formed, the before the time of the dinosaurs.  Mostly plants lived at that time with insects, some amphibians and an early reptile.  Because they were at the equator and it was warm and humid, the plants grew to be very tall.  After they died, many of them remained standing and they were covered by layers of sand and silt, and became fossilized where they stood.  They are literally standing in the stone on the side of the cliff.  Since the stone was subsequently bent upward, the trees are tilted sideways.  In some cases, scientists have found the remains of insects and other creatures in what would have been the hollow trunks of what were (at that time) dead trees.  All of these are known as in situ fossils and the information around the fossils as well as the fossils themselves tell important stories of that time.

A stem of a plant

We visited Joggins on a rainy day.  As we started our tour, a rain squall, complete with hail, started as well.  Within 10 minutes of the 2 hour tour we were all drenched to the skin.  Hail rattled off the hard hats we were wearing.  We wandered along the beach looking up at the cliffs at the trees fossilized there.  We found many fossils of bark and tree roots in the rocks along the beach.  As in Parrsboro, specimens were placed back on the beach after they were examined and discussed.  It was a bit disconcerting that put the huge root that we found back down on the sand.  To us it was a momentous find, to Joggins it is just one of many, many tree roots.  Someone in our group found a fossil of tiny footprints.  Since there were not many animals then, to find footprints is very special.  Joggins is a UNESCO World Heritage site which requires that the site be kept as natural as possible to allow future generations to discover fossils there. 

"Our" tree root.  The dimples are what is left of the "hairs" put out by roots.

As a quick note, after the drenching tour, we retired to the motor home, changed clothes and heated up a pot of soup.  Then, warm and dry inside and out, we returned to the museum to finish our way through it.

Can you see the tiny footprint just over the guides index finger clutching the rock?

It was an unexpected delight to find fossils in Nova Scotia, especially since they are millions of years apart in age.  As the folks in Joggins say, “They are a bit younger over in Parrsboro (at 200 million years old) than we are here at Joggins.”  Heh, heh!  A little fossil humor.

Ferns fossils