Saturday, July 7

The Bay of Fundy
Leaving Quebec City, we traveled on the south side of the St. Lawrence because the last bridge to cross the river is in Quebec City.  We traveled up and over the tip of Maine all the way into a new province, New Brunswick into another time zone. Now we are one hour ahead of Eastern time.  A large town and central spot near the Bay of Fundy is Moncton.  This is where the bay makes an inlet all the way to a point.  Here though, the tides are not as dramatic although we could tell a big difference today with it being high tide as we were coming along and then the next day it being low tide.
In the Bay of Fundy tide changes can be up to 46 feet (vertical) in difference from low to high and they change every 6 hours or so from one extreme to the other.  At this particular time, the tides are very high due to the full moon which is slightly waning.  Full moons and new moons create greater differences in the tides.  For instance, next week, the tides won't be as dramatic. 

Going around the tip of Maine.  This is Maine, U.S.A. in the distance on the other side of the river.

Some kind of golden yellow flowers, field after field of them.

Billboards do work!  After seeing one advertising the world's longest covered bridge, we took a detour.

The covered bridge.

One lane bridge, no stoplights but you can see end to end so traffic lines up on both ends and at some point, someone waits while vehicles cross and then the other end will go; there's no rhyme nor reason to it though.

We drove about 45 minutes from Moncton down to an area called Hopewell Rocks where there is a visitor center and observation platforms.  An easy walkable trail goes down to a beach area where rangers guard the entrance until the tide is going out enough and then make sure everyone is back up on the stairs when the tide is rising and is close to covering the beach again.  The issue is that the tide moves FAST, very fast.  Today's high tide was 42 feet.  Within an a hour, it had dropped about 4-5 feet down.  When the park ranger opened the beach, he placed a large rock in the sand right at the edge of the water and we watched as within one or two minutes, the water did not come near the rock again.  We stayed for quite awhile as JB and the children skipped rocks across the surface, along with the park ranger.  Then a huge rainstorm came.  The children mostly played on the beach in the rain but eventually sought cover under a huge area of rock with a cave-like entrance where we were.  An Amish-Mennonite couple on their honeymoon was under the rock with us.  By the time an hour has passed we had all gotten to know each other pretty well and they even asked us to take pictures of them with their camera. 

When we finally got back to the car we were all pretty wet.  It reminded me of walks in the forest when you might be caught in a rainstorm but it's really okay except that in July it might feel good, but here, the rain was cold.  Tomorrow morning we will come back and see a low tide.  The park will not be open this evening or early in the am for the next cycle so we will experience the lowest tide at 10:27 am, Atlantic Time Zone.

*Pictures of the Bay of Fundy to follow in another post.
Quote of the Day:  JB took the children to the hotel pool on Saturday evening while I put the baby to bed and (tried) to update my blog (I'm still having problems loading pictures.)  When they came back, Harris described an experience at the pool with a little French girl: 
H:  "It's a good thing I know how to say 'excuse me'  in French.
Me:  "Why is that?"
H:  "Because this little girl said it to me in French and I knew what she said."
M:  "So how do you say, 'Excuse Me' in French?"
And this is the quote of the day:  Harris replies, "I don't remember!"