Author Archives: Jill and Bud

We are headed up the west coast of Newfoundland towards our next stop in Labrador. Last year we stopped at the National Historical Site here. There are traces of ancient Dorset people here, and we saw a caribou. So I thought we should stay here on our way up to the ferry.

I reserved a site at the Sea Shore RV Park, which turns out to be some RV hook-ups in the back lot of the Sea Echo Motel.

We have water and electric, we’re the only RV here and we’re right across the road with an open view to Gargamelle Cove, so it’s fine with us.

Matey and I walked out and explored when we got here. It’s a picturesque little port. Port au Choix (Port a Schwaa) is a corruption of Gaelic for little port, but is now usually taken to mean Port of Choice, from the French. It fits both names.

There’s an active fishing fleet and a fish processing plant.

Like everywhere in Newfoundland, if there’s a nice view a place is provided for viewing. This is right along the main street at the harbor.

And if there’s a notable bit of history, a display is made for anyone interested. I have found these things in every community we have visited and they make me feel like I’m being welcomed everywhere.

This morning we went to walk the Philip’s Garden Trail along the coast at the National Historic Site in hopes of seeing caribou. I got out of the truck, looked to the side and there was a caribou!

I was hoping I could get Bud’s attention before he went away. I needn’t have worried, he came right towards us. We got back in the truck with Matey and watched him come up.

He walked right behind us and over to some buildings.

After we started up the trail we looked back and he had gone into the water and he swam across the little cove to the opposite shore.

The trail itself was beautiful.

This is a wind-swept coast so the forest near the sea is all in miniature.

The rocks, too, were fascinating.

We didn’t get far before Matey showed signs of tiring so we headed back. We decided to do some touring by car.

First we drove out to the end of Point Riche, which is part of the National Historic Site. The wind was howling and these waves were big. We saw some breakers out in the water that were well over six feet.

We decided to drive north of town to look for more caribou, and when we turned around to drive back out we spotted this group of caribou cows.

There were at least two calves, but it was hard to see them as they were lying in the grass.

We did take the road north out of town. That turned out to be rough gravel through very pretty country.

We went by an area that had a lot of yellow flowers. When we got close I saw they were orchids! There must have been over a hundred of these yellow lady’s slippers there.

There are only about 550,000 people in all of Newfoundland and Labrador so it’s easy to get to a place where you can’t see or hear anyone. I’ve also noticed that there are very few aircraft. All you hear are wind and waves.

We came to a boggy area with another miniature forest. This one had larches, as well as spruce.

Later in the afternoon we took another walk. This time we went out the side of the cove the caribou had swum to.

We didn’t see him, but I did find another plant new to me.

This is Golden Root, Rhodiola rosea, and it grows wild in the Arctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America. I was excited to have found an Arctic plant!

We’re leaving Port au Choix tomorrow, but I will not forget it.

Getting around in Newfoundland is definitely beautiful, but this year we are spending more time here so we can take things more slowly.

I am appreciating the smaller things. Of course the flowers. Geum rivale; Purple Avens.

Clintonia borealis; Blue-bead Lily which is named for its fruit, not the flower.

But I am also noticing the smells. Even walking around the wooded part of this campground (KOA Gros Morne/Norris Point) it smells of conifers, like your house with a fresh cut Christmas tree.

And the sounds. Being here earlier things are wetter and there are little streams everywhere.

I noticed this cloud, which seemed to hang in one spot in the sky even though there was a breeze.

There are so many walking trails here, and they are made with just enough intrusion into the landscape to let you immerse yourself in your surroundings without struggling.

They let you see the forest beauty,

and notice when the woods offers up an arrangement to rival any human design.

When help is needed to protect you or the forest, it is given, but not too much.

Of course nowhere is perfect. There are all these little black bugs that bite me if I stop moving, but that’s what the screen house is for. (Just know that every photo you see comes at a price!)

The nickname for the island of Newfoundland (as opposed to the Province of Newfoundland Labrador) is The Rock. And it’s pretty apparent why. As soon as you start driving north on TransCanada Highway 1 from Channel-Port aux Basques where the ferry lands, you are treated to views of the Long Range Mountains. These are a northern extension of the Appalachians and here are not as high, but far more rocky.

It may be a rock, but it is beautiful, and we are glad to be back. This is looking at the western flank of the Long Range Mountains (which, as their name says, run up the whole western side of the island) and up that very pretty valley you can still see some snow.

We came back to Grand Codroy RV and Tent Camping Park. It’s a very popular place and just a 30 minute drive from the ferry dock. You can tell when the ferry comes in, the campers soon follow.

Even with a full park there’s plenty of room to breathe.

The campground is on the Grand Codroy River in the Codroy Valley. This valley has world famous wetlands and enough soil that there’s a dairy farm.

Matey and I walked the short trail through the woods here.

Besides lovely glimpses of the river I found two flowers which I must tell you about.

The first is Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense).

In some places it carpeted the understory.

The second is this tiny flower, Moneses uniflora. It grows around the Northern Hemisphere in temperate, moist coniferous forests and has at least eight common names. You’re looking at the backs of the blossoms as they hang down.

It was hard to turn this blossom up and take its picture, this is the best I could do. My favorite common name for this tiny beauty is Frog’s Reading Lamp.

Later we took a ride to walk the Port aux Basques Coast Trail from the All Trails App. We thought it odd that the route there took us on this very narrow dirt road.

When we were almost to where it said to park the road turned to this deep sand. We parked just before the sand at a wide spot by a sign that told us we were on the T’Railway ATV trail. No wonder! This ATV trail is a Provincial Park that runs 900 kilometers from Port aux Basques to St. John’s. It follows the roadway from the narrow gauge railroad that was replaced by Highway 1 and finally closed in 1988 after 90 years of service. The roadbed became a park in 1997. In any case, it’s a multi-use trail for hikers, snowmobiles and ATV’s and not pickup trucks.

The Port aux Basques Coast Trail was actually a walk along the beach, and we didn’t go far as the wind was blowing the sand in Matey’s eyes.

We explored the cove a bit and found this wreckage. We couldn’t tell what it had been, but it had hand hewn beams and wooden pegs.

Since the beach trail didn’t work out we drove back to the Cape Ray lighthouse about four miles away.

The road ended at the lighthouse, but this track went down to the shore. Bud was going to drive down, but I told him the road ended on the map, we should just park and walk.

It’s a good thing we did. This is looking back up from below the point where the track kind of falls away into the ocean. Someone tried to bypass the eroded part and sunk these ruts deep into the boggy soil.

We walked between the ruts and the bank and came down to another rugged and beautiful spot on the coast.

These were the wave washed rocks. I think that’s pink granite.

Bud found some kelp that he was examining closely. He said it smelled good. He might have tasted it.

It’s so interesting to poke around the coast here. It’s always beautiful and again, you can see why they call this place The Rock.

Yesterday we had a few jobs to do. This is our water heater with the water draining out. We were going to drain this a campground ago and found out the drain plug is also an anti-corrosion anode. So we put off the chore until we could find one. The anode should be replaced yearly.

We bought one two days ago. Can you guess which is the old one? I guess we are a bit late with the change.

New anode in, no leaks.

All buttoned up. Wow, a job that went well, no surprises, no problems!

Yesterday afternoon after Bud had topped off both our truck tanks with diesel, we hitched up. We needed to leave the campground before 6 AM because we’re taking the ferry today and had to check in at 6:30.

We made it, no problem. Here we’re driving into the bow of the ferry. It’s one huge ship.

So for the next 110 miles of our journey we are on the water.

I took this just as we pulled away from the dock. That’s another Marine Atlantic Ferry on the right side of the dock, we had been on the left.

For a bit we watched the shore go by.

But soon this was the view, no icebergs or whales in sight.

So we’re just chilling in our dog-friendly cabin.

Bud packed us a lunch, but grabbed the leftover asparagus instead of the tuna fish, so I guess we’ll wait on lunch. We should be in port before 2:00 Newfoundland time (another half hour earlier than Atlantic).

And now this is our view, so we’re just listening to the ship’s foghorn until we arrive.

We’ve moved along further northeast in preparation for taking the ferry back to Newfoundland. That happens Friday. Meanwhile we’re staying at Mira River Provincial Park not far from Sydney, Nova Scotia. As you can see from the photo we have a reasonable amount of room here, so that’s nice.

There was a nearby disc golf course so we thought we’d try again. It was in a park, and that usually means a pretty open course. Some areas were park-like, but even then the baskets were guarded by trees.

Other holes were pretty much in the woods. It was reasonably cleared unless you threw a wild shot. Bud was throwing a lot of wild shots, so we spent some time looking for his discs. He was getting frustrated; I was throwing fairly well and my bad shots were short and didn’t get in a lot of trouble.

The fairways were definitely rougher towards the end of the course. And Bud was having bad luck. His approach shot was closer than mine on this hole. I then threw a shot right up next to the basket. His shot hit the chains, so should have gone into the basket, but managed to carom off, land on edge and roll back down the hill in front of the basket. He was more than a little frustrated now.

We played all eighteen holes and I won handily. I thought the course was fun and quite pretty, if a bit rough. Bud said maybe we should give up on Canadian disc golf.

Nuff said.

Admittedly, our standards are now pretty high. But although Caribou-Munroes Island Provincial Park looked promising, it has proved to be a bit of a disappointment.

I had high hopes at 3:30 Friday afternoon, sitting in my little screen tent and looking out over Northumberland Straight towards Pictou Island.

But by 4:30 this was my view!

It does have some nice open spaces and a good beach. The water in Northumberland Straight is supposed to be the warmest ocean water north of the Carolinas.

And Canadians do like to take advantage of “summer”. I was wearing two light jackets when I took this photo. Anyway, the park was full with too many kids and dogs for our taste.

Saturday was a gloomy day so I went to the cute little town of Pictou to do my wash.

The laundromat was in the picturesque part of town and I had the little place to myself, but I paid more than I’ve ever had to for wash. $4 a load to wash and $4 to dry, and they weren’t huge loads!

I had high hope Sunday. We were going to walk out along the beach to Munroes Island where there is reportedly a stand of old growth birches.

We did see the ferry heading out for Prince Edward Island.

But we found no old growth trees. We just found a lot of the rubber bands they put on lobster claws, which we gathered up and put in the trash.

Today we tried to play disc golf. There was a close course but it was at a high school, which was in session. So we drove about 30 miles to this course on Keppoch Mountain. It was a pay to play course on a recreation area. We put our $10 in the box and set out. We might have known things weren’t right when the first basket was somewhat haphazardly placed among odd discards.

We kept going, despite the berry bushes that grew in thorny groves along some parts of the fairway. Bud managed to get both his feet wet in a bog.

Obviously the course was not getting much care, but the kicker came when we came across many missing baskets.

We gave up and walked out. So another day that was pretty much a bust.

Oh well, at least this park has one little plot of woods to feed my soul.

This is our last day on the shores of the Bay of Fundy for this part of our trip. The tides here just fascinate me; as I’ve said, these are the highest tides in the world.

We took a short drive to Wassons Bluff. There a trail takes you down to a small beach near cliffs where tens of thousands of dinosaur bones have been found.

It’s a very pretty place in the vicinity of Two Islands.

While Bud wandered over to look for fossils I became fascinated with the tide, which was now coming in.

Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, and to a lesser extent, the sun, on the water in the oceans. How high a tide is at any place depends on how the water is pulled against the land. In places where there is a large continental shelf the water piles up. In places where the continents restrict the flow of water the water piles up. Both of those things happen at the Bay of Fundy, but there is another contributor. Water sloshes in the bay just like it will in a basin if you tip it. How fast it flows from end to end depends on the size of the basin. It just so happens that water sloshes in Fundy Bay in about 13 hours. The tidal cycle is twelve and a half hours. So as water is moving either into or out of the bay from sloshing, the moon gives it another pull, amplifying the movement.

And that movement is astonishing. This is a one minute video I took of the tide coming up on a rock. It may seem like a slow video, but what you are seeing is the actual rise of the tide, the water was otherwise still. At the end of the minute I looked closely at the depth of water on the seaward edge of the rock. It was at least an inch deep. An inch in a minute. That’s five feet in an hour!

And this is happening all across this huge bay. That’s an almost unimaginable amount of water moving.

People get stranded along these shores all the time. Rescuers are dispatched in boats to save them. It’s already happened twice this season at this campground.

Now I can see how strandings happen. You are wandering about looking for fossils or taking pictures…

and a half an hour later, half your beach is gone!

We stayed where we had a path up, but many people walk along the base of the rock cliffs and if they misjudge they are stranded.

That’s why there is a sign with the current tide times posted at the beach entrance here.

We will be spending one more day here at Glooscap Campground in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. I was going to wait and make a single post about our explorations but I’ve already got almost too many photos for one post.

First the tides. This was taken from the bank in front of our camper at low tide.

This was taken about an hour before high tide. The tides right now have been about 34 feet here. The record tide is 54.7 feet recorded at Burntcoat Head, just over twenty miles from here as the crow flies. The amount of water that flows in and out of the Bay of Fundy with every tidal cycle (about 12.5 hours) is more than flows over Niagara Falls in a year and eight months!

Just after I took that second picture, late morning yesterday, we headed over to Partridge Island for a hike. The island is on the other end of this sand spit. Since this was pretty much high tide I think this is only an island during rare storms.

As we walked out I saw this adorable house off to the side.

It sits pretty much by itself but is only a couple of miles from Parrsboro. I love it.

At the end of the sand spit a green and leafy trail went up the island.

We climbed until we could see back down the way we’d come…

and then far out along the bay.

We spotted the shore where our camp is…

yep, that’s us.

After lunch we visited the Fundy Geological Museum in town. Turns out there are rocks from every geological age at the surface in Nova Scotia, and examples of them are all here along the cliffs near Parrsboro. The erosion from the high tides is constantly revealing new rocks and new fossils. My favorite exhibit was this replication of ancient tracks found that they mounted under glass in the floor. At the end of the tracks is a model of the creature that made them. The two red tracks on top of the glass are just their guides through the museum.

Late in the afternoon when the tide was still falling we walked along our beach to the cliffs at the end. These are sandstone cliffs along the way.

Near the point the sand was piled in waves from the action of the tides.

Matey was excited to get to run on sand, but even where the sand waves were less pronounced they gave him trouble.

The cliffs got bigger…

until at the point they were huge monoliths.

We didn’t find any fossils…

but we enjoyed the strange shapes.

Today we drove towards the end of the peninsula that splits the head of the bay. The whole tip is Cape Chignecto Provincial Park. There’s a day use area where the red pin is. We wanted to take a hike there. Unfortunately a bridge is out on the normal entrance road.

So we had to take the Eatonville Road, which started like this…

but soon enough became a single track through the woods…

with bridges barely wider than the truck. Which is why my map program says the 43 mile trip would take an hour and 29 minutes. That was probably a bit of an underestimate.

At the end of the drive was this huge building, at this time totally empty. It looks like they’re working on the entrance drive, we had to walk in a couple of hundred feet. The whole time we were there we were the only ones.

The view from the platform gave a taste of what was to come.

We took the Three Sisters Trail. Most of the trail was like this.

It had a number of nice picnic areas.

The last little bit was a cut through the woman at the park office told me about. It made the trail a loop and cut off probably almost a mile of backtracking. As it was we walked 1.8 miles. But along the way were lookouts.

The first one was for Anderson Cove.

Look-off 2 was Eatonville Harbour…

which now looks like this.

At the next lookout was this dramatic split…

as well as this sea spire. Signs explained that the spire started as a split but then eroded to this single column.

I was able to catch a shot of one of two sea kayaks that were exploring by water.

The final Look-off was of the Three Sisters, and it was gorgeous!

Then we took the Eatonville Road back across to the other arm of the bay.

Now you see why I decided I’d better post our visit so far!

We are now very close to the head of the Bay of Fundy, at Glooscap Campground just outside Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. We’re the blue dot on the map.

I booked this site on February 6th, so there were lots of choices. We’re the camper closest to the water. Inland from us there’s a break where there is a walkway to the lane going down to the beach.

This is the view from in front of our door.

Matey and I took a walk down the lane to the beach. I think those lupines on the bank are just growing wild.

This is looking west towards Parrsboro. It’s about an hour from low tide. Way to the left you can see Partridge Island, which is a place we will probably explore while we’re here.

This is looking east, and I gather this is the direction to go to explore the bottoms of the cliffs. To get a feeling on the size of the exposed beach notice the couple headed towards the cliffs.

For this photo I was standing about halfway out the beach looking back at our camper. Can you see the roof just left of center?

There are some bugs here so after our walk I took five minutes to set up my new Clam Quick-Set Traveler screen enclosure.

I think when we’re not out exploring Matey and I will be spending our time enjoying this view.