Saturday, July 1, 2017

Fun at the Bay of Fundy

There is so much to explore along the coast and visiting the Bay of Fundy is a must. About a 40 minute drive from Moncton are the Hopewell Rocks in Hopewell Cape. These natural rock formations caused by tidal erosion are also called Flowerpot Rocks and stand 40-70 feet tall. Before visiting the park, it's best to check the tide times because the Rocks ar only fully visible at low tide. At low tide you can also access the ocean floor and walk amongst the rocks. It's an amazing sight to see and with the constant tidal movement the rocks continue to erode and change their shapes. We arrived for low tide and had a great time exploring the rocks, and ocean floor which to our amazement was a muddy and rock floor instead of a sandy floor. As you walk along you also encountered large areas of exposed seaweed. The tops of the rocks are topped with vegetation which at low tide seems a title out of place. Access to the rocks is a short trail walk from the park entrance. Keeping an eye on the watch is important because you certainly don't want to be stuck far out there as the tide starts to come in. 

Alma harbour at low tideBecause we also wanted to see the rocks at high tide, we made a day of this excursion and made our way to Alma, a small seaside village. We came here for lunch and as it was still low tide, in the harbour you could see all the moored boats sitting on the bottom of the ocean; a natural "dry-dock" I suppose. While we didn't have time to stay here to watch the tide come in, it must be an interesting sight t watch as the harbour fills with water and these boats all rise and are again accessible from the docks. We had a great lunch at Tipsy Tail, which at first we didn't choose as our lunch spot based on its exterior. Thankfully we looked it up on TripAdvisor and ended up having an awesome lunch there. 

From Alma we drove the coastal route back towards Hopewell Rocks but with a planned stop in Cape Enrage. Here you will find a 140-year old still operating lighthouse perched at the edge of the rocky cliff side. You can explore the ocean floor here as well and look for fossils embedded in the rocks, however by the time we got here the tide was already coming in so we didn't have that much time to look for these fossils. Before heading to the lighthouse, there is a pull out spot where you'll find a rocky beach. The unusual thing about these rocks though is that they are all strangely flat. We did not find a single round rock. 

As we continued back along Scenic Route 915 admiring the fantastic views of the Bay on one side and the green landscape on the other, we stumbled upon a winery called Waterside Winery pretty much in the middle of no where. We stopped in for a tasting and found this winery made fruit based wines. We were surprised by the taste of the samples. We tried a blueberry wine which was rather dry, not sweet as you would think based on the fruit. We also tried a blackberry wine which was one of our favourites and we ended up buying; a rhubarb wine which I was surprised that I liked as much as I did because I don't like rhubarb; and a cranberry wine, which tasted more like cranberry juice and didn't excite our palette. This was a great little find that we would never had discovered if we didn't decide to take the route less travelled on. 

Back at Hopewell Rocks we made it in time for high tide. It was amazing to think that only 5 hours earlier we were walking on the ocean floor amongst the rocks and now these lofty rocks looked like islands instead of tall columns. We were told that day hide tide was 41 feet and can at times get to 45 feet. It's definitely worth seeing at both low and high tide. 



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