Exploring with Intuition: Hopewell Rocks and Moncton

Shortly after breakfast, we rolled downhill from the campground to the town of Alma, where we were told we had to stop for Sticky Buns. We weren’t disappointed though, of course, they weren’t quite as good as mom’s. Guess what the road was like again today…

More Construction!

We stopped at an overlook where Beth caught Noah and I rested in the comfy red chairs looking out over the bay. Being used to construction we again followed the lighthouse signs, this time to Cape Enrage, a high cliff with a lighthouse perched at the end to warn mariners of the rock outcropping that protrudes into the bay. It has been restored by local volunteers and had good access with stairs to the bottom of the cliffs. One of the guides was kind enough to take our picture. Lighthouses here don’t need to be tall like in Florida since they can be built on high cliffs. This is a favorite place for rock climbing and we met a group that had just repelled down the rock face. After finding a few more fossils, we climbed back up the stairs to head further east to Hopewell Rocks, the most famous attraction in the area. This is where there are daily tide changes of up to forty-six feet! The roads were pretty along the coast and we even passed a 110 year old covered bridge. Once at Hopewell we noticed a couple of other Mercedes vans like ours in the parking lot, one was even a four wheel drive model with German license plates. The rocks themselves were amazing. We walked down around mid-tide and could stand at the base of the “flower pot rocks.” You can image why they were named this. At high tide, the water covers all of the hour-glass shape and they look like small islands. As we walked further along the shore, the tide continued to descend revealing alien looking mud flats that extended at least a mile into the bay. I wouldn’t want to get stuck in the mud here. We did pass one platform with ladders specifically built in case people were trapped on the sea floor as the tide comes in.

Since we still had plenty of light left during these long northern summer days, we continued on to the city of Moncton where we parked at the visitor center to see the tidal bore. We were early, so walked into town and enjoyed some good Italian fare. A tidal bore is a wave that forms when the tide coming up the river overwhelms the river running out to sea. This is such a popular phenomenon here that they built a park with a little amphitheater to wait for the water to do it’s thing. Our timing was perfect as the wave started just as we returned from dinner. If we had ordered dessert, we would have missed the bore. They say that it can range from 8 inches to 3 feet, depending on the strength of the tides, and when it is large, people actually surf the wave up the river. We all found something to like in Moncton; Noah was excited to find a big comic book and game store right across the street from the park. After buying some Canadian playing cards as souvenirs, we drove back down the windy coastal road to the national park campsite and didn’t have any trouble falling asleep.