Day 8: Bay of Fundy

Waking up, we headed out of Antigonish.

We made a stop at Truro, a city famous for its tidal bores – a phenomenon that occurs with the changing of the tides where the power of the tide overwhelms the natural flow of the river for a brief period of time.

Sadly, when we arrived, we were informed at the tourist bureau that there wouldn’t be anything to see until later that evening and…she couldn’t recommend us anything else to do in the area. Ok…talk about not being excited about your own city.

We found a park with a mini river running through it to eat breakfast, before we made our way to Burntcoat Head Park, the side where the world record of highest tide was recorded.
Driving along the northern shore of Nova Scotia, we saw stretches of red sand – the kind you would imagine to be on Mars…or PEI.

Largely unknown even to locals, Burntcoat Head Park was a gem of a discovery.
The park borders the other side of the Bay of Fundy and thus holds amazing views of the effect of the tide on the shore without us needing to cross the border to New Brunswick. Most Nova Scotians still elect to see the tides from Cape Blomidon or Hall’s Harbour but those were a little more out of the way so we had chosen to take our chances with this park.

After touring a short and fat lighthouse, we headed down a steep slope to get our first view:

In fact, the short and fat lighthouse we had visited used to be located on this plot of land. The erosion of soil and rock because of the tide waters had made this small plot into an island however, and the lighthouse was dismantled and relocated because there were problems getting to it for maintenance.

We had arrived in time for low tide and the water had receded enough for a large expanse of ocean floor to be revealed to us. The ground beneath us was a combination of rock, mud, algae or seaweed.

There were little pools or puddles of water where signs of life were still evident – we found snails and hermit crabs, and sometimes little fishies everywhere we walked. Actually, we found more snails than we would have liked. They crunched under our feet almost every step we took because they were literally scattered every other pebble.

In fact, the ground was so muddy, that I completely understand why it is that there are people every year who need to be rescued from the rising tide. They go out exploring the ocean floor, the tide comes up, and they aren’t fast enough at running back to shore because the mud fights them from lifting their feet to run.

My poor sandals were thoroughly battered and muddy by the time I made it out. Some of the other visitors had actually just given up on their footwear and had elected to cross on bare feet.

Probably the only reason we left the park when we did was because we were getting hungry and we needed to return our rental car. So we made good use of a garden hose to clean our feet before making the drive down to Halifax.

We made a special stop at John’s Lunch in Dartmouth, the neighbouring region of Halifax to eat the best deep fried seafood in all of the Halifax region. Pictured below, the epic platter of deep fried shrimp, clam strips, scallops, fish bites, and coleslaw.

We made one last stop at Evan’s Seafood to grab a Lobster roll for the journey home. At this point, our fuel gauge was at 17km to an empty tank. When we had taken up the rental car, we had purchased the option where you pay for a full tank of gas when you start out and you come back as close to empty as possible at the end.

Had done some calculations on how much gas to put in and had managed to estimate quite well. By the time we reached the rental car office, we had about 6 km left to Empty. The guys at the office just looked at us with wide eyes.

One last run at the souvenir shops at the Historic Properties, and then we were on the shuttle to the airport, biding our farewells to the lovely province of Nova Scotia and its sea-bound coast.

The entire week was a blessing and even our exit was well-timed. It was just the right amount of time to be adventuring – anymore and it would have been too tiring to keep up with the pace we had set.

Our day in driving: