Friday, August 9, 2025
On Tuesday, I did a long drive from Cheticamp, in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, to Fundy National Park in New Brunswick. It was raining for the first hour or so, raining with wisps of fog here and there along back roads which also happen to be the main roads. The area is so thinly populated that I felt like I was deep in the woods. These roads led to the main highway at Whycocomagh. The rest of the way was mostly highway. Upon leaving Nova Scotia, I entered and passed through Moncton, New Brunswick. It was the first densely populated city I had passed through in my nearly three weeks in Canada. From there, it was another hour along a single lane road the coast of the Bay of Fundy, RT 114, though it did not provide views of the water. I was surprised to see, at the end of this drive, there is a little town named Alma just before the park. It takes the entirety of a minute to drive through. It has several restaurants and shops, as well as a post office and a volunteer fire department.
I stayed two nights in Headquarters Campground. It is situated right next to the administrative area of the park, hence the name I guess, though it seems something nicer could have been given it. And I spent two nights at Wolfe Point Campground, about five miles away.
I did bike rides on my second and third days there. RT 114 passes through the park. It is a wide road with a good surface, great for cycling. The section in the park goes nearly thirteen miles. It begins with a steep climb, rising from sea level to 700 feet in about two and a half miles, eventually reaching 1200 feet at the halfway point. From there is rises and falls. Riding out and back is 40K, about 25 miles, and the total climbing is just over 3000 feet.
The hilly terrain is lined by trees the entire way. My knowledge of Bay of Fundy was entirely based on the tides. I have heard of these tides for years, and have seen photos depicting scenes at low and high tides, ships sitting on land in one photo, resting on the water in another. But I learned in this trip that the majority of the park is forest. There are miles and miles of hiking trails, including a 30-mile circuit of connecting trails that circumvents the park. It has backcountry campsites to facilitate multi-day adventures covering the entire trail.
I mostly did walks to the beach and town from Headquarters. The one short hike I did was Coppermine from Wolfe Point. Coppermine is a rolling hike in forested land with sections right on the coast, 200 feet above the shoreline of rocks and sand. The forest there has a rich, moss-covered floor in many places. I am familiar with moss-covered rocks and wood, but here the moss grows all along the forest floor as well. It’s like a carpet.
Wonderful forests aside, the tides are amazing. At high tide, the beach at Alma is a crescent, while at low tide, it is over half a mile to walk out to the water’s edge. At high tide the boats float high at the docks, while at low tide they site on supports on “dry” land. One has to plan one’s trips in and out of the harbor accordingly. It is generally 6h 14m between tides, low tide coming 6h 14 m after high tide, then 6h 14m to the next high tide.
On one visit into town, I went to a food take-out place that had fried clams. There was a deck with picnic tables. I sat with my clams and fries there. The deck overlooked the small Alma Harbor. It was high tide, boats were floating on water. A van pulled into the parking lot. A family got out and walked down to the boats briefly. The dad had a compression sock on one leg. “What’s with that?” I wondered. Sports related? Aging issue? There’s a story to everything …
They did a short walk to the boats, then returned and walked down toward the main street, away from the take-out place. The Mom and a daughter were walking arm-in-arm. Two other kids walking alongside. The thought struck me, why did I notice this family in some detail, and not others?
Later, I am back at my Wolfe Point campsite, sitting on the floor of my van, feet hanging out on the ground, and that family’s van pulls up and parks in the site two places over, with the site between us vacant. I start talking with the dad. They are from Manitoba. They drove here by coming south into the states into Minnesota, then across the Midwest into New England. He said his wife loved Connecticut. Soon she joins us, sees my license plate, says she loved coming through Connecticut. She loved the old homes, she said. We talked about the weather and other things of Manitoba. I don’t know how people in live in South Dakota and North Dakota, let alone farther north on the plains of Manitoba. Just as windy, he said, but colder. Forty below in the winters not uncommon. He also told be 40 below in Celsius is 40 below in Fahrenheit, something that rang a bell in me from my days of chemistry (FYI, my undergrad is in chemistry.) Brrr!!!!
Later, his brother-in-law’s family pulled into that vacant site between us. They were from Ottawa, and having a family reunion. The dad had on a “The Beetles” t-shirt, with four VW beetles on it, the design similar to one made famous by “The Beatles,” and I asked about when and where he got it. That began a long conversation about a trip he took to California, where he bought the shirt, and a business trip he took to London, where he had a 24-hour layover and used it to go to Liverpool and places now famous as being instrumental in the rise of the Beatles. It was a very interesting talk we had.
At my Headquarters campsite, there was a couple, with their dog Rosie, camping two sites away from me with a white, converted mini-bus with a New York license plate. It has a Calvin and Hobbes comic painted on one side. I greeted them, asking where they were from. They were from Somers, only 20 miles from Danbury! I taught 8th grade science at Somers Middle School in the 1995-1996 school year. He is a climber, says he goes to “The Gunks” once a week, but he has not stayed at the campground there, where I stayed for a few nights in May.
Headquarters was similar to the Gunks in one way. The campsites are both campgrounds do not have firepits at individual campsites. The Gunks has one large communal stone firepit in a community area, with free firewood provided, while Headquarters has three community fire-rings, but you have to buy wood at the campground. I went to one of these community fire-rings. There were two guys and a woman there, cooking steaks and lobster over the fire. The two guys were brothers, one living in Montreal, the other visiting from Canada. They asked me about my border crossing into Canada, and I told them about my 15-20 minute van search by the two border agents. They asked me if anything this happened to me in the states, and I told them about how last year, there was a border station while coming into Texas from New Mexico, and a border dog “marked” my van, I was told, meaning my van had to be searched. The agent asked me about transporting people, weapons, drugs or cannabis, “even small bottles of CBD,” he said, fresh fruit and vegetables, and “are you carrying any rodents?” My answers were no, no, no, no, and no. But I said there were these little mice trying to get into my van the night before. I could hear the little critters dancing around the undercarriage, on the plastic piping for the water tanks. That search turned up nothing “illegal,” but it resulted in a box of cereal spilled all over the floor from an open cabinet.
Also at Headquarters, a woman camping next to me was from New Hampshire. Almost always, I say hello to my campsite neighbors. She had come to Canada as an alternate to a trip to NY state that she said she does annually with friends. She did not go this year because her dog, a cute black lab shelter-dog named Mang, had ACL surgery two months prior. Somehow, her activities going there with them on the annual trip would have been an issue due to this. So, she came solo with Mango to Canada.
Mango did not appear to be impacted by his surgery. He ran over to me at one point with one of his toys to me. He definitely wanted to play. It was a ball with cutouts in it such that it could be picked up with his mouth, but the woman told me, “Please don’t throw it because he’ll chase like crazy, and we want his surgery to heal.” Mango was probably disappointed. Good boy. Him for not running. Me for not throwing the ball.
She was on her way to Cape Breton for five days. I told her I just came from there, and she asked for pointers on it, so we talked about the things I did and knew about the place.
She had a small, backpacking type tent. In my estimation, it was a tent that was new to her, because it must have taken 30 minutes or longer to set up. She seemed uncertain about it. I have been in that position before, unsure of how to do things, which pole goes where, how does the fly go on? Etc. It sounds simple, but first time is not always the case. Have you ever had that experience?
The headquarters area of Fundy has some spacious lawns. There is a soccer field, there are tennis courts, a playground, and a lawn bowling court. I had to ask about that last one. It is a large square shaped piece of lawn with the grass growing so tightly woven and trimmed so short. I thought it was a grass tennis court, but I asked a park employee, Angela, and she told me about it.
Earlier in the day, Angela had been down at the beach with a tripod-based set of binoculars. She was looking for Semipalminated Sandpipers. These birds make the journey from their northern hemisphere summer home in the Arctic to their southern hemisphere summer home in South America. She talked about the intelligence of these and other birds and their ability to know and navigate their way over such distances.
Wolfe Point Campground had an unusual “policy” of charging for a nightly campfire permit. I asked about this. I was told that the normal policy, of charging for wood on a case-by-case basis, was not profitable. So, they implemented this plan. There are about 160 campsites, and each is charged $13.45 per night for the permit. You get “free” wood with this, just go to the woodshed and take it. There is no refund for rain, no refund even when there is a “no-burn” fire hazard in effect. Seems like a racket.
Got air? So, I needed to put some air in my tires, getting a little low. I'm in Alma, New Brunswick, a rustic little town inches away from Fundy National Park. There are several restaurants and touristy shops. It's very low key. There's one gas station/grocery/camp supplies store. I ask the woman at the cashier station if they have air. "Down to the firehouse, dear," she says. "Just up the road, go past the little bridge, on your left."
Off I went. Sure enough, just up the road past the little bridge on the left is a firehouse, and outside the front doors there it is, the air hose is hanging. There's nobody in the building, but the compressor is turned on. I got air.
This “completes” my trip to Canada, as if anything is ever really completed. I say this because nothing is ever completed, nothing is ever really “done.” Ideas, feelings, uncertainties, perhaps mysteries within us continue to live and process after the initial experience, sometimes on the surface, other times deep within. Sometimes they appear dormant, even as we engage on new trips and experience a myriad of new activities.
But, like a dormant seed …
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