We made it back home after 31 days on the road for our Northeastern trip in June. Worth all the effort and expense. (Think gas for a 6000-mile road trip!) Sharing a few of the most meaningful moments here and working to get a few of the places we stopped clear in our minds. I knew almost nothing about the Northeast before this journey.
Did you know that New Brunswick is one of the four Atlantic provinces? (The other three are Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.) They are also called Atlantic Canada. I didn’t know any of this before this trip. New Brunswick’s capital is Fredericton, and we met a beautiful young waitress later in Newfoundland who plays hockey on full scholarship at Fredericton. French is an official language in New Brunswick, but I didn’t hear any French along the Bay of Fundy. I’m sharing all of this to help ME remember what I learned and perhaps help you as well.
After leaving the Vermont rally, Greg and I continued to trailer the motorcycle. We crossed New Hampshire, a portion of Maine near Mount Katahdin (the northern end of the Appalachian Trail), crossing into Canada at Calais, Maine (where my mugger spray was taken and our vehicles were searched) to enter the province of New Brunswick, before we found this coastline.
We met Scott & Crystal at New River Beach Provincial Park, and shortly afterward found a restaurant on the coast that overlooked the famous Bay of Fundy at Pocologan. The owner, an older Greek man (who visited 50 years ago & never left) was the also the cook, and the simple cafe soon filled with other diners, all of us served by one waitress, as we watched the rocks & waves during our 2-hour meal of the best fish & chips we’d ever had and seafood of every kind. There happened to be a 6-room motel beside the restaurant, so we decided to stay the night and pay the $90 a night, sight unseen.
The long day gave us time to climb down the rocky cliffs behind the Bay Breeze to explore the ever-changing shore. Seaweed, round rock loaves, sharp cliffs, driftwood, and ever-moving sand made a wonder of the evening’s low tide that was changing before our very eyes to become a high tide by the middle of the night.
It wasn’t a national or state park or provincial park. It was behind our restaurant and cheap motel. But to know that these tides are the highest in the world, to know that to the east – way across the Atlantic was Europe, and to know that we were so close to the ocean was awesome. It would have been nice to see the high tide, but we wanted to be asleep at midnight, and we didn’t want to wait around till noon the next day, so we just trusted that all of those rocks we had just ambled over would be covered, as they are twice every 24-hour period.
We loved that we didn’t plan this stop. It appeared when we needed a meal, and we stopped and stayed. It was humbling to be there. So beautiful. So old-school. We learned they had recently re-opened for the season; they would close again sometime in October. We only stopped once on the Bay of Fundy, which we later learned is huge: 94 miles long and 32 miles wide, located between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We didn’t walk on the ocean floor at Burntcoat Headpark or pay for the thrill of tidal bore rafting at the Shubenacadie River, both in Nova Scotia, but we had our own unplanned exploration of a natural wonder. Right there. Right behind this family-owned home and business. No wonder they stayed.
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
– Gustave Flaubert
If you have been to the Bay of Fundy or know something cool about New Brunswick, please let me know! I love how reflecting on one’s travels makes them more valuable, to me, and hopefully to others!
Walking in France from Le Puy en Velay 