Our Big Maritimes Road Trip: Fundy Trail and Hopewell Rocks

Date: Sep 30, 2009

The itinerary for the day was to travel East along the Bay of Fundy coast of New Brunswick and to see the Fundy Trail Parkway and the Hopewell Rocks.

Fundy Trail Parkway

I am still not entirely sure what the official designation of Fundy Trail is. It appears as a park on Google Maps, yet it’s managed by a non-profit organization completely unrelated to the government park service (either national or provincial). What’s clear is that it’s a must-see destination for anybody who can spare the time for a 1 hour drive from Saint John, NB. The park boasts a very nice scenic drive with amazing views of Bay of Fundy, twisty-turny fun driving, as well as a variety of hiking trails that take you close to the nature.

Our first major stop was at a lookout overlooking the Flower Pot Rock. This little rock island was carved by the powerful tides of the Bay of Fundy. There are a couple of trees still growing on top to complete the flower-pot impression.

Flower Pot Rock, Fundy Trail

A trail took us down to Melvin beach, where the intricately carved sandstone cliffs could be seen from the sea level. The water was too cold to swim, but we enjoyed dipping our feet into the water and building castles out of stones on the beach.

Cliffs on Melvin beach

Another walking trail took us to the Big Salmon River. We didn’t find any salmon (let alone big salmon!), but we did find a somewhat scary suspension bridge over the river. It didn’t look particularly scary initially, but Vitaly decided to test out the construction quality by jumping up and down when we were halfway to the other side. This gave the bridge quite a shake, and the rest of us quite a scare.

Bridge over the Big Salmon River

Hopewell Rocks

The Rocks Provincial Park is within striking distance of Moncton NB – a mere 35 minute drive. The “rocks” are actually flowerpot formations created by tidal erosion. Similar sights can be found in other places along the Fundy Coast (Flower Pot Rock on Fundy Trail in one example). What makes this park special is that there are many of these rocks concentrated in one small area.

We arrived to the park at low tide, which allowed us to walk on the ocean floor and also see the flowerpots exposed down to their narrow “stumps”.

Hopewell Rocks

The trail on top of the cliffs provided open views to the large mud flats near the shore. We were lucky to see them at the end of the day, when the setting sun colored the sky with lovely colors.

Fundy Mud Flats

The park allows visitors to put in a kayak and paddle among the flowerpot formations during the high tides. Unfortunately, the timing of our visit didn’t coincide well with the high tide schedule. We would have to wait until the noon of the next day in order to catch a high tide during daytime. The cool kayaking experience had to be postponed. It now sits high on the “Maritimes loose ends” list, waiting for us to come back.

Coming up next: last day before heading to Nova Scotia and featuring visits to Cape Enrage, Magnetic Hill, and Sackville Waterfowl Park.

Our Big Maritimes Road Trip: Fundy Coastal Drive

Date: Sep 29, 2009

Fundy Coastal Drive, as the name implies, takes visitors on a scenic tour of the bay of Fundy along all the coast of New Brunswick. On this day, we took this scenic drive going West from Saint John, with the eventual goal of reaching the Maine border, just over 100 km away.

The goal turned out to be harder than expected. So many treasures were found along the way as to make progress very slow. As this was our first chance to see the Bay of Fundy in a natural environment, we were eager to get our of the car at any possibility. We spent hours at unnamed pull-offs, wandering around the secluded beaches, admiring the tidal pools, negotiating among the giant mounds of sea-weed, and looking for colorful rocks on the shore.

Rocks on Fundy Shore

Bay of Fundy, Unnamed Beach

The beaches in that area were mostly rocky, so exploring them required a lot of climbing on things, which, I have to admit, wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

Bay of Fundy, Rocky Shore

There were other things to see on the scenic drive as well. The travel brochure outlined every little local attraction, including numerous covered bridges and even a small but feisty waterfall (Lepreau Falls).

It was getting late, and we were only halfway to the Maine border. The final obstacle to our plan was a small but irresistible Baybreeze restaurant overlooking the Bay of Fundy. One of those mom and pop shops (and apparently owned by a family from Greece), it served the most amazing food. It was probably the best meal that we had during our whole stay in New Brunswick, so we were happy to stay there until dark and enjoy ourselves. We didn’t make it to the Maine border, but everybody was happy with what we found along the way.