Bay of Fundy - Hopewell Rocks!

Hopewell Rocks are a natural sandstone conglomerate feature that towers as much as 70 feet over the Bay of Fundy.  They are located on the northern, New Brunswick shore of the Bay of Fundy at Hopewell Cape. Due to the extreme tidal range of the Bay of Fundy, the bases of the rocks are covered in water twice a day, but it is possible to walk on the beach at the base of the rocks when the Bay of Fundy is at low tide.  The Rocks are a very popular tourist destination.

Low tide while we are staying at Fundy National Park comes around 7am, but the Hopewell Rocks site doesn't open to the public until 8am.  So we were at the gate when it opened, and made a beeline to the far end of the beach in order to take advantage of low tide.

 

As it turns out, it is possible to walk the full length of the beach from approximately 1.5 hours before low tide, until 1.5 hours after low tide, so we had plenty of time to explore all the formations.

Woe unto anyone who stays on the far end of the beach more than 2.5 hours or so after low tide, because they will be cut off from the stairs up to safety.  For this reason, as the tide starts to inundate the beach, the park posts safety officers to herd tourists back to safety.  As an emergency backup, if for some insane reason a misbegotten visitor has ventured beyond the help of the safety officers, the park has an emergency rescue platform that can be climbed to safety (at the cost of a very long wait until the tide is low enough to walk the beach back to the stairs):

 

 

The Rocks consist of dark sedimentary conglomerate and sandstone rock. Because the retreat of the glaciers in this region following the last ice age left substantial surface water on the rocks, the water seeped into cracks in the cliff and separated the formations from the rest of the cliff face. Meanwhile, advancing and retreating tides and the associated waves have eroded the base of the rocks at a faster rate than the tops, undercutting or further separating the formations, and carving unusual shapes, depending on the composition of the sandstone and conglomerate in each formation.  Below, Kathy inspects a good example of the sandstone/conglomerate rocks making up the formation.  Due to erosion, the beach was littered with boulders, rocks and pebbles exhibiting this same composition:

 

 

Here is a good example of the hoodoo-like carvings, and the undercutting that can sometimes result in sea caves at the bottoms of the cliffs:

 

 

The sandstone/conglomerate itself sits on ancient rock which appeared to us to be volcanic basalts.  At one spot on the beach, a mysterious square piece of basalt peeked up through the rocks and pebbles:

 

 

At one end of the beach, the basalt has been lifted (or the sandstone/conglomerate eroded) so that it protrudes above the beach and extends out into the Bay: 

 

As the sandstone and conglomerate erode, they leave multitudes of rocks and pebbles on the beach.  Here's a shrimp's eye view of the pebbly beach leading back to the cliffs:

 

 

In some places, the water that undercuts the cliffs has eroded arches into the protruding formations:

 

 

This arch was particularly interesting, bedecked as it was with green rockweed:

 

 

Some of the formations are called the "Flowerpot Rocks" because they support an entire ecosystem on their unstable tops:

 

 

Other formations just simply surrender themselves to whimsy:

 

 

Here is another good example of a Flowerpot Rock:

  

The beach is not all rocks.  Sections of it consist of mucky, sticky red sand that, due to the oscillating tide, can cause you to sink in it up to several inches.  We learned quickly not to walk on the smooth red sand!  We encountered one stretch where there was no apparent path up the beach on pebbles.  Luckily, some kind stranger had placed stepping stones across the red muck, and David demonstrates the proper method for tiptoeing across the sandstone muck:

 

The rising tide took away our beach, so we moved on to another local Bay of Fundy attraction -- Cape Enrage.  Cape Enrage is the name given to the southern tip of what is actually Barn Marsh Island, about halfway along the coastline between Hopewell Rocks, to the east, and Fundy National Park, to the west, where we are camped.  The cape/island is surrounded by jagged sea cliffs towering up to almost 150 feet high.  The lighthouse perches on the outermost point of one of these cliffs as it juts into the Bay of Fundy.  Cape Enrage derives its name from the large reef that extends south into Chignecto Bay, which causes the water off the point to become extremely violent, particularly at half tide when the reef is partially exposed and the water is moving quickly. The lighthouse at Cape Enrage, built in 1838, is the oldest on the New Brunswick mainland.  It has been automated and unmanned since the 1980s, but it has recently become a popular tourist destination, as a result of a concentrated effort by local students to renovate the property and run it as a summer project.

Here's a view of this beauty:

The site includes a path to long, steep stairs down to the beach, which can be walked extensively at low tide.  At high tide, which is when we arrived, only a portion of the beach is accessible:

 

 

The Cape Enrage cliffs are of an entirely different composition that the Hopewell Rocks.  These appeared to us to be ancient mudstone.  The information at the site explains that these cliffs are some of the richest fossil beds in the region.  We saw some rocks that may have contained fossils, but nothing dramatic.

Having exhausted our curiosity about the lighthouse, the beach, the cliffs and the fossils, we repaired to Cape House Restaurant, which is part of the facility, to enjoy lobster sandwiches and our favorite beverages (oh, yes, and some popcorn we picked up at Hopewell Rocks):

To reach Cape Enrage, one has to climb a steep escarpment, then descend to a broad salt marsh which had been converted (presumably by Acadian farmers) into dyked fields.  The road crosses between the salt marsh and the Bay of Fundy via a causeway.  On our return drive, we stopped at the rocky beach on the causeway.  We were surprised to find that it was filled with inuksuks of all sizes, constructed, we are sure, by bored tourists.  Kathy found the most loveable one and added her own pebble to cap it off!