Exploring Fundy National Park

Hi Blog!

Saturday, August 25, 2018, was our first full day in Fundy National Park near Alma, New Brunswick. The Headquarters Campground where we are staying is within walking distance to the edge of the Bay of Fundy. We took the boys down to the scenic overlook so they could wake up on the bay. Here is what we saw:

As luck would have it, there just happened to be some red chairs there!

We stopped into the Visitor Center to chat with a Park Ranger about the best way to spend our three days here. Since we would need an early start to beach hike at low tide, we decided to put that off until Sunday. Saturday would be our cliff walk and scenic overlook day. We hope to be able to kayak on Monday, but will have to wait to see if the good weather holds out. On the way back to our campsite, we had to stop and admire the flowers.

We decided to start our day of cliff hiking by driving out to the furthest point - Point Wolfe Beach. A short one kilometer trail leads to a stairwell to the beach. We still had an hour or so before high tide, so we were able to get down and out onto the rocky beach.

As with all our beach walks, sooner or later they turn into a foraging expeditions. Here is a photo of our haul. Only two came home with us.

The road to Point Wolfe Beach goes over the Point Wolfe River via a covered bridge. Since we were trying to beat high tide, we left the covered bridge exploration for the way back.

We parked at a picnic area near the bridge and hiked back along the road to get the best view of the covered bridge. Our efforts were rewarded, since all along the side of road grew wild red raspberry bushes!

In addition to red raspberries, we also found Red Chairs! Here is our view of the red covered bridge from the red chairs. Kathy can now add a tiny red chair to her collection of Parks Canada Red Chairs!

Our next stop was at the end of Herring Cove Road. When we spoke to the Park Ranger, she mentioned the best cliff walk was between Herring Cove and Matthews Head along the Coastal Trail. We could park at the Matthews Head Trailhead, but the parking lot is small and it is always crowded. She suggested we continue the Coastal West Trailhead at Herring Cove and approach Matthews Head from that direction. No sooner did we start down the Coastal Trail then we were greeted by this really cool waterfall.

Our first viewpoint came complete with Red Chairs! We know you can't see much from this photo, so you'll have to trust us that there is a view out there.

The Coastal Trail is part of the Trans Canada Trail Network. Known as The Great Trail, this path crosses Canada via greenways, waterways and roadways that stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic! The Trail is over 24,000 kilometers. New Brunswick has over 900 km of the trail. We only planned to hike four of them, but what a fun four kilometers it was.

The trail was mainly in the woods, but every so often we could get a peak out at the bay.

We only ran into a few other hikers on our way to Matthews Head, but once we got there, we ran into dozens of hikers who hiked down from the Matthews Head Trailhead. Everyone took their turn standing out on the point. There was no way Kathy was standing out there, so she made Dave do it!

Off in the distance, crowned by fog, is Cape Enrage, which we will visit in our next blog entry.

Not sure which was more fun - hiking down this or hiking back up! Kathy celebrates a successful summit!

A short side trail took us down to Herring Cove Beach. However, we first had to cross Herring Creek before we could hit the beach.

By now, the tide was on the way out exposing lots and lots of pebbles! Of course, two more ended up in Kathy's pocket!

Tomorrow, we hope to get up really early and hike around Hopewell Rocks before the tide comes in. Stay tuned!