Fundy National Park, New Brunswick

Day Two of our fourteen-day journey got off to no better of a start than Day One; a long and monotonous car ride right from the get-go at 7:30am.


"Welcome to New Brunswick!"

   At 10:30am, I set my watch forward an hour, as a big billboard sign saying “Welcome to New Brunswick!” told me that we had officially entered the Atlantic Maritime and Time Zone. Losing an hour shortened the time it took for lunch to arrive and shortly afterwards, at 12:30pm Atlantic Time, we stopped at Grand Falls, New Brunswick.



The unspectacular falls

 After conducting some research, I discovered that the town was named Grand Falls after the elegant waterfall that cuts through the middle of the town. This waterfall is the largest waterfall in Canada (twenty-three metre drop) to the east of the Niagara Falls. Personally, I did not find the waterfall that interesting (lunch interested me even more!), but I took this photo just because I had no photos in my camera yet…



The St. John River is dammed at the top of the gorge (possibly a hydroelectric generating station). The gorge itself was presumably carved by the flow of the St. John River millions of years ago.

  

At 1:00pm (we did not spend a lot of time at Grand Falls), we hit the road again. This time, we stopped at Hartland, the home of the world’s longest covered bridge! 



The world's longest covered bridge

  Such a record is not as impressive (Burj Dubai of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the tallest free-standing structure in the world) but nevertheless, we stopped to take a couple of photos. One thing that you should note is that I will be taking most of the photos on this trip and thus, there are few photos of yours truly. However, my mom did snag this picture of my grandfather and me with the world’s longest covered bridge behind us. We hopped back into the van and began to travel southeast, towards Fundy National Park.

At 7:00pm (6:00pm Eastern Time), we finally arrived at Fundy National Park! One would expect to see an information centre, however, we were greeted by forests and forests of coniferous and some deciduous trees as far as the eye could have seen. After driving for an additional thirty minutes, we reached one of the only two campsites in the whole park; the Chignecto campground.




Hopewell Rocks

 By that time, my body, which had been cramped inside our van for six hours today and eight hours yesterday, needed some fresh air. While I was stretching and preparing to set our tents up, my dad informed me that we would be going to Hopewell instead, so we hopped back into the van. After a sixty-minute ride, we reached the Hopewell Rocks (New Brunswick’s top attraction). Little did I realize that twice everyday, the Hopewell Rocks experience the highest tides in the world! Sadly, however, when we arrived, the park officials prohibited us from descending to the floor of the Bay of Fundy because of safety precautions (the water level had begun to increase as a result from the coming of the high tide).

After a worthless merry-go-round trip to Hopewell Rocks and back, I found myself setting up a couple of tents at 9:30 in the dark! Luckily, my family (of six) had gone camping at least three times a summer over the last three years, so setting camp up in the dark did not seem to be too troublesome, but because the campsite was full of rocks and wet areas, frustration began to boil. My parents became a little edgy and ended up arguing, but in the end (10:30pm that is) we finally had DINNER!

As of right now, rain has begun to fall. With my dad still outside washing the dishes without an umbrella handy, I feel grateful for the fact that I’m sleeping in the other tent because the rain droplets are beginning to fall faster with thunder booming in the distance…