Though our family travels a bit, most of the time we go places in order to attend a conference, to spend time with another family, or simply take a day hike. It has been 11 years since we took off for more than a day to see a new place and enjoy God’s creation just as a family. September 4th to 7th was such a time for us. Sadly, Stephen’s classes at the university started up that week, so he wasn’t able to be with us. Hopefully we’ll be able to work around that next time.

Monday morning, we took off. It was a long drive…

…but eventually we began to see signs of what we were coming to see:

Finally, we arrived at our destination:

We camped at Wolfe’s Point campground where we rented an oTentik – like a permanent tent. We were glad to have them as during our last night there, it rained hard. Taking down our tents in the rain would not have been fun.

But on the whole, we actually received very little rain during our trip. Despite dire predictions of heavy thunderstorms, the only showers came either during the night or while we were driving in the van – never while we were walking beaches or exploring coves.

Of course, one of the first things we wanted to do upon arriving was to go down to the rocky cove and see tide come in.

The Bay of Fundy is well known for experiencing the world’s highest tides. Knowing that in one’s head and seeing it with one’s eyes are two radically different things. In 2006, during our trip out to the west coast, we had the fun of lighting a campfire on the sand and of watching the tide slowly come in to wash it away. But the tide in the Bay of Fundy is nothing like that slow-moving, gentle, western Vancouver Island tide. Here the tide rises and falls as much as 30 feet every 12 hours! We had to be careful always to keep an open escape route behind us as we backed away from the incoming tide! All camera equipment had to remain tied to our backs or in our hands, for in a matter of minutes the water could come in and wash any forgotten tripod, etc. away.

During our two day stay, we had opportunity to visit numerous beaches, coves, and the famous Hopewell Rocks. These last are situated in the spot where the tides climax. Though we were there neither quite at high tide nor quite at low tide, the pictures show the dramatic flow and ebb of the tide. The sheer rock cliffs make you realise how dangerous it would be to get stuck here at high tide! We were careful to time our visit as the tide was going out, not coming in.

The Hopewell Rocks were by far the most crowded place we visited, but even there it was not impossible to get pictures that didn’t contain tourists. And there were birds everywhere we went. Some of them, we recognised from pictures, but had never seen in the wild.

And other wildlife…

And not so wild life…Though we took some interesting, very small roads…

… and saw moose dropping all over one road, this was the only moose we saw:

But to tell of all of our stops would make this post very long, so I’ll pause here and post more pictures later.