Sunshine and Rocks at Cape Enrage

The photo above was taken early this morning from the back door of my room. Look! A sunbeam and a blue sky!

On our way to breakfast we stopped by the wharf to see the sunrise over the bay.  After days of fog and rain, it was extra exciting to see the sun.  

After a half day of lectures, we said goodbye to our classmates, and headed toward Cape Enrage, which is about twenty minutes outside of the town of Alma.  The tide was out as we neared the point of land with the light house, and we walked way out on the sandy bottom of the bay.  The water carves little ripples in the sand, and ours were the only foot prints on the entire beach.  

On the air plane on the way to Canada, my seatmate told me that we should visit Cape Enrage since we were going to be in the area.  Once we got to our chalets, the guy at the desk suggested Cape Enrage as a place to see.  A local lady in the class also said we should make sure we get out to Cape Enrage.  After all those recommendations, we were intrigued, and as soon as class let out today, we grabbed some sandwiches and cookies from the bakery in town, and headed for the little light house on the jutting cliff that is Cape Enrage.  Everybody was right, it was worth the visit.  

The light house has a fog horn that started sounding while we were there.  The lady in the gift shop told us that the light house has sensors on the outside that detect foggy conditions and sound the horn.  Strangely, something about the bright sun on the side of the light house also triggers the horn, so even though there wasn't any fog, we got to hear the fog horn.  I appreciated the authentic ambiance.  

Without even trying, we timed our trip perfectly.  Not only did we have lovely sunshine and bright blue skies, we arrived as the tide was out, and could leisurely explore the stony shores while we watched the tide reclaim the stones.    

The tall vertical rock cliffs are impressive, and made me feel very small.  

The pools of water in the rocks left by the retreating tide had lots of snails.  The snails left on the dry rocks were closed up tight, waiting for the waters to return. 

The large boulders were draped with long strands of sea weed and covered in small white barnacles.  

It looked to me like there were two species of sea weed.  The one in the photo above was short, had wide leaves, and the puffy air sacs on the ends of the branches were bumpy, and shaped like little hands.  

The other kind was long, with smooth oblong air sacs and little round leaves.  The air sacks feel like little rubber balloons when I squeezed them.  I'm glad there weren't any locals around to see me squeezing the sea weed.  

As the tide came in, these long mats of sea weed, which are anchored to the rock, would float and swish violently back and forth in the waves.  

If I remember correctly, Charles Darwin was a barnacle man, and his observations about the different barnacles at different locations on ships hulls helped him understand the adaptation of species.  Darwin must have had a more delicate barnacle extraction technique than mine, which involved banging on one with a rock, because I don't think he would have been able to tell much about the smooshie glob I managed to extract with my technique.  I hate to say it, but I am now a barnacle murderer.  

After exploring the shores at Cape Enrage, we had a short drive to visit the Hopewell Rocks, which are cool sandstone cliffs sculpted by the waves.  The tide was coming in fast, so we couldn't walk under all the arches, but we got to observe the tide swallow their bases.  

Tucked under one of the rock pillars were a little family of rock sculptures.  

Someone dedicated some time to rock collecting and rock stacking, and somehow got the rocks to defy gravity and perfectly balance.  

At our last lookout, we could see the setting sun shimmering on a river flowing to the bay.  I'm glad we had a day with a sun, and I'm glad we had days with mist and fog so we could really appreciate the sun shining on the water.  

As a grand finale for our trip, we had lobster for dinner, again, and this time we decimated our lobsters like real pros, as you can see from our discarded shell basket.  The first time we had to ask the waitress for directions, but not this time.  We had our bibs on and our tools at the ready, and as soon as they arrived at the table we went after that lobster meat like we meant it.  Lobster number two was even more delicious than the first one! 

Cloudy Day in the Bay

After breakfast this morning, and before class began, we drove to the top of a hill so we could look out onto the Bay of Fundy.  It was the first time we could see a horizon line, and discern the sea from the sky.  

We had high hopes that the clouds would break apart, and we would see sunlight today, but it remained cloudy all day.  It didn't rain, and it wasn't foggy, so the views were different from the day before.  

Today, I sat near the front of classroom so I could hear the instructor better, hoping it would help me stay focused during the technical parts of the presentation.  I was doing pretty well until the coffee break when they supplied warm sticky buns from the bakery across the street.  They were delicious, but even coffee can't counteract the sleepy power of sugar coated pastry.  

During our sticky bun break, I swapped insect stories with a fish biologist from Manitoba.  She shared the horrors of biting black flies at her research station, and I tried to explain the misery of chiggers.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in the world without having ever heard of chiggers?!  Over lunch, a consultant from Nova Scotia explained the trials of trying to do research on tidal flats when the tides catch him unawares and washes all his gear away, and I tried to explain having to work into the wee hours catching bats in nets.  People are doing strange things all over the world.   

Fortunately, part of the day was spent outside looking at a stream restoration project.  Finally, we were getting to see real examples of the practices we've been hearing about.  Because the stream project was on a golf course, the entire class had to wear hard hats to protect us from golf balls.   

This might make sense if there were actually people playing golf at the course, but they didn't have a single golfer, and didn't expect any, since it's the off season.  The hard hats were some crazy park regulation meant to protect visitors.  Surely golfers don't have to wear them?!  No wonder they don't have any customers!  But, it's nice to know that other countries besides my own can take safety to such extremes. 

Growing along the stream banks were these lovely shrubs with bright red berries.  I think it's a type of Viburnum, but it's not a species I'm familiar with.  In our class, besides myself and my two coworkers, there are two other Americans, but these guys are from Arkansas.  As I was admiring the red berries on the bush, one of the Arkansas guys walks up and picks some of the berries and starts to eat them.  I asked him if he knew if they were edible, and he said someone told him they were cranberries.  Uh, those are not cranberries!  Maybe you shouldn't be eating them?   If you hear of an international incident that involves the unexplained death of an Arkansas man in New Brunswick, you'll know what happened!  

While there aren't cranberry shrubs growing on the golf course, there are lots of apple trees.  All sorts of apples - green ones, tiny ones, red one, small pink ones.  This must be a great climate for apples, because they grown along the roadsides and stream banks.  

Before our field visit, we were given some background information about the stream restoration on the golf course, and one of the challenges of the project was that the top soil was contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals from the years of chemicals used on the golf course turf.  As the entire class is picking and eating apples from the trees on the course, I asked if anyone was uncomfortable eating fruit from a place that we were told had contaminated soil.  Everyone just shrugged and kept munching their apples.  One guy who seemed to know a lot about apples, said all old apple orchards have soil with arsenic and lead, because they used so much pesticides, and that it's an environmental concern.  Great.  Not to be left out, I tried a few bites of apple myself.  My Arkansas friend said I shouldn't worry since we would get a stomach ache before we got arsenic poisoning.  I wonder if he will be able to tell arsenic stomach ache from "cranberry" poisoning?   

After class, with our remaining day light (if you can call it that), we headed into the national park and hiked down as short trail to a beach.  

The beaches are course red sand and small gravel, and they are littered with snail shells and sea weed.  

We hiked along the top of the cliffs to see the bay from above, and watched the tide take over the beach we walked only moments before.  

Even with all the hiking, I don't think I exercised enough to earn the seafood casserole that I had for dinner, since a seafood casserole is a giant pastry topped pot pie filled with a creamy sauce, shrimp, lobster, and scallops, and served with a baked potato, coleslaw, and a tall beer. 

Its Foggy, but I Ate a Lobster

Well, I just finished my first full day in Alma, New Brunswick and there's great symmetry in my experience so far, since I began the day without any electricity to my room, and just now, as I'm tucking myself in for some much needed sleep, the power went out again.  Maybe it's some sort of energy saving technique employed by thrifty Canadians?  Or maybe someones hair dryer blew a fuse again?  I'm too tired to go tell the dude who lives here about the problem, and since there are no phones in the room to call him, I'll just wait until the morning.  I managed not to freeze to death last night, and to take a shower in the dark this morning, so I know I'll survive.  Does this count as camping? 

Today was a classroom day, which was just as well I guess, since it drizzled all day.  We started the day with bacon and eggs at the local store and restaurant, and then spent the rest of the day in a unheated classroom in the Alma activity center learning about stream hydraulics.  The instructor is obviously a genius with an entire career of experience restoring streams, and his reputation brought us all the way here so we could hear him speak, but he has a very soft voice, and really likes formulas and slides with logarithm graphs, which wasn't the best combination for participants like me who were sleep deprived, chilled, and soothed by the gentle dripping of the rain on the window panes.  The big bowl of lobster bisque soup I had for lunch didn't exactly perk me up either.  

When class let out at five thirty, we knew we only had about an hour and a half before dark, so we didn't waste any time and headed to the wharf to see the high tide.  The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and the water level changes by more than twenty feet during the tide.  As we drove to class this morning, we could see all the fishing boats at the wharf sitting on the ocean floor.  After class, they were floating near the top of the pier.  Notice the name of the boat in the photo above?  Dead Men Tell No Tales.  Creepy, but somehow appropriate to the setting.  The sea and the fog are the same color, and we couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.  I'm glad I'm not out on a boat today.  

After the wharf, we drove into the national park, and chose a short hiking trail so we could stretch our legs and work up an appetite.  

The forest was wonderful.  Not only was it beautiful, but it smelled amazing, like spruce and fir trees.  My first thought as we stepped into the forest was that it smelled like Christmas trees, only even stronger.  I sniffed the air so much I chilled my sinuses!  I wished I could cut armloads of branches and bring them into my room so I could keep the smell with me.    

The pale bark of the birch trees with their almost golden leaves contrasted sharply with the dark green of the spruce and fir trees.  The birch bark has great variation in color too, and some layers were orange and some were pink.  

The fall colors haven't reached their peak, but occasionally a maple would have vibrant red leaves, which really stand out against the yellow and green.  

The trail we chose followed a steep boulder filled stream.  After hearing about streams and their processes all day, it was nice to see a real one in action.  

The slopes on either side of the stream and trial were covered in mossy stones and ferns.  These forests are so different than the forests at home, that it was like walking in a story book forest.  I kept expecting to see gnomes or fairy peaking from behind the mossy tree trunks.  

The highlight of the trail was the waterfall and cascades.  

After our short hike, we stopped by our rooms and I took the picture above of the door to my room.  Supposedly, there's an entire ocean in the distance, and the view is lovely.  All I could see was gray.  

I've been dreaming of and talking about lobster since the trip was on the books, and tonight was my first chance for indulgence.  I was not disappointed! I decided the claw meat was my favorite, and the greenish liver inside the body cavity was my least favorite.  Our waitress insisted that the liver was good and that we should eat it too, and when she asked me if I liked it and I told her it tasted like the ocean smells, I got a big laugh.  She said "I don't know if that's a good thing or not" and I said "me neither".  

New Brunswick, Aye?

Notice anything strange about the plane that took my two work buddies and I from Toronto to Moncton, in New Brunswick Canada today?  It has propellers!  I can't remember ever riding in a an airplane with propellers before.  Since most of my flying has been on large jets, it was slightly unnerving to get on a relatively small plane like this one.  

The air plane that took us from Cincinnati to Toronto wasn't really any bigger, and now that I've been reminded of propellers, I wonder how this one even flies?  I took it's picture because I liked seeing the maple leaf on the tail fin.  It made me feel like I was really going to Canada.  

My first impression of Toronto?  It's flat.  Really, really flat, and the city spreads out as far as I could see.  I didn't get to leave the airport, of course, so I'm sure there's more to Toronto than flatness, but that was my impression.   

Our destination today, was the town of Alma, near Fundy Bay National Park, where we will be attending a workshop.  For an all day travel day, which started before five in the morning, and didn't end until after nine, it was a pretty good day.  Once we arrived in Moncton, we stopped at this neat store, where they sold all organic and natural foods.  We loaded up on healthy snacks and drinks, and then stopped at the grocery store for fresh fruits.  I'm not sure this will compensate for all the snacks, giant cheese burger, and jumbo beer I had at the airport, but it was a very nice first Canadian shopping experience.   

I wish I had taken a picture of our beautiful food from the Blue Olive, but it was such tasty Mediterranean food that we scarfed it down before I even thought about photos.  We plan to take advantage of all the sea food options we have now that we are near Fundy Bay, so we were happy to find great hummus and Greek salads in Moncton.  

My room at the Fundy Highlands chalets is functional, and clean.  I think it will have lovely views too, but we arrived after dark, and it was cloudy with sprinkles of rain, so we couldn't see anything.  The clerk tells us the weather has been beautiful until today, when it turned cold.  Hopefully over then next few days, we will have some nice weather, and get to do some exploring.