New Brunswick

On July 14th we crossed the border into Canada to begin our visit to the Maritime Provinces. We crossed at a small border, crossing at Milltown, Maine just a mile or so from the main crossing at Calais, Maine/St. Stephens, New Brunswick. We received the usual cross examination from the Canadian border guard regarding having guns, ammunition, etc. with us. Those Texas plates do invoke visions of the old west for a lot of people. They were very interested in whether or not we had potatoes. Why I’m not sure, but that is a hot item that you can’t bring across. We had our new passports - they just glanced at them, and away we went. We felt very good that we didn’t get pulled over for inspection as often happens with RVs with Texas plates, but the line was very long behind us, there was a trailer off to the side ahead of us with what looked like a mechanical problem, so they waived us through.

We followed Joe and Nancy across - - we knew when they ‘bounced’ that it was time to slow way down for the bumps ahead. Once across the border we encountered road construction in the center of St. Stephens - there was no way to move and we blocked streets because we were so long. Nice to know that American companies are not the only ones that do not get road construction done easily.

We stopped about 1/2 of the way up the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia at a park that offered the Passport America discount (50% off) and stated in the directory that they could handle 45 ft rigs. Yes, the sites were long enough, but the road wasn’t designed for that size of rig. Both Dave and Joe really had to work at getting out - luckily there was an empty site they could back into to as the corner was to tight to make with a motorhome.

We had several geocaches identified on our trip down to the Bay of Fundy at Alma. This is just outside of the national park and we decided it would be a great way to spend a day - sightseeing and geocaching. A couple of things became very obvious - first was that most of the geocachers in the areas aren’t out in the summer because the bugs are BAD. Did I say BAD - make that really BAD. Not just mosquitos, but also black flies that bite. The second thing is that a lot of the caches are winter friendly which means they are up in the trees above where the snow is likely to be.

We quickly found out that our definition of terrain difficulty and that of the local geocachers was much different. This is a picture of one of the many logging roads we ended up on while searching for some caches. In addition, what is an easy walk from October through March, when all of the vegetation had died down requires significant bushwhacking in July. There were several caches that Dave and Joe went the final 300 feet because the brush became to thick and neither Nancy nor I had long pants and boots on. We also found that one has to keep moving or the bugs find you!

One of the caches was located at a cemetery in the New Ireland area of New Brunswick. There is no longer any people living in the area, but at one time it is apparent that there were several immigrant families in the area. Very few people have logged in as finding this cache, probably because it is a very rough logging road out in the middle of nowhere.

But that doesn’t deter such avid geocaches as we are, and sure enough we quickly located the cache.

One of the neat things we found on this trip was a covered bridge on the 45 River. The height was 3.2 meters (about 10 feet) and the maximum weight was listed as 4 metric tons (or 5 tons US). Obviously this is not a location that you would be taking an RV! But it was a very pretty area and a wonderful find.

We had lunch in Alma on the Bay of Fundy. When we started lunch, this boat was floating and you could not see the bottom of the bay at this location. By the time we finished lunch, the boat was sitting on the bottom and the water was a trickle from the stream that emptied into the bay at this point.

There was a geocache located down at the water’s edge, so down to the beach we went. While there the fog began to roll in. Thin wisps covered the area - but it made it seem almost ethereal in nature.

As more and more water receded, more and more people came out to walk on the bottom of the bay. There were also horse back trips out onto the bay bottom - just another thing that people do in the area.

Once the fog rolled in we went back in land and picked up a few more geocaches. Here are Dave and Joe coming back through the tall grass from finding the last one.

After 2 days, we bad farewell to New Brunswick for now and headed out for Pictou, Nova Scotia - this time with Dave and I leading the way!

Boats sitting on the bottom after the tide went out on Fundy Bay at the town of Alma, New Brunswick.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Geocaching in New Brunswick