Day 8 (August 22, 2020): Two last sights, and then homeward bound!

Vacation Day 8:  Homeward-bound day!  But there are still two ferry rides and two key sights to take in before we make it home:  The Balancing Rock on St. Mary's Bay and Burntcoat Head Park on the Minas Basin.

As accommodations go, the Brier Island Lodge is nothing to write home about.  But the restaurant has a great chef, and the food is quite excellent.  Pam's blueberry pancakes and my omelette contend for top-prize among our seven breakfasts on this vacation.  Sufficiently fed, we headed down the road to make the 10:25AM ferry from Westport on Brier Island over to Freeport on Long Island.  The channel between the two was socked in with fog, which made us concerned that The Balancing Rock would also be fogged in.  The fog hugged the coastline all along the journey from Freeport up-island.  Throughout the 1.7KM hike out to the coast, we were convinced we wouldn't be able to see a thing.  Lo and behold, as if by some miracle when we broke out of the forest near the coast, we had a fog-free viewing of The Balancing Rock.  

You can be the judge as to whether The Balancing Rock is impressive or not, but to us, we were totally in awe.  I first heard about it in 2009, when a colleague had a photo of it in her office.  And around 2016, the cafe next to my office was named The Balancing Rock Cafe!  So I've wanted to see it for over a decade.  Nature did not disappoint!

From there, it was another ferry ride -- our eighth and final -- from Tiverton on Long Island over to East Ferry on Digby Neck.  And then we started the three-hour / 272KM drive to the second place on our list of sights for today:  Burntcoat Head Park, near Truro.  Ideally, one visits the park at low-tide, so that you explore the ocean floor around the island.  Logistics and tide times saw us arrive there at high-tide.  But it was still a very fascinating place to see:  one is struck by the power of the Fundy tides and the red rock.  And one could be forgiven for thinking it's a scene from PEI.

From there, it was an easy drive home.  We headed up the driveway at 5:15PM.

What a week we have had!  Last Friday night, we were still trying to make our final decision as to whether it would be Vancouver Island or the Maritimes.  When we pulled the plug on Vancouver Island, we (okay, let's be honest -- "I") was really disappointed and felt like a spin around the Maritimes would be ho-hum.  But 2105 kilometres later, we can honestly say it was a week beyond our expectations, filled with sights and experiences that would have rivaled anything British Columbia had to offer.

Thanks for tuning in for this blog!  We will try the Vancouver Island trip over Thanksgiving Weekend, if Covid permits.  If so, join us then for another Canadian stay-cation experience.

Farewell, Brier Island

A birthday party?  No, just a massive collection of marine floats!

Westport sure is a colourful village!

The Balancing Rock

The 1.7km trail to the Balancing Rock is well maintained and a fairly easy hike - except for the 235 steps out at the rock!

And there it is!

Miscellaneous Enroute

All the way up Long Island towards Tiverton, the coast was socked in with fog.  We feared we wouldn't even be able to see the Balancing Rock.  But miraculously, when we reached it, it was fog free!  Just up the road, after leaving the park, the fog was back - thick as pea soup, as they say.  

Sounds like a great place to live!

Dueling gulls:  these two were duking it out over rights to bum food in the passenger line up at the Tiverton ferry ramp.  One actually had its beak around the other's neck!

Dave’s Rant - prepare yourself:  Everything on the Costco snack bar menu can be served during Covid - except lattés.  That makes no sense to me.  And the same with this:  the Government of Nova Scotia has suspended the collection of the $7 fare on its short-run ferries due to Covid.  Covid: the 2020 excuse to do whatever makes no sense.

The small, efficient, non-stop ferries of rural Nova Scotia.  This one traverses the very turbulent waters between Tiverton on Long Island and East Ferry on Digby Neck.

When the local school has just four grade 12 grads, you know you're in deep rural Nova Scotia!

Burntcoat Head Park

Burncoat Head Park, built and operated by the Municipality of East Hants, is a Nova Scotian gem and was totally unknown to us until friends at church posted their recent daytrip there on Facebook.  The red rock led us to assume it was in PEI.  So when we learned it is actually in Nova Scotia, we decided to make it part of our route home.

The rather boxy and inconspicuous lighthouse at Burntcoat Head was operated from 1913-1972. Its light could be seen for 23KM.  The lighthouse fell into disrepair, so the government had it burned in 1972.  This replica was rebuilt in 1994.

The greatest tides in the world occur in the Bay of Fundy.  Burntcoat Head, in Fundy's Minas Basin, has the greatest average tide at 47.5 feet and an extreme range of 53.6 feet!

This island is the main attraction at Burntcoat Head Park.  Walking the sea floor at low-tide is apparently quite the thing to do.  Unfortunately, logistics prevented us from arriving close to low tide.  In fact, we arrived at the maximum high tide!  We will simply have to return to see the low-tide situation.

The Burntcoat Settlement began in 1796, when two bothers (who were Loyalist descendants) purchased 1000 acres and settled there.  The island used to be attached to the mainland, but erosion has done its thing!

Fun fact to close the blog, since so many of our experiences on this vacation have touched the Bay of Fundy:  100 cubic kilometres of water moves in and out of the Bay of Fundy with every incoming or outgoing tide.  This stirs up the nutrients in the water and makes it appealing for whales and other sea creatures.