2024 Bigger Truck across Canada day 5

Day 5 started out similar to most of our weekends, with me getting a free few hours in the morning while the female contingent slept in. This morning worked out especially well, since I got to do some advanced scouting at full low tide, giving me a solid 'before' view of the Bay.

This also allowed for some solo Jeep exploring, which is always fun after driving the Big Truck for 4 days straight.

I was 1 millisecond from driving across that creek, and then I remembered how quickly the tide can change (30-40feet over 6 hours), and thought about the situation I would create for us if I buried the Jeep 25 hours from home with very few recovery options. I decided to do it tomorrow about an hour earlier to make sure the tide was at it's absolute minimum.

Next I found a two track, with no signs about private property or No Trespassing. Assuming New Brunswick isn't full of a bunch of overly zealous gun worshippers like back home (not sure if that's safe assumption or not), I proceeded ahead, and was rewarded with a beautiful beach. It was adorned with a perfectly worded sign declaring it private property, but only restricting camping and stealing. Canadians seem like a reasonable folk.

We would return to this beach later to see the difference in tides, and it was pretty mind blowing. This is where I have successfully avoided attaching a bunch of nerdy tide charts (nice charts guys), graphs, and other supporting data that none of you care about. Just know that it was an internal debate.

After arriving back to a silent campsite, I suggested we head into town for a late breakfast/brunch/lunch. It was met with the most tepid of enthusiasm, but an hour later we were on the road.

The venue of choice was the Octopus Garden Cafe, a quaint little joint with some outdoor seating along a little stream and a lobster roll on the menu. Jackpot.

Fueled up, we headed into the Fundy National Park, our second Canadian National Park after visiting Pukaskwa back in 2015 on our Lake Superior cirle tour. We decided on a couple of short hikes (both of them are now immediately suspicious when I say that, so I now make sure it comes directly from the park ranger or the park map - my reputation precedes me).

First up, Dickson Falls. A short loop with a waterfall as the main attraction.

Next, Shiphaven - a quick out & back with a covered bridge as the starting point.

Along this hike we found one of our favorite features of these Canadian National Parks - they place these red Adirondack chairs in the most interesting overlooks on randow trails or overlooks. I have a similar photo (on this blog somewhere) from the top of a granite overlook in Pukaskwa, so as soon as Jordan and Kimberly saw them, they made a mad dash to recreate the photo.

From there, we headed back toward the Bay, stopping for a quick photo op at the National Park visitors center.

Now it was time to retrace my steps from earlier this morning and see how the tide has changed. Here are a few before and after shots from similar vantage points. As always, photos don't do it justice, but having a 12+ meter difference in water levels in a 6 hour period is pretty jarring to see in person.

Cape Enrage beach (yes, it's real. And yes, Kimberly wants a pic by the sign in the worst way..._)

The private property beach from earlier

While we were back at this beach, the water was finally close enough for us to skip some of these perfectly formed rocks, a favorite pastime of ours.

At this point, we decided to do one last recon to the Hopewell Rocks before stopping for dinner. We were right on the edge of being done for the day or knocking out one more hike. I may or may not have been in favor of one more hike, so we headed for Hopewell. These 'flowerpot' rock formations are pretty iconic images in the Bay of Fundy promotional material, so we were a little hesitant about how touristy they would be.

Between us girls, it was pretty touristy. It was a Canadian Provincial Park (equivalent of a state park back home), so not only did we have to pay, but there were paths for the herds, including a disney-style shuttle, so those pics don't completely convey the amount of oblivious and self centered people we encountered. It was a stark contrast to the entire rest of the day we had experienced. I will now stop telling you to get off my lawn and refrain from blaming everything on TikTok and Instagram.

We then decided to hightail it back to town, grab some dinner and retire to the campsite. The remainder of our trip is a bit up in the air, as we are deciding where to go once our time is up in Bay of Fundy. As we were discussing dinner plans while ripping through the Canadian countryside, we noticed things got very quiet where they would normally be filled with jibber jabber.

We grabbed a quick dinner in town, stopped at Holy Whale Brewing Co for a couple of takeout beers to power this blog entry, and called it a night.

Cheers!

2024 Bigger Truck across Canada day 4

Day 4 dawned with a bit of anxiety and a whole lot of hope. We needed to get to St-CYR RV which opened at 9am, hopefully find a towbar in stock that would work, then find whatever hardware we needed to cobble together the attachment to the Jeep bumper. A tall task, made a bit more difficult with the whole French language thing.

When we arrived, we came in with the bumper adapter that we use, and as soon as the first word came out of my mouth, the guy at the parts counter put his hands up and called to a sweet old lady, who turned out to be incredibly helpful. Her broken English was so much better than our very broken French. Between the 3 of us, we arrived at what they had in stock, which turned out to be almost exactly what we needed. Of course the bumper adapters wouldn't work without some custom redneck engineering, but luckily there was a Home Depot 10 km away.

We headed over to the French Home Depot, went foraging for the hardware aisle, and were immediately greeted with this.

I have to say, seeing the aisle title I was a bit disappointed to find out that it wasn't filled with Fast & Furious, Tenacious D, and RAD merchandise (and perhaps some Nicolas Cage stickers). Instead, we would settle for a couple of old men who did their best to help me MacGruber a pile of washers, bolts, hitch pins, and disregard for instructions into this masterpiece that we will never speak of again once we are back in the US of A. Kimberly deserves a ton of credit for helping me piece this together in my heightened state of anxiety to get on the road.

After some tense moments on the highway, anxiety gave way to anticipation, and we were back in the standard mode of transportion.

Now our attention turned toward the 8 hours of driving in front of us, with the end destination of Alma, New Brunswick. Along the way, we saw some distinctly Canadian sights.

Traffic became more and more scarce, and eventually we felt like the only vehicle on the road. The winding 2 lane road with a single yellow line started to feel a bit like the old motorcyle trips out west, and just as I was thinking that, Kimberly said "Hey, I know I'm usually pretty comfortable with your driving, but I feel like you might kill us." I assured her I was driving under the speed limit, and she assured me that she was not interested in the speed limit given the size of our rig. Here is the road we were on during said exchange.

The other thing we discovered during this drive, as a testament to our American ignorance, was the existence of the Atlantic Standard Time Zone. While we were driving, our ETA jumped by an hour, and all of us were quite intrigued to realize that this tiny pocket of Canada has a time zone 1 hr ahead of the Eastern Time Zone. Jordan and Kimberly instantly commiserated about how this would not help their eternal desire to sleep in.

As we approached our campground, we passed through Fundy National Park, and also saw a black bear just chilling on the side of the road. We did reach one scenic turnout before exiting the National Park, and finally jumped out to see the bay at low tide and get a sneak preview of our next few days.

When we finally arrived at the campground, the first time unhooking the Jeep with the new setup was a breeze. We rolled into site 6 at West River Campground, and were pleasantly surprised. It was definitely meant to be, as our site had a raised planter bed of vegetables just like the one Jordan has been tending back home. No surprise, but she was immediately out there watering and weeding.

By the way, that lobster boat you see in the background, Jacob Boy, is apparently available as an AirBNB. Jordan, after about 20 minutes here, spoke a near blasphemous statement - "This is my new favorite campground, it's now number 1 over Pentwater". Bold statement. All in all, given the circumstances, today turned out as well as it could have. We now have the next few days to explore the largest tidal range in the world. Cheers!

2024 Bigger Truck across Canada day 3

Hopefully yesterday was the most stressful/eventful day of the trip. This morning, it was a little later start to the day, but so much better. The Montreal South KOA is immaculate, and the person at the desk was the Bizarro version of the person at the previous KOA. She was incredibly helpful, and pointed us in the direction of an RV dealer near our campground in Quebec City. Fingers crossed. Once we got on the road, we were excited since it was a mere 2.5hr drive to our destination, the Aquarium du Quebec. However, the Canadian powers that be had a little something else in store for us.

With our newfound arrangement of driving both vehicles, Kimberly was rewarded with a 45 minute full stop and go traffic jam due to this semi truck deciding to roll over in the median and back up both directions of the highway for many, many kilometers. Good thing the Jeep has a nice easy clutch. 3.5 hours into our 2.5hr drive, we needed to stop for petrol.

Just seeing the reaction from the kid at the counter since pay at the pump was disabled was worth it. It nearly surprised the France out of him. I assured him that yes, it is possible to rack up C$307 in a single transaction. It's all yours, courtesy of the red white & blue.

The final hour of our 2.5 hr drive (yes, we are now at 4.5) involved a bit more construction, traffic, and an exciting and creatively designed 6 into 2 lane merge just before crossing the St Lawrence and arriving in Quebec City. There, we arrived at the aquarium and mentally prepared ourselves for the one thing Jordan wanted to see more than anything on this trip. Historic architecture, you guess? Old Quebec, the only fortified city on this continent north of Mexico, you assume? Nope. Polar bears. And let me tell you, they did not disappoint.

I'll spare you the other 50 pics and videos we got, but they really know how to put on a show. There were 2 of them, and they were kicking the crap out of each other nonstop, it was like the Beute family basement circa 1977-1982 whenever the babysitter showed up. Jordan was completely giddy, which made it worth the 4.5 metric hours of construction and traffic to get here.

If you do find yourself in this historic city, this place is certainly worth a few hours of your time. It is directly on the shore of the St Lawrence, with this historic bridge in the background, which we discovered is an international historic civil engineering landmark. The engineering nerd in me was quite impressed.

Back to the aquarium - there were a few notable creatures, specifically the Sarlacc pit:

this guy, who seemed like he just wanted to hang out:

and this guy, who seemed like an aquatic Dr Seuss reimagining of Scrat from Ice Age:

From there, a quick trip down playground memory lane, allowing Jordan to experience the true joy of a dolphin on a coil spring (keep your shear strength jokes to yourselves, nerds)

Then it was back to the big truck to head to our campground, the aptly named Camping de la Joie. But not before a brief visit to an Inuit ice exhibit, where Jordan was definitely comfortable and not worried that we had potentially just been locked in a frozen shipping container.

A quick pic to remind ourselves that we have no idea where we are going or what anything is, and we were off.

On the way back to the parking lot, we realized that all the bikes we had seen on the way in were enjoying this riverside trail that must have some incredibly scenic overlooks, and also must be an Olympic trainig ground given the amount of spandex and full aero gear (do you really need the full Alien teardrop helmet for a Sunday afternoon cruise?)

Back at the campground, we were assigned to site 135, sized to accomodate a motorhome up to 35' in length. I admire the Canadian confidence that we would fit, and with a bit of finagaling (never actually spelled that word, certain that cannot be correct), we were set for the evening.

A quick hour of nap/downtime for the ladies, and it was off to Old Quebec City to explore, only about a 20 minute drive. We knew it was going to be cool, but I don't think any of us were prepared for what we saw.

We explored for just a bit before grabbing a bite to eat (and our first poutine of the trip!) at a joint called le Chic Shack, right at the base of the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac. The atmosphere around the area was pretty vibrant, especially for a Sunday night. Street performers, influencers influencing, cars cruising, open air cafes and music everywhere, it was quite the experience. Once we finished dinner, the sun had set and it really became picturesque.

We were starting to fade, but Kimberly had one more spot for us to check out - Umbrella Alley. It was worth the hike all the way down to the waterfront.

At that point, I'm not sure I could have gotten us back up the hill with a Looney Tunes ACME cannon. As luck would have it, the Funiculaire was still running, giving us one last view of Old Quebec.

Now, we were done. Quick trip back to the campground, and down for the count til tomorrow. Cheers!