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Driving ever Northeast, we finally came to...
Where we had to clear Canadian customs. The nice customs lady asked all kinds of questions about what we were bringing in to Canada. When I said that we did not have any alcohol, dairy, or meat, she looked a bit askance at us, since we were after all towing a pretty large trailer, with fridge. But she let it pass. When she asked if we had any pepper spray with us, I answered "I don't think so", with which she was understandably not satisfied -- she wanted a 'yes' or 'no'. I had given Jody a small pepper spray for Christmas a few years ago. We vaguely recalled that it may be in the glove box, and after rummaging about a bit we produced it. The nice customs lady then told us to park, and take a form she gave us, along with the spray, over to the customs house. Once inside, I had to sign a form acknowledging that I was "surrendering my personal property to the crown" of England. This was a fun and unusual experience; I had never been asked to surrender anything to the crown before. The offending spray sitting on the counter, now the property of Queen Elizabeth. I hope she enjoys it. After clearing customs and changing money into Canadian dollars, we discovered a new time zone, called "Atlantic Time", and that we were now in it. We thought that Eastern Time was the last time zone covering a populated area until you hit the British Isles. Wrong. There are at least 2 other time zones East of Eastern Time. At any rate, we were now 4 hours ahead of our hometown Pacific Time. And so we drove North and East, nearly up to the tip of the Bay of Fundy. Tides at Fundy are typically monstrous. A 40 vertical foot tide is not uncommon at all. Apparently the shape and orientation of the bay are just perfect to reflect back and forth a standing wave of water that moves up and down the bay. Imagine that you are sitting in your bathtub, and you suddenly move forward. A large wave moves away from you, bounces off the far end of the tub, and returns to you, all in the space of a few seconds. If you then move forward again, if you time it right, you can push the wave higher, and as all children learn, you can even make a wave big enough that it overflows the bathtub. Now imagine that your tub is hundreds of miles long, and that the period of the standing wave is 13 hours or so. The 'push forward' is provided by the incoming tide, which reinforces the 'old' wave. And so you get something like Fundy, apparently the only place in the world like it. Quite amazing, as you will hopefully will see. Below is a 'before' picture, taken of a small inlet at low tide. And here is the same inlet at high tide. While the tide was coming up, Jody and I stood still, about 5 feet from the waterline, and waited. Within a few minutes, our toes were under water. The water rises here about 1 vertical inch per minute as the tide comes in. On a fairly flat beach like this one, 2 or 3 yards of horizontal beach per minute rejoined the bay. We just stood and watched the tide come in for an hour or more. In the picture below, Joya had put a mark on her leg, at about mid calf. We stood and waited in ankle-deep water, and timed the rise until the water covered the mark. It took about 8 minutes. We later measured, and it the distance from ankle to mark was indeed 8 inches or so. Another before and after series, this time of the harbor at the small town of Alma. The boats below are just sitting on the mud. Those are the docks behind them. Fishermen time their departures and arrivals to match the high tide, which only occurs twice per day. You can see that the tide comes in even higher at times, based on the height of the docks. The rocks below, located on Hopewell Cape just North of Fundy National Park, are called "flowerpot rocks" for obvious reasons. At low tide, these are just sitting in the sand. At high tide, the small caves at the bottom are covered by water.
The girls found a paradise for rock-skipping. |