The Bay of Fundy

September 12, 2015

Today we did something I have never done on a road trip: we stayed put. I mean I thought about moving on after a few hikes. I thought about camping in the park. The weather was just too nice for a few trails, especially after the almost non-stop rain that we had been dealing with. And the ground was waterlogged so camping with the mutts would be a bit unpleasant. I looked at hotels down the road and decided nope. We stay.

But before all that thinking about moving on and stuff, we went for a walk on the bay.  Not along the edge or anything.  We scaled down the rocks and wandered around in the mud.  Now I don’t remember seeing signs not to move around on the flats but since we were the only ones out there, we didn’t stray far out.

After wiping off muddy feet, we had breakfast at “The Octopus’s Garden” down the road from the hotel.  Pancakes of course.  I certainly amused a few people when they saw me sharing little nibbles with the dogs.

Then to the park.  We hiked for almost 12 hours!! The only time we stopped was to run into Alma for lunch. There was a trailer as soon as you get back into town so that was where we stopped.  Seafood, of course, before we went back to the trails.

I didn’t expect to see much in the way of wildlife during the day but I had thought that maybe, just maybe, as dusk approached I would see one of those moose I kept hearing about.  We did see a couple of rabbits. Ohhhhhhh then as we’re heading back into town and it’s almost completely dark and the only light was from my headlights, I saw a pale shape in the middle of the road. At first I couldn’t see what it was or where it was going but as I got closer I saw that it’s a coyote. A bloody coyote eating something in the middle of the road. And you know what that little bastard does? Trots at my car!!! So I rolled my window down and just start talking at it: “are you really coming at my car? Who do you think you are?” If a coyote could look confused I’m pretty sure I saw what that looked like. Then I had Piper try to push herself through the glass to get at it. Let’s face it… I’m the mouth and she’s the muscle. I’m glad she hasn’t figured out how to undo her harness.  The kicker is that we have coyotes back home in southern Ontario.  I drive to the Atlantic Ocean and the only wildlife I see is a coyote.  Not a whale or seal or dolphin or even a moose.  No.  A coyote.  I spent the short drive back to the hotel muttering to myself.

I had reserved a room in the middle of our hiking so I had to check in again with the same gentleman who had been there when I checked in and out that morning.  He seemed surprised to see me again.  I just shrugged and shook my head.  What could I say?

After unpacking in our new room, I decided to try a different place for dinner.  Alma is so small that you could basically walk from one end to the other in under an hour and this restaurant was almost directly across from the hotel.  I walked in and asked if I could sit on the patio while the dogs were outside the fence.  My jaw almost dropped when the server said I could bring them onto the patio.  Say whaaaaaaaaaaat?  So there I am on the patio and there are people on the other side of the glass inside the restaurant who are getting quite a show as they watch me and the dogs eating.  Yes the dogs had a few bites too. What can I say: they have refined palates.  I felt like we were on display at a zoo.

After gorging ourselves on so much food we practically rolled back to our room, we quickly passed out, pleasantly exhausted from a wonderful day.