Back to New Brunswick (8/25/2015)

We had a bit of a slow start again this morning, Joe wasn't ready to get up at 7:30, so I took the opportunity to walk the beach again.  Still no sea glass, but I found 2 more rocks I needed.  And I checked to make sure Joe's addition to the cairn survived the night.

I really like this campground.  There is something pretty special about camping at "Seafoam Campground" in a town named "Seafoam."   There are a lot of "seasonals" in here, and the ones on the front row have quite a view.

We got on the road about 9:30, finishing this coastal drive, heading into Amherst, then crossing back into New Brunswick about 11:30.  I did see another eagle this morning.  We had camped one kilometer from a lavendar farm that I thought we might go back to, but it didn't open until 10:00, and we were on our way by then so we missed it.  We skirted around Moncton on Hwy. 2, then picked up Hwy. 1 into Saint John, where we spent the night.  Our destination here was the Reversing Rapids, aka Reversing Falls.  There was a tidal chart in the many brochures we've picked up, and when I found out low tide was at 2:21, we picked up our speed a bit and headed straight for the viewing area for this.  We arrived about 20 minutes late, but we watched the water in the St. John River continue to drain into the bay here.

  Joe had a rock he was using to measuring the changing tide as the water flowed out to the bay.

They offered boat rides on the river, and we watched one circle close to the whirlpools.  We talked to someone later who was on this particular boat, and she said it was a really good tour, and the narrator gave a lot of good information.

We walked across the bridge and viewed the River from the other side.  They had the bridge all torn up so we couldn't see upriver very well, but we stayed about 1 1/2 hours and watched the whirlpools form as the water continued to recede.

We left here and drove to the campground to get checked in.  It was about 4:00 by now, but we had actually gotten to the river about 2:45.  After we got things set up, we went for a drive, first down to the City Market, and then around the harbor where we found 2 ships in port and 3 offshore, either waiting for high tide or for room in the harbor since there were already two ships in.

We stopped back by the RV for a bite to eat, then headed back to the River to watch high tide.  We got there about a hour before high tide, so again Joe kept an eye on his rock.

We also saw some river otters cavorting in the water.  But now, the water that was dumping into the bay heading east when we were here at 3:00, was now heading upriver west or north.  The water level was rapidly moving up on the rock.  I wouldn't call them "reversing falls," but the rapids we had seen at low tide had either disappeared or the water was crashing over them heading the opposite direction.  Quite an amazing phenomonon!  Maybe when the tides are higher at full moon, it is more of a falls than a rapids.

The big rock is almost completely submerged now.

There was another viewing area upriver that we drove over to and watched the tide slow, but we didn't wait around for it to actually stop or reverse.  There were 4 small fishing boats over in front of a paper mill right here at these rapids, and we saw the river otters again, this time chasing fish.

 

One of the locals said that would take another hour or so, and it was pretty chilly out there by now.  So we called it a night and headed back to camp.We caught the sunset here, very pretty.

If all goes well, we should cross the border back into the U.S. tomorrow morning.