We camped
at the Wide Open Wilderness campground in Urbania, NS about 45 minutes north of Halifax. The camp is beautiful and our site is surrounded
by trees. There’s also a tidal-bore overlook from the campground.
During high
tide the water comes rushing in from the Bay of Fundy (Atlantic ocean) into an
almost empty red-banked river. From above it looks like a small wave but soon
the entire river is filled with red churning water. The wave seems to move slowly but we were
told that you couldn’t outrun it. Lots of tourist-filled red rubber boats go
out to meet the incoming tide.
While
waiting on the cliff, high above the river, for the bore-tide we were surprised
by the appearance of a beautiful, huge hawk and then another one and then a
bald eagle and another!!! RATS!! The cameras were back in the RV. We didn’t
even get a picture of the bore-tide!
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| Halifax harbor |
On Tuesday,
the 24th we went to Halifax to see the Tall Ships at the harbor. There
had been a Tall Ship celebration during the weekend but only a few were still
there. We wandered in and out of the
shops until the forecasted rain arrived.
Everyone here and in PEI had been hoping for rain because they also are
in the middle of a drought. It still
looked green to us but they say even the grass has stopped growing.
The rain
had stopped by the next day, July 25th so we packed our usual lunch
and headed towards the mouth of the river where the Bay of Fundy starts its
bore-tide journey.
We
came across an old church with its cemetery. The church had been converted into a
museum. The inside was packed with displays of antique tools, household
“appliances” and furnishings, clothing and even the embalming table that was
custom made for Col. John Jacob Astor IV.
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| Church converted into museum |
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| Embalming table made for John Jacob Astor IV |
He was the
wealthiest passenger aboard the Titanic to perish and his wife insisted that
his embalming be done on an unused table. The table above was hastily made and is probably the first portable embalming table.
That was
only one of the many interesting stories told to us by the college student docent who was
working at the museum for the summer.
Our next
stop along the river was at the Walton Lighthouse. It was used to guide ships
into the nearby port but the port is now closed.
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| Look through the sign. The tide is still out. |
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| Walton lighthouse |
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| The tide is out! |
The tide was still out and the
river bed was mostly dry so we took what we thought was a short cut to get to
the river’s mouth and the Bay of Fundy. Wrong!
We ended up taking a wrong turn.
Road signs are vague to non-existent! Because of the wrong turn we had
to turn around to get back to the Bore-Tide Interpretive Center up-river so we
could photograph the incoming bore-tide and all the boats “running the rapids”
created by the tide.
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