Fundy National Park, New Brunswick, Canada

SUN & MON August 22 & 23, 2010

A pretty day for a short 19-mile drive up the coast of Maine to Prospect Harbor; my last duty station before I retired from the Navy was with the Navy Astronautics Group, Point Mugu CA, we were a satellite navigation command for the fleet ballistic missile submarines, and we had a detachment in Prospect Harbor. Generally once a year we did an inspection of NAG’s detachments and the last time I was in Prospect Harbor was 1985. The gem of the place is a set of guest quarters called Gull Cottage, it a cottage and a lighthouse; one of those nice little places that not many people know about, and hard to get a reservation for.

After Prospect Harbor I continued eastward driving past cranberry bogs and blueberry farms into Canada to Fundy National Park and it started to warm up.

Starting SAT, cell phone service for me started to get spotty and I don’t like that and then I remembered that Forrest would soon be going overseas again so in Calais ME before crossing the border, I stopped at the local fire station and asked where pay-phone was. After getting the crew of 4 together, they thought there was one at a store in the Wal-Mart shopping center. Yes there was and I called Forrest and told him to keep his butt in the ditch and be safe.

Can a cell phone accept a collect call? That’s something for you folks, and me, that are cellphone only to think about.

So here I am pulling in to Fundy National Park and finished getting the camper all settled in and relaxing after supper when I noticed that the lights seem not to be as bright as they normally are. In checking I find that my trailer house-battery system is registering low, it usually reads fully charged, and that is soon emphasized when my propane gas alarm goes off to announce that it is receiving less that nominal power. Out I go to check wiring connections as best as I can for the batteries and leads to the trailer, I find nothing. I start reading the trailer manual and decide to check the power converter and don’t really know what I’m looking at. Bottom line, turn off all the lights and go to bed because it’s dark. No power, no heat and I add a sleeping bag as an extra blanket. Thank goodness the fridge can run off propane.

The campground is only a couple of miles from the Visitors Center that is the hub of all the roads and the village outside of the park is only another mile so I was planning on riding my bike but then I saw a road sign that posted steep and twisting roads because of hills, maximum speed of 40 km/h and suggested low gear; would have been fun going down but then one has to go back up, doesn’t one; change of plan.

Fundy is a beautiful and wonderful park that is well manicured and I mean just that, they aren’t letting the people areas go to natural setting the way U.S. Nat’l parks are, there is even a solar-heated saltwater swimming pool. And the campgrounds have emergency exits that are really car trails cut through the trees in case a forest-fire cuts off the paved campground road. And it is a park designed for hikers with many many trails and a wonderful trail-map that gives trail difficulty and distances in kilometers, 1 km = 0.62 mi; I would describe what I did more as hard walking rather than hiking, fun and beautiful.

And the tide range is what people come to see. I had heard 14 feet but a postcard I looked at said 9 meters.

They clean the showers and bathrooms here twice a day and I have NEVER seen that in a US park.

Saw a soda machine that said “Sorry this machine takes only loonies and quarters; I surmised that a “loonie” was a dollar coin and when I asked, yes it was, and there is also a tooney, a 2-dollar coin and I’m not going to make a joke out of that. Had a great late lunch in the village of Alma and the best fish chowder I have ever had, so good in fact I ordered a take-out of the same chowder for supper.

Spent a second night in the dark reading by flashlight and in the cold, this is not my Idea of fun.