New England and Canada Trip - Part 4

St. John, New Brunswick

 

Once again, Dave and I were on the treadmills in the fitness center when dawn broke and we could see where our ship had docked.  One by one church steeples appeared as it got lighter outside.  I was liking the looks of this Eastern Canada city.

 

 

Sandy, Becky, Dale and Dad waiting to board the "Hop on, hop off Big Pink Bus".

Elaine, Dave, Russell, Phil and the photographer (yours truly) were ready, too. 

Notice how many levels of portholes can be seen in this photo. We were docked in the Bay of Fundy at high tide and so our ship is sitting pretty high next to the dock.

The Big Pink Bus, of course. 

 Everything in this city is labeled in English as well as French.

 

 This house is called "The Witch House" by residents because the roof looks like a witch's hat and cape.

 Our tour guide was very proud of the fact that McDonald's signs in Canada have the Maple Leaf in the middle of the M.

 A very unique thing about the Bay of Fundy is it's unusually high tides, which rise up to 50 feet in a few hours.  Because the bay is shaped like a funnel, this causes a phenomenon where the river that usually flows into the bay becomes lower than the bay.  The bay floods into the river and reverses the direction it flows for up to 80 miles.  This is the only place in the world where this occurs.

 We first visited the river in the morning, when the tide was high.  So the river was flowing inland because the high tides pushed the flow the opposite direction.   It's hard to tell in these two photos, but the river is flowing in the opposite direction that it should. It is flowing from left to right in the pictures.

 Here is another view of the river being forced to flow the wrong direction.  (Left to right in the picture again)

 

 Nature shot.  These little flowers looked like orchids, but I don't think they were.

 

 

 Waiting for the Pink Bus after viewing the river.

 

We went to a museum in the early afternoon. This is the complete skeleton of a huge whale.

"I like turtles"

 Then about five hours from our first visit, we returned to the river.  The tide had dropped dramatically and the river was once again flowing rapidly out to sea.  (Now it is flowing from right to left in the photo)

 The rapids have completely reversed from what we saw earlier that day.

 

 Here are two comparison pictures:
                                 High tide- river turned inland. Low tide - river reversed out to sea.

                                 High tide- river turned inland, low tide, river going out to sea

This was the only day it really rained.  We got soaked.  You can see how the ship has gone down about three decks with the drastic drop in the tide level in such a short space of time.

Here is a better view of how low the tide dropped. (Compare with the first pictures in this post)

A very interesting day.