See Ya When We Get There!: New Brunswick, Canada (June 7

We arrived at the very nice Century Farms Campground in the small fishing village of St. Martins, New Brunswick on June 7. It was cold and rainy until June 9.

The campground is waterfront and we really enjoyed our site and the view once the weather cleared.

Beach at Century Farms

Our first New Brunswick outing was an urban event. The four of us loaded up in the truck and headed for downtown St. John, New Brunswick which we learned is Canada's oldest incorporated city. Our mission was to walk this historical/scenic route. We did. It was fun. We checked out the waterfront and downtown areas.

And particularly enjoyed hanging out with some of the locals.

These are actually wooden statues by Canadian sculptor John Hooper. They are located throughout Market Square in downtown St. John and in other locations throughout Canada. Apparently St. John loves statues. Also in Market Square is this life-size bronze statue of a moose.

We read it was a very popular place for tourists to take a picture. Of course we couldn't pass up that opportunity.

Continuing on our little tour of downtown, we came upon the Three Sisters Lamp.

The story goes that in 1849, a post containing the three red gas lamps was placed at the end of Prince William Street. If all three lamps are clearly visible, sailors would know they were heading straight into the harbor, however if only one or two could be seen sailors knew they needed to alter their course. End of History class.

Then we moved on to the Irving Nature Park.

Irving is a popular name in the area. It's an oil company. Anyway, the park is a marvelous resource for the people of St. John. There's about an 8 mile driving loop and miles of hiking trails. Lots of scenic overlooks to the open sea, wooded areas and I suppose lions and tigers and bears oh my!

On the 10th Debbie and I and the boys moseyed to the Fundy Trail/Parkway.

It's located just outside of St. Martins where we're camping. It's a 14 mile out and back drive with an adjacent foot trail along the southern coast of New Brunswick as well as the Bay of Fundy. Everything about this location is first class. The Visitors Center,

roads,

Best not to bring your RV here!!

waterfalls,

scenic overlooks and views,

river and bridges,

and even the quality of the decking,

are all terrific! This area is also the site of the former Big Salmon River Settlement. It was a hustling logging community until the 1940's. The Visitors Center has a great movie as well as nice pictures on the walls telling the history of the community. There is now hardly a trace of the old community.

This is where we also had our first opportunity to check out the changing tides that the Bay of Fundy is famous for.

This was taken at low tide,

and here's the same area about 4 1/2 hours later.

But our day is not done. Late in the afternoon we drove about 75 miles to the Fundy National Park. This is also located on the southern coast of New Brunswick.. It's a very pretty chunk of land but is mostly a wilderness area best seen via some ambitious hiking. We strolled a nice trail to the wonderful Dickson Falls. The whole area struck us as very GREEN.

Otherwise we simply drove the park. We had dinner in Alma, then motored home.

It rained like crazy for the next two days. Consequently, we extended our stay in St Martins an extra day because we didn't want to break camp and drive in such ugly weather.

So in between the raindrops we managed to find some time to enjoy the small town of St. Martin. Very cute area that includes a lighthouse,

covered bridges,

a small harbor,

Obviously low tide

and an impressive area known as the caves. The caves are only accessible at low tide and since we accidentally arrived at a good time we checked them out.