No Volume Control

Our plan this morning was to leave the hotel by 9 at the latest.  As we all know, plans are difficult to follow on the best of days, let alone throwing in 3 kids who don't want to wake up, and everything that comes with staying in a hotel room.  But we did manage to be on the road by 930, so it wasn't too bad.   We headed down "chocolate river" to Fundy bay.  It's quite the sight to see so little water in the rivers, some of the off shoots had absolutely none in them.   We stopped at Hopewell Rocks, and were pleased to discover that even with our late departure from the hotel, the water was still at low tide and we could go walk the ocean floor.  It was about a 15 minute hike to get to the stairs to go down.  The girls did great on the walk.  Get to the look out and the stairs, and there is a long line of people waiting to wash their feet, shoes, legs and even more in some cases.  We made our way slowly down the many stairs to the ocean floor.  All of us except for Dany removed our shoes.  I think Dany was the lucky one with her shoes on.  Steph didn't last very long without his shoes and went back and got his sandals on.  The ocean floor was rocky, muddy, uneven, and hard to walk on, but the older two girls ventured out as far as where the water was, and everywhere in between.  The rock formations were incredible, especially when you see how it was caused, and the amount of water that flows in and out of that area on a daily basis.   After a little while down there, we headed back up the stairs to the line up to wash our feet. Unfortunately this is where some chaos happened, because we needed to wash our feet, but Dany informed us that she needed to pee.  Hoping for the best, we continued to wait in line, and then when they opened up just a hose off to the side, we went there behind the family that was already there.  We got our feet washed, and then Dany and I rushed to the bathroom, but she only made it about halfway before the accident happened.   :(   Poor Dany.  We tried.  And luckily she was wearing a dress and pants, so we were able to take the pants off but kept the dress on for the walk back to the car.   We went back to the look out point to look where we had just been, and the water was starting to rise.  There were already Kayaker's down there getting ready for their water adventure.  If we could have stayed the entire ocean floor where we walked would have been completely covered with water. We didn't venture off the main path to go see the other lookout points, but headed straight back to the main center for a quick peek and then to the car.  Change of clothes, and we had a much happier Dany.  Well prepared mom got bowls with crackers, and then other snacks for a "lunch".  We continued to argue with the GPS and made our way beside the bay of Fundy.  One pit stop at Cape Enrage that surprised us by costing money.  We had heard that it was the best look out point on the Bay of Fundy, so i suppose we shouldn't have been surprised - why keep something free when you can make money from it.  But the view was worth it.  There was a beach there as well, but the tide was high so you could go to the bottom of the stairs, but that's it.  At some points, even the bottom couple of stairs were under water.  I'm sure the beach would have been quite beautiful if the tide was lower.  From what we could see it was covered in small flat rocks.  
 We headed on the road again.  The next part of the journey was one of those true tests for people with motion sickness.  From what we can find out (and any one is welcome to correct), the highest altitude we reached on the drive through that park was about 380m (~1200ft).  Some parts felt like we were doing nothing but going straight up.  But Ellie and I survived - with several stretches with the window open. LOL

We stayed in Fredericton for the night. It was a really nice hotel with a pool, hot tub, and a pond with Koi fish and turtles.  And since it was our last night in the Maritimes, we decided to treat the girls to an old favourite - Jungle Jim's.   This was a restaurant that we went to a few times while we lived in St. John's and it was always a fun night.  This night was no exception.  Girls had a great time there.