T Stands for On the Road in Nova Scotia-Trip Part 4-Burntcoat Head

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and Happy T day to those who stop by over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  blog.

    Yesterday I wrote a post about taking the ferry from Maine to Nova Scotia, and today I'm going to take you walking on the ocean floor. But first, it's about a 3-3.5 hour drive from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (where we stayed the night before after arriving on the ferry) to Burntcoat Head which was our  planned stop for the day.  It's where we would be able to walk on the ocean floor.

   And just an FYI- this is a long post.

   After a couple of hours of driving, we decided to make a potty and caffeine stop. Plus we thought a little treat would be nice too. This is my ticket to T day this week.

   Some of you know all about Tim Horton's, the donut and coffee (or tea) shop of Canada. They seem to be in just about every town  in Nova Scotia. There also used to be one in Maine near the University where I went to school, but I've noticed it has since gone out of business.  

   We got a box of Tim Bits (donut holes or what here in my area you'd get at Dunkin and are called Munchkins) and our drinks. This is my ticket to T this week. 

I'm not a coffee drinker, so I had a London Fog Latte. (Earl Grey tea and some milk whipped together)

   We drove along the north side of Nova Scotia along the Bay of Fundy and through what's known as the Annapolis Valley. Neither my husband nor I knew there would be so many large farms in this area.  You'll have to take my word for it because I only have this next photo, but it  was quite pretty. 

   One of the items on my travel bucket list  was to go  up along the Bay of Fundy, which is where the world's highest high and lowest low tides are. I had seen the tides in far Eastern, Maine and just over the border in parts of New Brunswick (at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy), but I had never seen the huge tides that you get when you travel  far up along the shores of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and deep into the bay.

  Why does the  Bay of Fundy have such high high and such low low tides?  Here's how I'd explain it to the kids at school (plus it keeps it short so this blog post doesn't get all that much longer 😉).

 

1) The shape of the bay is like a funnel, starting off wider than it is at the other end. This means the large amount of water entering the wide opening of the bay during high tides needs to  stack up on itself  as the bay gets narrower.  And for low tides, all this water that flowed inward now needs to  flow out. 

 2) The Bay's natural seiche (movement/oscillation of water) is very close to the natural tide cycle in the area. That means that the moving in of water at high tide and the moving out of water at low tide puts even more energy into the water in the bay. More energy means more water movement. For you  geekier personalities (that's me), it is referred to as the resonance. 

3) Tide size also depends upon the length of the bay, the width of the bay and also the depth of the bay. The Bay of Fundy has just the right combination to create these very high and very low tides.

    That day's plan was to go to the place where the world's largest high and low tides are recorded. You can see it on the red spot on the map of the area below.

  This place is called Burntcoat Head. 

    We were lucky because low tide came at the perfect time for us to see it. That was at 12:41 PM.  At low tide, you can safely walk along the bottom for 3 hours. Even though high tide is around 6 hours after low tide, the water comes in  quickly and you could be in trouble if you stay out after the 3 hour mark.

   We joined all the other people walking on the ocean floor.

    I was really surprised how red the underlying ocean floor was in this area. And  since much of it was mud, it was slippery too. 

    If you look at the trees on the left side in this next photo, you can get a good idea how deep the water is here at high tide. (Even though the water doesn't go up to the tree line, it does go quite a way up the side of the rock face. This is especially true when the highest tides are happening.)

    Our shoes got a bit muddy walking around, and my husband rolled up his pants so they wouldn't get muddy either. 

   In this photo you can just see  the stairs that get you down onto the ocean floor.

    We also did a bit of tide pooling and saw these hermit crabs in what looks like periwinkle snail shells.

  Although we weren't around to see  high tide (which both my husband and I wished we had been), I did climb to the top of the lighthouse in the park and took some photos through the windows after we'd finished our ocean bottom walk about. 

    At the time I climbed up the lighthouse it was just about the end of the 3 hour window when it was safe to walk around on the ocean  bottom. From up high you could see how much the tide was already starting to come up. Some of those areas where we had been walking were now underwater. 

  I did find some photos on the internet to share because it is really interesting to see the difference between low and high tide.

https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2025/0228/bay-of-fundy-tides-tidal-bores

   The parks website also has a cool website to see the tide in real time. If you're interested you can check it out here: Burntcoat Head Park.

   And for those of you who might be curious, the dogs had to sit in the car (which we luckily found a shady spot for) because you can only imagine how filthy the car would be if we let them walk around in the mud.  Plus with Maddie being blind, I'm not sure she could have safely maneuvered the rocks. But they did get a walk before and after our ocean floor exploring. 😏

    That's all for me this post. Next trip post I'll take you to the tidal bore. Have a super T day and week ahead.