Overpowered by the stunning sunrise, the Bay of Fundy out between the trees is inching closer to low tide, though it may be difficult to see in the early light of dawn. We’ll find ourselves out there soon enough, but first, breakfast, courtesy of our hosts at the Shepody Bay Inn, Seydou and his wife Luba, who are also part owners of the inn. From last night during check-in and here again this morning, it is abundantly obvious that customer service is the highest priority here, which works magic to create a sense that this is one of those places that would easily bring back former guests for future visits. [As a token of our gratitude for Seydou and Luba’s hospitality, we gave them a cloth bag from Frankfurt’s Blutspendedienst (blood donation services) which has been traveling with us for decades, to pin to their wall of appreciation that is covered with many notes, letters, and mementoes of their guests from all over the world – Caroline]

Attesting to the popularity of the Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park on the Bay of Fundy, no matter how early you arrive, others will have arrived before you. Spoiler alert: Caroline and I did not stick around long enough to witness the tidal change here at one of the most famous places on earth to see that phenomenon of extreme tidal variation (as much as 52 feet/16 meters!). We only had time to go for a walk around the rocks.

While I’m okay with the photos I was able to capture, this is not an easy place to grab great images due to the difficulty of working with the light and high contrast between the rocks that are almost up in your face compared to the bright background. Then, there’s also the issue of how one might feel about others in their shots. Obviously, I got lucky from time to time and could wait for a passersby to dip behind a rock or be caught in the shadows, becoming part of the silhouette.

If you don’t want to get muddy, this is not the place for you. You could choose to view the rocks from the tower that brings visitors down to the shore, but you’d miss a lot of other sites that are equally beautiful.

I see the advantage of living nearby and being able to dip into the park at various times across the day and week, as low and high tides are a moving phenomenon that will seriously affect what you will see and where you can visit. While today at 9:00, we were afforded this opportunity to traverse the majority of the shoreline; if we’d been here ten days earlier or ten days later, the seafloor would have been underwater, making it inaccessible, requiring us to visit later in the day unless we joined a kayak tour of the area.

Adding Hopewell Rocks to our long list of natural sites we’ve visited over the years, while significant for us, doesn’t dent what remains and will always be there unexplored by us because with an estimated 60,000 to 110,000 natural and historic sites distributed over the earth, it’s obviously impossible that anyone will ever be able to accomplish such a feat. If I were to make an intense effort, I could scour our blog posts and come up with a fairly close approximation of how many hundreds, possibly low thousands of sites we’ve been lucky enough to visit, but I doubt we’d find more than maybe 3,000 such places, potentially significantly less. This is not a lament; it only adds to our sense of wonderment that these two people who love these situations equally were able to discover one another and then find the ability to bring ourselves into these exotic places of such joy.

To those of you who were not here on the day of our visit, thank you for not cluttering the environment with your presence and your loud voices or music. To the influencers looking to inspire over-tourism by your antics of glamorizing yourself for likes, we are thrilled that you’ve not found the Maritimes yet.

I know there was an epic photo here somewhere; there was a vantage point that would have given me that photo, but I couldn’t find it.

Hey, Caroline, is the perfect photo I’m searching for over there?

“Yes, John, it was here, but the clouds are coming in fast, so you’d better get to it.”

Rarely has mud ever looked so beautiful.

By this time, we’d gone farther, lingered longer, and seen more than we’d ever anticipated here at the Bay of Fundy, but we had an appointment in America for a reservation in Portland, Maine, so we were heading for the exit.

After some days away from lobster rolls and with last night’s reencounter, we are now well aware that our chances to indulge in the luxury of such fresh lobster are coming to an end, and so lunch was easily inspired after passing a few roadside signs directing us to Collins Lobster Shop in Alma. An hour down the road and shifting our awareness to the dwindling opportunity for another particular bit of decadence, Caroline finds Snow’s Softserve & Ice Cream in Hampton, which turns out to have orange and licorice swirl flavor ice cream, better known as tiger tail.

Fortunately, the weather was kind of bleak on our drive out of Canada, but it was also that way entering Maine, which meant we had to make an effort to stop for something to note that we’d arrived back in the U.S.

It’s about time to say goodbye to fall colors, at least for Caroline, who will return to the desert tomorrow night, where it’s still full on summer. If only we could say goodbye to those damned billboards for Subway, which we’ve easily seen over 100 of, advertising that crummy chain of restaurants, while zero moose have been seen.

With our efforts to take photos finished, it was time to return to Caroline reading out loud in the car, which we had skipped over the past few weeks during which we were always on the lookout for where to stop next. Opening the Kindle, we picked up where we left off a month ago in The Marshes of Mount Liang, a.k.a. The Water Margins, a.k.a. The Rebels of Mount Liang, in chapter 41 of 120. The chapter title was Song Jiang Plans the Capture of Wuweijun; White Eel Takes Bee Sting Huang Alive!, probably the longest chapter in the book so far. An absolutely riveting chapter at that.

Finally, there are more lobster rolls, especially a proper all-American one, such as this perfect example from the crazy popular Red Barn Restaurant in Augusta. This effectively brings us to the end of our vacation.