Kids went to bed on time last night thanks to my southern style reading of Tom
Sawyer—it never fails to be soporific. We didn’t sleep too well though, since Nick
was rather sick, coughing and sneezing through the night, and the northern birds
and squirrels started really early.
After campsite breakfast, Sasha and I went down the stairs—we have stairs next to
our campsite leading all the way to the town of Alma—and partook of another ranger
activity, "beach sculpture." A local artist drew a heron on
the sand, and then all the people were gathering sea materials of different colors—
white shells, blue stones, brown seaweed, etc.—to create a rather impressive
mosaic. The tide (which is famous for being the largest in the world) was low, so we had
probably half a mile of a beach to ourselves. Anna and Nick came down midway
through, and Nick slept near the sculpture, sneezing all the while. We then walked
to the water, which took us 10-15 minutes; the patterns and textures under our
feet were phenomenal. We took pictures of the mosaics and went back to Alma for
lunch. Anna and kids had the fare from the “Alma Take-out” restaurant, which was
surprisingly good; I crossed the road, and bought a freshly steamed lobster & local
beer (Honey Wheat from PEI, great). It was an excellent lunch.
We then drove up to the next ranger program, which was on the lake in the middle
of Fundy preserve. The program itself was rather bland (a theatrical piece involving
rangers pretending they are bilingual animals), but the lake was exceptional. We
swam in the lake and hung out on the beach while Nicolas slept; afterwards, he was
ready for ice-cream, so we dove downhill to Alma (I had to downshift in order not
to burn my breaks) and we had ice-cream in the same take out place. We then went
back to the tent and Nick and I had a two hour siesta (he is still sleeping as I am
writing this).
At 9:30 pm we had a night hike through the Caribou trail—without lights! It was
totally amazing. Our tour guide (ranger Dan) had night vision goggles, astronomical laser
pointer, naturally light producing mints, tons of stuff to touch and smell in the dark,
and cookies from the famous local bakery. It was so interesting! We could not see
anything, and had to follow the little fluorescent triangle attached to another person.
Dan showed us all the constallations in the sky, plus lots of other really cool things.
We got to our tents at midnight, exhausted.
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