Back to paradise. Camping in Grand Manan

Because I have been teaching this year I did not have the usual vacation constraints and could go out of town anytime I chose to this summer. I can get used to this. So we picked when we wanted to go camping this year, right in the middle of the construction holiday. Usually the timing coincides with the ripening of the tomatoes, which is a hassle, but they are very late this year so I have yet to pick a tomato. The garlic was pretty much ready, and despite all my schooling by Gu about how many leaves were left and harvesting each plant at the right time, I took into consideration the intermittent rain and timing of our vacation plans, and on a sunny day two days before we left I threw caution to the wind and harvested all of it. I got pretty muddy in the process as it had rained the previous night, and I just managed to get it all laid out on top of the tomato cages for it to have some sun to dry. The tomatoes were barely beyond the first level (by this time in years past they were taller than I am, rather than at my knees) so the empty cage levels were perfect for the purpose. Before we left Wednesday morning I had managed to get them all strung up. More on garlic in my next post.

This year, we took a child along on our trip. The past two vacations in Grand Manan (see posts in August 2012 and August 2013) we were escaping from our kids and left them at camp and at grandparents. This time, we were ready to share, but our son had already moved out west with his girlfriend, and our older daughter decided to opt out (24 hours of sharing a backseat with her sister scared her off), so she did the grandparent visit instead, making a bit of money helping with the garlic harvest out in Glen Roy Ontario. Our youngest daughter Orianne came along and with the help of a hammock, an i-pad and some nice girls her age she found around the campsite, she made the best a teenager could of being stuck with parents who insist on waking up early and hiking while she was on vacation.

We stayed at the amazing Hole in the Wall Campsite on a cliff overlooking the Bay of Fundy. Cool, misty, with sudden weather changes and a few heavy showers, this is not everyone's ideal vacation, but I will take the chilly nights for the decided lack of mosquitos on the cliff edge, the spectacular views and the coastal wildlife. We did not have quite the same level of whale action as we did in 2013, but we did see a few fin whales and maybe minkes from a reasonable distance. We had a mother and baby porpoise in the vicinity, as well as a bald eagle, a rather large great blue heron, loads of sea ducks and cormorants and seals. We did not have the excitement of being awoken by whales right in front of the campsite, but when we spent any amount of time in one place, we did see a fin here and there. When we went hiking along the cliff edge, it seemed that every person we chatted with had just seen a whale that we missed. 

Orianne had been to New York city, and Portland, Maine, but on both trips we did not have any time for the beach, so this was the first real seaside vacation. She had a rather strong aversion to the smells of seaweed washed up on the beach, and the rank odour of rotting fish from the occasional net was pretty harsh for both of us. Orianne has never been the most enthusiastic hiker, so I suggested we modify our plan for full day hiking trips. Even the shorter hikes were punctuated by a good deal of moaning about returning to the hammock.


We took a couple of days where we walked on the diverse beaches of the island. Some were sand beaches, others covered in rounded grey stones, some had every rock covered in a variety of seaweeds and barnacles. The beaches transformed completely from high to low tide. On our last trip, one beach we walked on at low tide allowed us to walk very far out on what was basically the bottom of the bay when the tide came in. Due to the time of day and the moon cycle this time when we went to find the beach, we could not even recognize it as it looked completely different. Josh convinced me it was out beyond the Castalia marsh, but it looked so much smaller, and the landscape was hard to recognize.









We took Orianne to Dark Harbour, on the mostly uninhabited side of the island. There are some fishing cabins there, and lots of dories for fishing and dulsing (dulse being the local, edible seaweed), stinky fish nets, and old abandoned lighthouse, tons of fishing spiders on the rocks, and below the tide line, very treacherous round rocks totally covered in slimy, bright green sea weed.

We also spent a beautiful, sunny afternoon at the Swallowtail Lighthouse, close to our camp site. It sits on a wide, sloping meadow that tumbles into rocky cliffs jutting out off the island into the sea, giving a breathtaking vista and a great vantage for whale watching.









We were not disappointed. We took Orianne with us on a misty morning sea kayaking from Whale Cove, all along the bottom edge of the campsites of the Hole in the Wall campsite, past the Swallowtail lighthouse and Pette's Cove to the area where the ferry dock and the boats come in, the "downtown" area of the island.

I took a lot of pictures. There are so many niches of flora, some preferring the cliffs, others like the beach peas on the beaches, and a variety of interesting underwater plants that live a very amphibious life with the changing tides.

There was a lot of fog and mist, which gave everything an intense and eery look. I tried to capture the shifting moods in my photos.

This was a beach side house at Dark Harbour, built to keep above the rising tide.

Where the water flows back into the Bay of Fundy from Dark Harbour at low tide, it's like a bathtub with the plug pulled out.

There are hairy giants emerging from the stones. Perhaps stone trolls?














We took a ferry ride over to White Head island. The island boasts the most incredible beach with ocean-polished stones of every imaginable colour, fields of wildflowers and Alfie, the lady who paints rocks. I described her in my last two posts about trips to Grand Manan. She is an older lady with a colourful history who made this island her home for the summers, living in a lobster shack at the end of the one road on the island.

We were excited to introduce Orianne to her, as we were certain they would enjoy each other's company. When we arrived at the end of the road, instead of a table with beautiful painting on round beach rocks, we found the door of the lobster shack closed with a small pad lock on it.

We spent the time instead picking out the prettiest stones on the beach, taking photos of the charming houses and gorgeous wildflowers. Josh picked a bunch of samfire (sea asparagus) for cooking for dinner while Orianne and I explored.

Upon return to Grand Manan we found out that Alfie had had some health issues, and her daughter bought a house on the island where they had moved. Alfie continued to paint rocks which she sells at the Farmer's Market on Saturdays on Grand Manan. We were sorry to have found out this information after our visit, as we may have otherwise had the opportunity to find her again. This will be a priority for our next trip!

Here comes another stone troll.

Lots of jellyfish were washed up on the beaches. Orianne had a lot of fun poking at them, but they were too far gone to react.

In addition to rocks, spiders and samfire, Josh had a lot of luck picking chanterelles in the forest around our campsite, which added some nice flavour to our rather gourmet camping meals. Oh, and if you were wondering how I can justify once again writing about my vacation on my garden blog, what do you think those gourmet meals were made from? Prior to leaving, I harvested garlic, onions, kale, swiss chard, tons of green, purple and yellow beans, basil, lettuce, strawberries, raspberries and mint. It all came along with us in our cooler. Also all of the rocks which I brought home from White Head are featured now in our garden!

Orianne and Josh found a section of the beach which the seabirds liked to use to crack open crabs. There were crabshells all over the place. As Josh has long enjoyed building inukshuks, he decided that he would build a uniquely maritime one with Orianne.

Back on Grand Manan, we explored some other parts of the island where we hadn't yet been. This is atop a geological formation called "Seven Day's Work, which is volcanic. From the top, this is not evident, but it offered a great view of the sea.

These berries were all over the forest. I have no idea what they are.

Driftwood and wildflowers.

And as every good thing must end, we caught our last shots of the island in the morning sun from the ferry.

As we managed to catch the 9:30 a.m. ferry by waking up early and doing a bang up speedy job taking down our campsite, we decided to stop for lunch at one of the weird roadside attractions along the way. We skipped the giant axe, and did not make it on time to get to the the Accordion museum before it closed, but we did take a peek at Potato World, in Florenceville-Bristol, the "french-fry capital of the world", home of the McCain's Potato Processing Technology Centre. Who knew?