Tidal Bore and continuing east

On Saturday afternoon, we stopped at the Fundy Discovery Site near Truro, Nova Scotia, with the hope to see the tidal bore and spend the night in the parking area.

We found a chart on the wall with the Tidal Bore times for this location...

One would be on Saturday night at 7:23pm and on Sunday morning at 7:41am (I had looked them up online previously so knew we would have the possibility of seeing two of them).

 

So, you might be wondering what a tidal bore is... It is the wave that precedes the high tide -- I think it would be appropriately named a "tidal wave" (a tsunami is often called a tidal wave but is not actually tidal at all, to my understanding).

Some information about the tides in the Bay of Fundy.

"At mid tide, the flow of water into or out of Minas Basin through narrow Minas Passage near Parrsboro is the same as the estimated combined flow of all the rivers on earth, a million tons of water per second."

The Fundy Discovery Site is near the end of Minas Basin.

We went into the small information center to ask about where we should go to see the tidal bore, and the young lady there said that we could watch right from the bank outside. But she did also mention that it wasn't the best time of the month to view the tidal bore (it is best at new or full moon), and said something like, "If you have something else you were considering doing, you might want to just do that instead."

We headed back to Gracie where Miss Kitty was sitting in the window right by the sign that indicates that we have a cat on board.

We did some tasks in Gracie until the time of the tidal bore -- we had read that we should arrive 15 minutes early, so we arrived about 20 minutes early. It was very windy so the surface of the river was very wavy... the lady in the information center said that the direction of the water in the river would change -- well, with the wind blowing up the river, it pretty much already appeared to be flowing upriver, even hours before the time of the tidal bore.

We unfortunately, saw nothing.

We don't know whether it happened before we got there -- the tide was definitely coming in because we saw objects in the river disappearing under the water -- or whether the bore was so minimal at this time of the month that we couldn't see it. There were other people there along the bank who had been there before we arrived, and they didn't say, "Oh, you just missed it!" or anything like that... oh well!

In case you'd like to see a video that another person took at the place where we were: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCcq8AfL_nA

We're going to be back in this area in early July, and the full moon is on 7/3 -- so we may make another attempt then!

Our plan was to spend the night at the Discovery Site and possibly try to see the tidal bore again on Sunday morning. We had noticed that there was a LOT of cars coming and going around the Discovery Site, more than it seemed would be warranted by even a great tidal bore (much less a "boring" one!). It seemed that a lot of folks would come in their cars to meet each other at this parking area, and sit in their cars talking (?) to each other. As the evening progressed, the number of cars coming and going did not diminish, and we just felt uncomfortable... so we decided to move (after dark, after we were all settled -- not something we would choose to do lightly, but both of us felt uncomfortable).

We had the Starlink up, so I could check the internet and found that there was a Walmart just a couple of miles away; I called them, and they said that we could stay there for the night... we packed everything up, and drove the short distance to the Walmart...

Here's a picture of Gracie in the Walmart parking lot on Sunday morning.

We may have been fine at the Fundy Discovery Site, but we just weren't sure, and it was better for us to go elsewhere. Note: I had called the Fundy Discovery Site on Friday and gotten an okay for spending the night there (the fellow I spoke with said something like, "it is allowed but not encouraged.").

So, the Tidal Bore was boring, and the location was sketchy (at night), but we're glad we tried to see it!