Kouchibouquac - Canada Day Weekend

For Canada Day weekend, Erika and I headed to Kouchibouguac National Park on the coast of New Brunswick. I took the afternoon off work, and headed to Moncton to get Erika, from there we drove for roughly an hour and a half to the park. We had to take it a little slower them some other people as we had two bikes strapped to the back of the car. In any case, we got there with plenty of sunlight left to setup our camp. It's always nice being able to setup a tent when it's still light out; we are getting pretty good at setting them up in the dark, too.

Kouchi has a pretty big camp setup, and the wooded sites are huge. We could have easily fit three or four tents on our site. As it was just the two of us, we had plenty of room to ourselves.

Once we had the camp all setup, we hopped on the bikes and went to explore the area. There is a great deal of crusher dust bike trails, a reasonable mountain bike trail, accessible walking trails, and some wooded hiking trails. Erika and I mapped out what we wanted to cover, and then setup a fire to relax by for the night.

The next morning, we hopped on our bikes again, and headed for the big sandbar. It was about a 12 km ride from our camp to the boardwalk. We locked up the bikes at the boardwalk, and went over to the sandbar. The sandbar was full of dunes and was a huge nesting area for piping plover. We walked along the sandbar for a few kilometers looking for shells and sand dollars, but still never made it to the end of the sandbar. It started to rain a bit, so instead of getting soaked, we turned and headed back for the bikes.

The weather was really weird, cause it would rain for about 20 minutes at the start of each day, but then it would clear for the most part. There would be a few showers, but they were really isolated. You could come across parts that looked like they hadn't been touched by water in days. This being said, our first little shower ended by the time we got to the camp, so we decided to keep exploring. That afternoon we covered pretty much every small trail in the park, adding up to about another seven or eight kilometers. These trails were more of nature walks then hiking trails, but we got to see some interesting stuff in any case. There were interpretive panels setup explaining how the land was originally used and the how the land has changed. There was a tipi at the start of one of the trails, but it wasn't exactly made of traditional materials (I don't think they had much extruded aluminum bars back then).

When we got back to our camp for supper, there was a little bunny (Buddy the Bunny) hopping around our camp. I ran into this bunny a number of times while we were at Kouchi, but it was scared of me, so never got close to it. The chipmunks and squirrels though, would come right up to you.

For the evening, we went for a bike ride and got some ice cream from down by the beach, and watched some raccoons trying to raid the garbage cans down there. We then went back to the camp, made a fire and planned out what we were going to cover for the next day.

Again, it rained for a bit in the morning, but once we had some breakfast in us, we headed for the Osprey Trail. This was the best hiking trail that we found in the park. The trail followed the water around a point, and brought you through wooded areas filled with lady slippers. I had never seen so many lady slippers in one spot. This single trail had probably around 150 lady slippers, and the trail was only 5.5 km.

There were also a lot of woodpeckers on this trail. We could hear a pileated woodpecker calling while we were walking, but never saw one until we stumbled across one sitting in some ferns. We heard it calling, and were looking in the trees, so it scared the crap out of me when it flew up out of the ferns in front of us. I'm not one of them quick draw Gunn's, so I didn't get my camera out in time. However, there were a bunch downy woodpeckers throughout the trail and I was able to snap a shots of some of them.

With Osprey Trail covered, we stopped for some lunch, and headed for Claire Fontaine trail. This was a pretty good trail as well, and you had lots of evidence that deer loved the trail too. Unfortunately we didn't see any deer, just lots of their poop. Erika powered through the first portion of the trail, barely stopping for any views. She was on a mission to conquer all the trails in the entire park, I think. She eventually decided to slow down a bit, so I took the lead and Erika took the camera. After a brief break under a tree down by the river, hiding from the rain, we started off again. With me walking at a closer to normal pace and avoiding the piles of deer poop, we finished up the four kilometer trail.

For a quick trail before supper, we head to Bog trail. This trail is mostly board walk, but it really interesting. The area started off as a small marsh, but due to the clay ground in the area, the water couldn't drain. As a result, the marsh took over the area, spreading and taking over more land. The entire area is really mossy, filled with lady slippers, pitcher plants and some other really different plants that I hadn't seen before. This area is supposed to be really good for spotting moose and other animals, but we weren't there at the right time to see any. It was still a really interesting area.

As it was starting to rain a bit again, we packed it in and headed back to camp. By this point we had covered all but two trails in the park. One tiny, short 700-meter boardwalk, and the long 11 km one-way trail. If it wasn't raining the next morning, we may have covered the long trail, but instead we just packed up in the rain and headed back to Moncton for the afternoon.

All in all, Kouchibouguac is a nice park, that seems to be very under used. There were very few people out on the trails, and a lot of the camp sites were empty. It made for a quiet getaway for us, so I won't complain too much.

New Camera - Moncton & Halifax

Recently I have graduated from uni, and for a graduation gift my parents got me a new camera. It is a Canon S3 IS, and has an incredible zoom, really funky settings for color adjustment and enhancement, plus it was a new toy to learn how to use. I spent some time exploring around Moncton and Halifax with Erika and learning how to use all the settings on the camera.

Heading up to Moncton on the weekend of June 8-10, I explored around Erika's house looking for photo subjects to test some of the settings on. Her cat Josie made for some good photos, partially cause she is an attention hog and has to be around you no matter what.

As I had mentioned, the camera has a really crazy zoom; 12x optical and 48x digital. I started playing around with the macro and super-macro functions on the camera, and they can lead to some really neat photos. It gives you a different view into how things actually are, because you rarely see the tiny details in objects in a regular day.

The next day, we headed to Mapleton Park. I hadn't been to the park before, and figured it would be a good chance to explore some more of Moncton. The park was pretty large and had a good selection of trails to explore. There were a lot of bike trails throughout the park, as well, so we'll have to go back with our bikes sometime and explore some more. Maybe Erika will leave a crusher dust path for real bike trail.

Throughout the entire park, the number of squirrels and chipmunks was insane; they were everywhere! Just walking down a trail, you'd be chased by three or four of them at once, and there would be another three or four up the trail waiting for you. Plus if you looked up, there'd be some waiting there too.

This is all for Moncton, as I had to head back to Halifax for the week to bring home some bacon. The next weekend, Erika came down, and we went to Point Pleasant Park to throw a football around for a bit. I brought the camera incase we saw anything interesting, and to give us a break from football for a bit.

We started by just walking around the park and taking some photos of different things. Then we headed for Fort Olgivie to toss the football around. It was a wicked nice day out, so we threw the ball for a good long time. Once we were done with that, we explored the fort a bit. While we were in Moncton the week before, a blue jay kept landing on the deck and stealing peanuts. I wasn't quick enough with the camera to catch a picture of it, but while we were exploring the fort, I noticed a blue jay sitting in a tree. I lucked out this time and was able to get a picture of this one before it flew away.

I have some pictures of our latest camping adventure to add, so I'll get to those sometime soon.

Until then, keep on keeping on.

Park Falls, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia

Okay, one last old one, and then I'll start posting new stuff.

As I had mentioned in the Fundy Park post, I was living in New Glasgow last summer and working for Michelin. I met a lot of good people there, and had a lot of fun biking and exploring the area with them. Whether it was hanging out with my roommies Sean and Fenny; biking with Patrice, Garrett and Fenny or swimming with Garrett and Dan, it was enjoyable place as long as you stayed busy. This photo is of a portion of "Beaver Dam" bike trail in Trenton Park.

New Glasgow has that typical small town mentality, so when 4:00 rolls around, everything except for Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire closes. Erika and I would try to go out to dinner only to find all the restaurants closed by 6:00 some nights; at least Swiss Chalet stayed open.

While I was there in the summer, there was lots of stuff to do. On the hot days after a good bike ride, we'd head to Park Falls for some falls jumping.

This gave us a good break from work, and made for some fun times.

Fundy National Park, New Brunswick

Well since I am just starting this blog, I might as well start with something from the past. Last year, Erika and I made a trip to Fundy National Park for some time away from work.

I set out from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia on a Friday and drove up to Moncton, New Brunswick to pick up Erika. From there we headed to Fundy, stopping only for pizza at a little shop just outside of the park. As the drive from New Glasgow to Fundy was nearly four hours, we had the adventure of setting up our camp in the dark.

In any case, things worked out fine, and in the morning we hit the trails. We started out towards Third Vault Falls, one of the tallest falls in the area. The waterfall itself is surrounded by thick woods and rocky terrain. As a result, the trails were a little rough, but made for some nice scenery none the less.

Along the trail, we crossed a number of small streams and the sound of falls was getting louder. These pictures were taken with my old camera, so the least bit of shake or the tiniest bit of glare resulted in a blurry photo. Plus, I wanted to see the falls, so I was in a bit of a hurry and never really took my time with the photos.

At last we arrived at the base of the falls. The water was freezing cold, but it was too tempting, so I took a splash. The force of the water hitting you was intense! Trying to swim towards the falls was pretty much impossible. It is really quite incredible to see how water carves its way into the rock faces though.

Erika and I spent some time just relaxing around the base of the falls, watching the tons of water falling over the top edge. There were more trails to cover and more things to see. So we eventually got back on our way and headed towards Moosehorn Trail.

Moosehorn Trail essentially follows the lower portion of Salmon River which empties into the Bay of Fundy. Along the trail there are a number of falls and pools. Some of these falls and pools made for natural waterslides, but others were pretty intense. Both Erika and I took a swim here for a break from all the hiking. It was a hot afternoon and we had covered a pretty good distance by this point. It was a blast playing in the current from the falls; they would carry you all the way to the next pool if you were to float with them. After swimming and jumping in the from the falls, we made our way to Laverty Falls.

This part of the hike was still along the edge of Salmon River. It was pretty calming to have the river flowing beside you, and gave us the opportunity to take a couple breaks from the heat. After a quick duck through some trees and wooded area, we were at Laverty Falls. It had been pretty dry leading up to our time in the park, so there was not the normal amount of water flowing over the edge of Laverty Falls, but it was still impressive. I was able to crawl up onto a ledge under the falls, and the water hitting my back was enough to put you back in your place.

All in all, we covered a bit under 15 km that day, with many breaks for snacks and swimming.