The Ferry, Fresh Veggies, and the Failed Rift

Saturday, August 17, 2013


Yes, we made it off “The Rock” as Newfoundland is known. We are now spending our second night at Five Island Provincial Park in Five Island, Nova Scotia on the Chignecto Peninsula in sight of the Minas Basin that flows into the Bay of Fundy.


We left J.T. Cheeseman Provincial Park outside of Port Aux Basque, Newfoundland about 9:30 PM the night before our ferry crossing. We decided to park for a while on the road across from the ferry terminal, where we could see the 11:30 PM ferry arrive. The reservationist said that we could check in about 10 PM as those vehicles were boarding, and then stay in line until our 6:30 AM boarding. When we arrived at the pulloff, there were already two other campers there with the same intentions. The night ferry hadn't arrived yet. Not good. That meant it was running late and we would have to wait longer. We stood outside the camper watching the dock and a couple walked by and said “Hi!” It turned out to be the motorcycle campers from Catonsville, MD, we met on the Labrador ferry. They had been in a bar down the street and met other motorcycle campers from around the world there. We wound up next to all the motorcycles in line the next morning. They decided to get a motel room instead of sleeping in the terminal all night.


We walked across the road to the viewing area above the docks. The ferry finally came in late. We watched it unload and by then it was midnight and I went back to the rig and climbed in bed. I figured a little sleep was better than none. As they started to load the ferry, the rain started, so Greg came back to watch out the window. At 3 AM, he woke me up to tell me they ferry was almost finished loading, (it finally left at 4) and we drove to the gate and checked in. After we got in line, we got in bed, but were up at 6 AM to get dressed, eat a quick breakfast and be ready to load. Glad we weren't driving the boat!

Watching the unloading of the previous ferry from the Town park.

Our turn to load.

Parked next to the Motorcycle tourists, note the tiedowns.

Goodbye Port-aux-Basques.

The boat was completely full due to one of the four ferries being in for grounding repairs in Halifax. We found what they called airline seating in a small room down the hall from the staterooms. We were on the Atlantic Vision , which normally sails the 12 hour crossing, so it has lots of staterooms, and not a lot of large rooms with seating like the ferry we came over on. We did get seats by a window and dozed some. It was rainy and grey until halfway across when the weather began to clear. Shortly after we boarded an announcement was made for the passenger who owned a Newfoundland dog to come get it on Deck 7. Dogs must stay in your vehicle during the crossing, and no passengers are allowed on the vehicle decks. How did a Newfie get from Deck 3 to Deck 7?


I went to the snack bar to get some lunch, and met a family from Quebec. They own a Newfie that was not traveling with them and had seen this wayward one on Deck 7. As we discussed the incident, the woman sitting next to us said, “That was my dog!” Apparently it got out of the cab, and somehow made it upstairs. They decided after the second announcement, maybe they should go check, and discovered that Abigail had gotten lonely! No one knew how she got out and then into either the elevators or through the heavy doors at the top of the stairs. Sounds like she had some human assistance!


We arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, without incident. The sun was shining and it was hot! It felt crowded and urban after almost five weeks in Newfoundland. We managed to find some propane before it ran out, and drove south on Cape Breton to the Battery Provincial Park, where two retired gentlemen checked us in. We called them Click and Clack as they reminded us of the two guys on Public Radio's Car Talk, because of their comedic banter. Don't ask me how they could make checking in to a campground amusing, they just did! They assigned us a site on top of the hill, but by then, the fog was over the water and we couldn't see the view.

We were the 3rd vehicle off our deck.

The next morning, the weather had cleared and Greg exclaimed that we had the best campsite in the place. I was in the middle of a weird dream and thought he said something about the police, he scared me to death, and that was how our first morning back in Nova Scotia started! Greg had an interesting talk while he filled the water tank, with an archeologist from Ontario, who wants to see the Viking artifacts at L'Anse Aux Meadows. After checking out, we found a laundromat and did five loads of wash. While doing that, we met a couple from Calgary, Alberta. The husband has his own engineering firm and works in oil and gas exploration. They have daughters who are an engineer and a geologist, so we got into a discussion about careers, schooling, what age their generation is marrying, and student loans. She said that they are marrying later than the US, and paying off their student loans first, then buying their trucks, etc., then thinking about marriage. Tuition in Canada is much lower because it is subsidized by the government. The average student loan is $8,000. They were shocked when I told them the amounts of student debt in the US.

Battery Prov. Park campsite

Our view across the Canso Strait after the fog went out.

We said our goodbyes and drove a short way to Chubby's which was a converted school bus, and got lunch. It came well recommended by the man substituting for his wife at the visitor center in St. Peter's. Greg went in to get change for the laundry next door and came back 15 minutes later with change, but only after a long conversation and identifying fossils for the man! Greg sort of got fish and chips. It was a seafood platter, so he also got shrimp, scallops, and clams. Don't ask, okay, I got fried chicken and chips, again. At least they don't call it Maryland fried chicken.

Not Fish & Chips! Fish, clams, scallops, shrimp & chips!

Chubby's - food, not ambiance...

After resupplying the groceries and finding some diesel, the day was getting long, but we finally drove off of Cape Breton Island and back on the Nova Scotian mainland. We found the campground, again recommended by the man at the visitor center. You have to understand that they aren't supposed to make recommendations. They have to treat all the businesses equally, but someone forgot to tell this guy when he substituted for his wife! The Linwood Harbor Campground was nice with a view of the harbor. We spent the night and moved on.


Before we drive the New Brunswick coast north to the Gaspe' Peninsula in Quebec, we traveled back southwest to the Chignecto Peninsula that juts into the Bay of Fundy. A stop at the Masstown Market yielded tons of fresh, local, reasonably priced produce! I overbought. My poor little fridge is jammed to the gills and probably wheezing. It is wild blueberry season and we bought those and strawberries from a few miles up the road. They also have a fish market, and Greg now has two seafood pies in the freezer for later.

Petting Zoo, with lobsters

We checked into Five Islands Provincial Park in order to participate in a geological walk today, given by Dr. Howard Donahoe, a retired geologist with the Nova Scotian Department of Natural Resources. We are across the Minas Basin from Blomidon Provincial Park where we stayed earlier in the summer and took the fairy shrimp hike. The hike this afternoon was scheduled for low tide so that we could walk along the beach and study the rocks at the base of the cliff. We had a good crowd, and Howard did a really good job of teaching Geology 101 in a few hours!

Local blueberries for breakfast!

Local Peaches & Cream corn, green beans; Beef Strips with local garlic and garlic scapes

Studying the local geology map

Greg's Commentary on Five Islands- Our geology walk was along the beach of the Minas Basin, where the highest tides of the Bay of Fundy and the world occur, peaking at 12.5 meters or 47 feet. You can walk 5 km out on the bay bottom but when the tide starts coming back in you need to jog or run to keep ahead of the advancing tide. At the fastest, it comes in one meter per second horizontally!

Minas Basin of the Bay of Fundy, with water - tide going out fast!

Minas Basin an hour or so later. Those are people digging clams in the distance.

The geology walk was focused on the rocks and sediments in the cliff overhanging the beach. This area had been buried under a 2-kilometer thick ice sheet that extended 500 km eastward to the edge of the continental shelf near Sable Island. As the ice sheet melted 12,000 years ago, individual glaciers continued to carve valleys for a few thousand years more. The sediments exposed at the top of the cliffs consist of sands, gravels, and boulders carried out of the glacial moraines by fast moving streams meandering across a wide glacial valley. The streams were originally near sea level but have been lifted up about 100 feet as the continental crust continues to rebound after the weight of the ice was removed 9,000-ish years ago.

Howard discussing glacial sands and gravels - lighter colored beds in the upper half of the cliff. The darker red layer in the lower half is sandstones and shales from 180 million years ago.

Under the young glacial sands and gravels are soft sandstone and shales that were laid down in a dry valley basin, similar to the Basin and Range of the southwest US, about 180 million years ago. These rocks contain many fish fossils, including abundant fish scales in the stream channel sands that we looked at, and geologist are hoping to find tracks of large dinosaur predators that hunted near the desert streams and water holes.

Sandstones with dinosaur tracks and fossil fish and scales

However, the most interesting feature was the basalts that dominated the headland extending into the Bay of Fundy. This formation of hard, black volcanic rock is the remnant of a failed rift, or ocean spreading center, that flooded the region with an estimated 750 to 1,200 cubic kilometers of lava, extending down to Penobscot Bay in Maine. The headland we were standing on was the vertical vent that was the source of the lava that poured out about 200 million years ago. This rift stalled and the separation of North America and Europe/Africa stopped after this single event. The continental breakup continued about 10 million years later at a rift about 500 km eastward, which continued to move eastward and is now the ocean crust spreading center called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Howard and the Geo-Drama of the failed rift

Here lava came up vertically from below the continental crust and pooled dozens of feet thick over many hundreds of square miles.

Looking back at the vertical vent and the thinner lava pooled over the sedimentary rocks.

Just to add icing to the geological cake, the boundary between the basalt (lava) headland and the younger sandstones was a very clearly defined fault, along which the sandstones had dropped several near-vertical kilometers relative to the basalt. The sandstones were crushed and sheared within a zone that was only a few meters wide. The much harder basalt showed no obvious sign of shearing along the fault.

Younger sedimentary rocks on left dropped several kilometers relative to the basalt on right.

The horizontal sandstones and shales are crushed and sheared in the narrow fault zone

AND, Immediately underlying the basalt flows in the cliff north of the rift area was a white strata between the black lava and the underlying red sandstones. Researchers think this white ash is the indicator of an extinction event caused 180-ish million years ago by the asteroid impact that left the 40-km wide Manicougan Impact Crater in upper Quebec. This crater is easily visible in Google Earth satellite photos as a ring-shaped lake formed by Hydro_Quebec’s power reservoir.

The white layer is debris or ash from the Manicougan asteroid impact

So much Geo-Drama in one location!


Tomorrow we leave Nova Scotia as we head back into New Brunswick. We'll travel north up the Northumberland Strait and stop over at Kouchibouguac National Park along the coast. We don't know anything about this park, but Buck, who we met over in Newfoundland, who is an avid birder, mentioned it, so maybe we'll have lots of birds to view. We are also hoping for a chance to bike, as we haven't used our bikes since we were on Prince Edward Island. In the meantime we are having a streak of sunny, warm, dry weather, and black fly season seems to be over in Nova Scotia!!!!!