Hopewell ROCKS!

Day 25: Lakeview, near Moncton

Distance Traveled: 179.2 km

Cumulative Distance: 4,028.4

Temperature range: 11 -19

Maximum speed: 129 kph

We were up early and out the door by 7:15 am as we made plans to stop at a coffee bar in Moncton to get a good cup of coffee before proceeding down to the Bay of FunDAY.

We asked Skynet to find the times of high and low tides so that I wouldn't have to bother reading them off some book like the Farmer's Almanac and extract the day/times from pages and pages of columns with times, dates, tide levels.

It would be almost an hour's ride down to Hopewell ROCKS! so we wanted to allow ourselves enough time to have a latte (maybe a croissant) and see the tide level low enough that we would be able to walk on the beach.

Cute coffee shop. Cute customers, too.

Riding from the hotel, were quickly in rush hour traffic. Metro Moncton has a population of 188,000, which isn't much by big city standards but they have HUGE traffic circles with three lanes. It is a little intimidating riding into a traffic circle so large you can't see the other side and where to exit and exactly which lane one should be riding. We went through a couple and on the first one, I missed the exit, in part because I was in the wrong lane so ended up going around an extra time.

The river bed in Moncton shows what happens at the tides. When the tide is low, water flows out normally. However, when the tide is high, water washes up the river and floods where the river is exiting to the ocean.

However, we made it through unscathed and on the second attempt, I was able to enter the circle from the correct lane, thereby ensuring we would be able to exit at the right place. 

The ride down to Hopewell ROCKS! was easy and we were in good time. Once there, we paid the somewhat hefty two day fee of $19, only realizing later that we could have asked for the senior's discount of $3 each (which they did subsequently refund me passing through the gate at a later time.  I was also very sad to learn that it really isn't Hopewell ROCKS!, it is Hopewell Rocks. I had somehow been thinking that it would be a big music festival of rock music but they hadn't seen fit to invite any rock bands to play.  

Sign pollution.

Once inside, we walked down to the beach where there are stairs for beach access, which took a good fifteen minutes and quite a bit of negative elevation change. I wore my motorcycle boots. Nan ended up carrying her runners with her but then changed in short order and ended up carrying her moto boots. We wore our moto jackets because, even though it was sunny, it was still only about 13 degrees.

We spent a fair amount of time scrambling around the beach. Nan thought we would be looking for shells but there are really nothing of the sort here as the beach is basically covered in mud.

After spending time at the beach, we retreated back up to the entrance. I dropped my motorcyce jacket off at the bike because after walking back up the hill, I was finding it quite a bit warmer. 

Rather than ride back to the hotel to kill some time, as had been the original plan, we elected to get a bite of lunch locally, walk some of the other trails then return to the beach where we had walked in the morning. Riding back to the hotel would have taken nearly an hour, then to turn around to come back for high tide would have made no sense. 

This turned out to be the better move. We had a surprisingly good lunch at the Park restaurant, spent some time looking at the interpretive centre then we went for a walk to a different beach - one a little more remote than the one we saw in the morning. 

We were back to the original beach around 2:00 PM or so, a half hour before high tide. Much to our surprise, there were substantially fewer people than in the morning. Still bus, though. Ropes kept tourists from descending all the way down the scaffolding and jumping into the water. Everywhere we had walked in the morning was now under 3 or 4 metres of water.

When it was time to move on to our next stop, we were getting the bike an ourselves organized and the couple parked next to us were taking a close look at Andelska. The lady - older then us - was wondering what make of bike it was. Are you a rider, I asked, even knowing the answer. She said no but there is a Harley Davidson plant near to them. She lives in Pennsylvania. As I always do, I welcomed her to Canada. She explained to me that they have visited Canada many times. Awesome; we love foreigners spending their money here. She also explained to me that they have visited every PROVIDENCE in Canada except Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Well, at least she didn't call them states, which I have heard before.

From Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park, we rode straight to Magnetic Hill. Now, if you have never heard of it, you haven't lived but it is a road in Moncton where, due to an optical illusion, it appears as thouh you are driving uphill whereas in fact you are riding downhill. I remember hearing about this place as a kid. The road has now been taken out of the general road system and is behind a paywall, along with an amusement park of enormous size and the Magnetic Hill Zoo. Fortunately, the pay station was unmanned and I am not even sure there was any activity at the amusement park. That season seems to have passed.

We weren't sure about what to expect. Plus, the instructions, which were posted on a sign, weren't entirely clear but Nan grasped the meaning. We drove to the TOP of the hill, turned around and proceeded to the white post, the coasted what appeared to be UP hill.  I did put the bike in neutral and did appears as though we were coasting uphill, but it was a bit subtle. Hopefully, the video below will give you some sense of it. We did it twice.  

After our fun at Magnetic Hill, we went back to Shediac for dinner. This saved us from riding through Moncton at rush hour for the same elapsed riding time. It is called "stress management". 

We ended up at a restaurant not of our initial choosing but it looked like it would have good seafood, so we took a chance. Quite good but very quirky, though harmless!

Looks like they are catering tona specific crowd: those are all games in then shelves.