Canada Day Day-tripping

The ocean used to be where the brown is - about an hour ago!

Today, as we drove away from Five Island Provincial Park, I said to Jason and Monica, "I feel the way I did when I hiked Burncoat in the winter; how do I explain to anyone what we just did in a way that they could possibly GET it?" So that's my dilemma, I just did one of the most incredible things I've ever done, yet words don't do it justice, because it is almost impossible to describe the scope. When we pulled into the parking lot it was just after 1:00 in the afternoon, and we were there to hike. We wanted to wander down to the beach first to check it out; after all, I had seen some pretty cool pictures of this muddy beach and really wanted to see what it was all about.

So what is the big deal you ask? The Five Island Provincial Park sits within the Bay of Fundy. The park features 90 metre (300 ft.) sea cliffs overlooking the world's highest tides, and when we got there the tide was on it's way out, so the ocean floor was slowly giving up all its secrets. We started up on one of the cliffs, wandered down to the beach and ended up spending the entire time there just walking and basking in the awesomeness of it all for about three hours. We were walking along what had been the ocean's floor just an hour or two before; it was like walking on the surface of the moon. Yes, I know, I said all this for the Burncoat trip as well, but it is probably going to be as amazing to me every, single time. Walking barefoot with the silty, clay sand oozing between your toes, seeing clam holes in the sand and walking on  ocean kelp...who does this every day?

The sales pitch reads:

The cliffs at Five Islands Provincial Park tell a story of Triassic sand dunes, Jurassic lava flows and lake deposits from the age of dinosaurs. The spectacular faults and rocks exposed along the shore, near the "Old Wife" are dramatic evidence for the break-up of the super-continent Pangaea, and formation of a rift valley in the area that we now know as the Bay of Fundy.

Yup, it's all that and then some. So now my feet feel as smooth as a baby's bottom and I feel as if I had a serious leg workout - what an awesome Canada Day!