Maritime To Relax Vacationers Immerse Themselves In New Brunswick’S Uncrowded, Natural Beauty

It was a few seconds of panic; I thought I’d lost my tide table. That’s like traveling in Switzerland without your watch. I’d rather lose the map.

Everything hinges on the tides in New Brunswick’s Bay of Fundy. The highest tides in the world are here — as much as 48 feet. The statistics are staggering: Every 12-1/2 hours, one hundred billion tons of sea water comes in and goes out of the bay. The tide can rise more than five feet an hour.

Paul Perkison, manager of visitor facilities at Fundy National Park, gets amused because people ask him where the best place is to see it and where should they stand.

“They expect the tide to come in with one giant wave,” Perkison said. “It just doesn’t roll in. It creeps fairly slowly but surely, advancing at the pace of a leisurely walk. After it starts, in six hours the beach is covered; six hours later it is exposed again.”

I was on my fourth trip to the coast of Maine, but this time, rather than drive north from the Portland airport, I decided to fly into Saint John, then drive south exploring the Fundy Coastal Drive. In the parlance of the tourist brochures, it’s one of New Brunswick’s “themed drives.”

New Brunswick, a Canadian Atlantic province, shares borders with Quebec, Nova Scotia and Maine. The province is about the size of Maine and the neighbors each claim a Highway 1, although it takes a while to get used to the fact that Maine’s runs north and south, but once you reach New Brunswick you’re traveling east and west. And once over the border, it’s an hour later - you’re on Atlantic time.

While there are many similarities between the two (mainly the rugged, unsullied coast), it was the differences that attracted me to New Brunswick. The population is less than 750,000; the pace is slower; the crime rate is lower (guns are nearly non-existent).

Their Highway 1 is really the road less traveled. Billboards are rare; so are litter and traffic jams (compare that with Maine’s Bar Harbor on a summer Sunday). And it’s not overrun with mini malls, factory outlets and too-quaint antique shops (serious shoppers won’t like it here).

Peace and quiet reign, save for some noisy birds. This is a birder’s heaven. Why else would Audubon have come here to sketch?

The Fundy Coast is designed for nature, island and ferryboat lovers, not for people looking for life in the fast lane.

August is the best month to visit. The weather is temperate; the sun shines until 9 at night; the whales are spouting in the bay; wildflowers are in bloom; and thousands of birds are stopping off on their southern migration.

I’m sorry I only had one week. I could have spent the entire time on Grand Manan, “Queen of the Fundy Isles.”

This 60-square-mile island is one giant picture postcard - fishing villages, offshore salmon farms and weirs brimming with silver herring, fresh water lakes, meadows of lupine and fireweed, smoke sheds, picturesque lighthouses.

I ate lobster every night; photographed lighthouses; scheduled a sea kayaking safari (canceled because, with winds at 30 mph, the wake was too rough); checked out the pickled specimens at the whale and seabird research station; toured their small museum with its extensive collection of stuffed birds; and tried to walk over to nearby, uninhabited Ross Island, but couldn’t - it was high tide and the beach road was under water.

I also signed up for a whale-watching excursion in the Bay of Fundy, the summer feeding grounds for humpbacks, finbacks and right whales.

“You may see none, you may see two or three, or you may see 100. It’s all up to Mother Nature,” announced Dana Russell, who operates Island Coast Boat Tours. “But if you don’t see a whale, I’ll give you your money back.” That has only happened twice in five years, he added.

We headed out 10 to 15 miles to the center of the bay in search of rare, endangered Atlantic right whales, who have been hunted nearly to extinction. Protected since 1937, Russell said there are only about 600 in the world today, and as many as 150 of them summer in the Bay of Fundy.

We sighted at least a dozen, a couple within 100 to 200 feet of the boat and one that put on a spectacular show when he “lobbed” five or six times within 40 feet of the boat.

Grand Manan claims to be the “dulse capital of the world.” Dulse, I learned, is an edible seaweed, maroon-brown in color, harvested by hand and spread out to dry in the sun. It’s a nutritious, calorie-free snack food eaten with your fingers - New Brunswick’s healthful answer to potato chips.

At Rolands Sea Vegetables, an employee let me sample it. “You either hate it or love it,” he said. After he saw the look on my face, he volunteered, “Some people like it better if it’s burned” and singed a few flakes with a match. Then it tasted a bit like popcorn. But it was like chewing waxed paper. Dulse may be better for me, but I’ll stick to potato chips.

My high point on Grand Manan was a 19-mile boat ride to Machias Seal Island. Not a seal to be seen here, but no matter; I was in pursuit of puffins. Machias, a government-protected migratory bird sanctuary, is a 16-acre rocky island that comes with a lighthouse, the keeper’s and warden’s houses - and thousands of puffins, arctic terns and razorbills.

Visitors are escorted to blinds to watch birds for an hour or so. I’m not a birder, but I’ve been smitten with the stocky, comical-faced puffins for years. And, I confess, I cooed right along with the other three women sharing my blind when the handsome birds perched eyeball-to-eyeball on the boulders alongside our blind and “chirped” like chain saws.

After a scenic ferry ride (whales, dolphins, islands and lighthouses) back to the mainland, I rejoined Highway 1 and headed north (whoops, east). I veered off to St. Martins to see the Quaco Lighthouse, the twin covered bridges and to walk the town’s isolated Melvins Beach with its sea caves and waterfalls (accessible only at low tide, of course).

Then I drove on and inspected tide pools on the beach at 80-square-mile Fundy National Park; stopped off at desolate Cape Enrage (with another historic lighthouse) where the views reach as far as the coast of Nova Scotia; visited Marys Point, a national wildlife sanctuary, home to Fundy mud shrimp that feed more than a million migrating shorebirds on the Atlantic Flyway in July and August; caught a local quilt show in Hopewell Cape; and walked the beach at Hopewell Rocks to gawk at the world-famous five-story high “flower pot rocks” rising from the ocean floor (they’re islands at high tide).

Time was running out, so I turned around and headed back toward Maine, stopping along the way to explore Deer Island (the world’s largest tidal whirlpool), where I took the 45-minute car ferry to President Franklin Roosevelt’s “beloved isle,” Campobello. FDR spent most of his summers here from 1883 until 1921.

His 34-room “cottage,” with most of the furnishings used by the Roosevelt family, is open to visitors, administered as a joint memorial by Canada and the United States. Docents are stationed throughout the house, but I was disappointed with their recorded-like speeches which reminded me of wind-up talking dolls.

I also stopped off for a day in St. Andrews, an old fortified garrison town on the border (when America was the enemy), one of Canada’s oldest and best-preserved. The village is definitely upscale (reminiscent of California’s Carmel) but thankfully not too trendy. Some of the buildings - from the legendary Tudor revival-style Algonquin Hotel to New England salt boxes - looked as if they had been pulled out of history books.

There was a lot to see and do. Nearby are more than five covered bridges, a garden oasis at Crocker Hill in St. Stephen and Ministers Island, the summer residence of Canadian Pacific Railway builder Sir William Van Horne, which opened to the public for tours in 1994.

And (I hate to admit this) I shopped. I was seduced by the storefronts along Water St., the goodies in the windows, the charm of the shop owners, especially when I mentioned that I was a fan of Inuit art and a shopkeeper sent me down the street to the competition - where I shocked myself and bought a Cape Dorset lithograph.

So much for that comment that serious shoppers won’t like it here.

IF YOU GO Air Canada and Canadian Airlines fly to Saint John from Toronto, Montreal and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Travel in Canada is a bargain for Americans. Currently $10 U.S. is worth about $13 Canadian. The following prices are in Canadian dollars: The Grand Manan ferry (506-662-3724) leaves from Blacks Harbour every two hours from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mon. through Sun., except there is no 9:30 crossing on Sunday. It takes just under two hours and costs $8.20 for adults, plus $24.60 for a car round-trip. You should be there at least 30 minutes before departure. The ferry from the mainland to Deer Island is free; from Deer Island to Campobello it costs $11. I stayed at bread and breakfast inns along the route, arranged through New Brunswick’s Heritage Inns Association (800-561-0123). Two that I especially liked (for the congenial owners, the service and accommodations): Inn on the Cove (1371 Sand Cove Rd., Saint John, NB E2M 4X7, phone 506-672-7799; fax 506-635-5455 ), a turn-of-the-century non-smoking residence with five rooms on three acres in the outskirts of Saint John, with views overlooking the bay. Owner Ross Mavis (with his wife, Willa) is New Brunswick’s answer to James Beard; his cooking and recipes are featured on his own TV shows (The Tide’s Table), including PBS in Maine. Breakfast comes with the room, but Mavis also serves five-course dinners. Make reservations; they also serve dinner to non-guests. The Victorian Florentine Manor (R.R. #2, Albert, NB E0A 1A0, phone and fax 506-882-2271) in the village of Harvey is only 20 minutes from Fundy National Park and Hopewell Cape, even closer to Marys Point. There are 10 guest rooms furnished in period antiques. The owners, Mary and Cyril Tingley, also serve dinner by reservation. Sea Watch Tours, run by Preston Wilcox and his son Peter, is the official concessionaire to Machias Seal Island. Make reservations well in advance (P.O. Box 48, Seal Cove, Grand Manan, NB E0G 3B0, phone 506-662-8552); the excursions are limited to 13 visitors each day from the U.S. and Canada for a six-week period which starts around the third week in June. The cost is $55. Visitors can stay on the island only about three hours from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (the hours depend on the tides); the round-trip boat ride to the island takes an additional three hours. Dress in layers, bring sunscreen and lunch; they provide coffee and tea. Whale watching tours from mid-July to mid-September on Island Coast Boat Tours (P.O. Box 59, Castalia, Grand Manan, NB E0G 1L0, phone 506-662-8181) cost $35 on a converted 40-foot fiberglass fishing boat. Don’t forget to bring binoculars and insect repellent; mosquitoes can be bothersome, particularly at night. For further information and brochures, write Tourism New Brunswick, P.O. Box 12345, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3B 5C3, telephone (800) 561-0123, fax (506) 453-5370.