“Common’ Polo, we’ve gotta get going,” Marco said while starting to pack up our tent site. I was sitting on a rock, savouring my morning cup of tea, warming myself up after my early morning dip into the ocean. The day promised to be perfect: warm, but not too warm, and there were no bugs in sight! It took all of my will power to leave the rock, get our bags packed, and get going on our last day of the trail. I’m not sure if it was because we had planned on hiking out the day before, or my renewed sense of energy, but I was underestimating how long the day’s hike would be. With my energy brimming over, my feet Voltaren’d (sometimes it’s the only way I can get going on trails when I’m hurting), and my pack securely on my back, we headed back on the trail towards my patiently waiting car in Fundy National Park. The last few kilometres were not very difficult. There were the last few ups and downs, but the ups and downs were more gentle. It was almost as if the trail knew that it had challenged us, and it was taking it easy on us for our last day. It didn’t take long for us to reach the 0 km mark. I can’t lie, when we got to the trail marker which indicated that we were officially off the Fundy Footpath I shouted in joy. “WHOO!!” “WHOOO!” Marco joined in. “Ok, so now what?” I asked Marco. “Oh, it’s another 8km or so walk out of Fundy National Park,” he responded. Yes ladies and gentlemen, when you are finished the Fundy Footpath you still have another 8 km (or slightly longer) to walk out of the park. We hopped off the trail and into the mud pits. There are two paths you can take when you are finished. One path is the traditional Fundy Footpath trail, where you need to do it at low tide. The other option is great for when the tide is high and you can’t cross the mud flats. However, the tide was out, so we were able to go through the mud. “That way?” I asked Marco. “Yup.” I then proceeded to walk through the mud. Marco took one look at me sinking in the mud and skirted along the side where there was significantly less mud. “Oh...that would probably make more sense, eh?” I asked while I looked at how muddy I was compared to Marco. We skirted what we could, but as per my messy nature, I ended up covered in mud and Marco came out generally unscathed. I have to say in my defence though, the sound of your foot making that “thwuck” “thwuck” sound while you walk is quite relaxing and meditative. We soon reached the area where the park boundary sign is. After a quick refuel stop of raspberries and gooseberries, we took a look of the park map. So this is where the 8 km hike starts from. This part of the hike is not very interesting, and I was so excited to be off trail to take a shower. I gripped my hiking poles with new ambition and used the poles to push me to walk faster. “800” “799” “798” “797” “What are you doing?” Marco asked. “You said that there was one kilometre left. That means around 800 steps. I’m going to count them,” I responded like this was the most natural thing in the world to do. “0!” I proclaimed. We still weren’t off trail. “800 is according to my pace, Polo. Count up now; it can’t be much longer now.” “98” “Wait isn’t that a car?” I said excitedly. “99” I was practically skipping at this point. “100” “WHOOOOO!” Everyone in the Point Wolfe parking lot at Fundy National Park looked at me funny. Who was this very smelly, screaming lady coming from? I didn’t care and yelled one more time, “WHOOOO!” I fished my car keys out of my pack, took off my hiking boots, got the clean clothes bag, which we had left in the car, out, and started to head towards Point Wolfe for a shower. You are supposed to go up the road for a shower when you’re coming off the back country trails, but I wasn’t about to smell up my car with my particularly horrible odour. We snuck into the showers at Point Wolfe, and it was the best shower that I’ve ever had, even though we only had dish soap (we forgot to pack the actual soap in our clean clothes bag). Once we were all clean we limped our way over to get a coffee and sticky buns from Alma. I had been thinking about sticky buns since the first night on trail. This was a sweet reward for finishing the Fundy Footpath. As I took a bite of my sticky bun, a sip of my coffee, and started the car to head home I felt a high sense of accomplishment and pride in being able to finish the footpath. I had many doubts if I had what it took to make it through the trail, and here I was, all the better for it.
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“Good-*buzz*-morning,” I said as I turned to Marco. It looked like we had another day of battling the bugs to contend with. There were a few clouds in the morning and a bit of a drizzle. This soon burned off, and the day warmed up. This time I knew that this particular cocktail of weather meant that we were going to be battling more bugs. We packed up all of our things and started our long and climb out of our campsite and on the path towards Rose Brook, our last stop on the trail. As we rose to the top of our elevation for that portion of the morning the smell of bacon and pancakes wafted through the air. “Marco?” “Polo?” “Are you smelling that too, or am I just going crazy?” I asked. I took in a deep inhale of the intoxicating scent. “Nope, you’re not imagining it; yes you are crazy, but that’s a conversation for another day.” I playfully looked shocked. “We’re by Martin’s Head,” he explained, just as a Jeep went down a dirt road I hadn’t noticed. “People here go out to Martin’s Head to go 4-wheeling, or muddin’.” Now I had just learned about this ridiculous practice only a few months earlier from a friend who lived up in Parry Sound, Ontario. Muddin’ (no -g) is when you intentionally go into the woods, get your vehicle stuck in the mud, and push it out again. I don’t pretend to understand why someone would want to do this. If my car got stuck in the mud, I would call CAA and it would ruin my day. However, people here do it for fun. I shouldn’t judge - maybe one day I’ll give it a go and see if I like it. I might need another car besides my Mazda to do it in; that will be a post for another day. “The beach looks to be a bit of an easier walk. We have to walk out to the beach anyway, right?” I asked Marco, just as we both swatted a mosquito for the umpteenth time. And with that, we were bush waking our way to the beach. We proudly emerged from the beach to the amazement and wonder of people who were camping nearby. We must have been a sight: bug bites everywhere, smelling from kilometres away, and dirt smeared across our faces. We were as proud as two hikers could be. “Day hike?” The bewildered family asked. “Nope, on the footpath. This is Day 3,” we answered before heading off towards our next camp. What that family must have thought of us! We hadn’t done this part of the path before, so we weren’t sure how far we could go along the beach before… “Marco?” “Mmmm?” “We’ve run out of the beach.” It seems that there were large boulders for as far as the eye could see. Just ahead we could see our next stop on the footpath - Goose Creek (or River, I can never get those two straight). “It can’t be that hard to scramble, right?” I asked Marco. Oh boy, I had no idea what I was getting us into. We were on a bit of a schedule, due to the tides, but we could see our next stop. It couldn’t be that bad, right? Right? After an hour of scrambling past big boulders, we found a free rock climbing gym! Or rather, we were being forced to boulder to get past the slippery seaweed. Now, rock climbing, for me at least, can be challenging, but rock climbing with 25 lbs strapped to your back and a few hours trip to the nearest hospital? Nerve-wracking! There were a few spots where I thought we weren’t going to get across. With a few scrapes and close calls, we ended up at our tidal crossing. After a quick lunch, where we can rest our feet, we started to do our tidal crossing. It didn’t take long, but I didn’t want to wait too long or else we would have the tide coming back in. “...what are you doing?” I asked Marco as he picked up a large log. “It’s muddy here.” “You’re going to carry it the whole way?!” “Yup.” And he did exactly that! It ended up being a blessing because the spot was pretty muddy. After some conversations about potentially walking off trail, we ended up taking one look at Rose Brook and decided to stay the night. I was pretty happy because if I had tried to walk off that day I probably would have been driven to my limit again. Rose Brook was one of the nicest camping spots on the trail, in my opinion. It had fresh water right there, the ocean to swim in, it was open to see the stars, plenty of trees to hang dirty laundry, and it was quiet as we were the only ones there. However, there wasn’t a functioning bear box there, and no thunderbox to be found. We decided to rinse out our grossly sticky clothes, and watched the clouds of salt and gunk emerge from our clothes and our hair. It was a sight to be seen! Next, we jumped into the ocean, and I proceeded to scream the whole time, while also swimming in it. It was so refreshing to be somewhat clean. With warm clothes on, we unpacked our treat dinner (Backpacker’s Pantry) and spent the evening star gazing. We ended up pulling the fly back on our tent and star gazed that night. That region of the coast is a light sanctuary so you can see a beautiful sky at night. This was my favourite night on the trail. I went to sleep, happy to be warm and well fed. One more day to go! When I first met Marco we had a conversation that went something like this: “Want to try going backpacking?” He asked. “Sure! But...um….” “Yes?” “It’s supposed to rain this weekend,” I told him. “Don’t worry, it’ll blow over. This is the coast - the weather changes so quickly. Also, I’ve been backpacking for years, and I’ve never been caught in the rain.” This is when the universe decided to curse us. Cue rain. Every time we go camping now, it rains at some point. Today we woke up and could hear the rain in the distance. We’ll be fine. We’re under tree cover! Besides, the rain is so far away. Hmmmm…it does sound like it’s getting closer. Yup, it’s getting closer. Annnnndddd…..*plit, plit, plit, plit, plit” the rain has started. Luckily the rain didn’t go for too long, and by the time we finished breakfast the rain had finished too. What we didn’t realise at this point: the rain had awakened a deadly monster in the woods, a monster that we were soon to meet: a large swarm of bugs. We were unknowingly walking into our doom, and yet we packed up our tent and headed out. We started our ups and downs, 200 m up, only to come back down that same elevation again. The views were beautiful, but this part of the Fundy Footpath is basically a giant muddy swamp. This is where bugs thrive - still water, dew from the plants around, and fresh warm bodies to steal blood. It is a bug heaven and a human’s worst nightmare. Without too much trouble we got to Rappidy Falls and crossed on the nice new bridge. Marco told me that when he did the path, years back now, there was no bridge. I was very glad that a bridge had been installed, and we excitedly walked across the bridge to our next stop. On our way, we saw the remnants of an old dam, broken now. At the next campsite, we sat and had lunch. I was pretty exhausted by this point and bitten by more than a few bugs. I was itching everywhere. The good news was that we were on a beachfront and the moving ocean, rocks everywhere (no plant life), and wind meant that we could eat in peace. The beach at Telegraph Brook was very nice. In fact, someone was slowly building a house out of rocks at Telegraph Brook. There was a stone floor, a slowly built up wall, a fire pit, and what looked like a little food cellar. Marco told me that he found animals bones there before. That made it a little creepy, but, honestly, the house seemed so inviting to rest my sore feet. “Ready to go?” Marco asked? “....er” “What’s wrong?” “I’m exhausted. I know that it’s only 1pm, but I am so tired.” “Let the food work its magic. You’ll get a second wind.” It was still so early in the day, and calling it quits here would mean a much longer hike the next day. So with my sore feet shoved back into my hiking boots, we started on our way to Quiddy River. I thought that my energy levels would pick up, but unfortunately, they just kept declining. Each step up was hard, and each step down just hurt. After a few more ups and downs the bugs were starting to get really bad. You couldn’t sit in one spot to get respite from the bugs. I so badly wanted to sit for a half an hour or so to get my feet to hurt less. Unfortunately, stopping for any amount of time just doubled the amount of time we got bit. At one point I sat down on a log and tears started to well their way up. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. We had thought that we only had one more kilometer left, but we couldn’t see a downhill anywhere in sight. Even though the downhills hurt, I looked forward to it because it meant that we were close to our campsite. I stubbornly pushed on, knowing that our campsite couldn’t be any further, but with every step, my feet hurt more and my bug bites itched something awful. I started to get even more tired and I started to trip over roots and rocks. At one point I slipped and had a less than graceful fall. I started to cry, embarrassed at falling and crying because I fell. It had all started to become too much. “Give me your pack,” Marco insisted. “No, I can do it.” “Give me your pack.” “No!” I declared through tears. “I’m worried about you,” Marco looked at me, clearly showing his worry on his face. I reluctantly handed over my pack. We had no more than a half a kilometre left, we had been going down for a while now. My legs, feet, and generally whole body, still hurt with each step, but the extra weight off of my back/hips had really helped me get to camp. Marco was an angel that night. He braved the bugs and set up camp while I sat in the stream crying and cleaning myself of the blood and grime of the day. I then climbed into the tent to filter water while Marco cooked dinner. We ate a quick dinner and got to bed very early that night. I thanked my lucky stars that I had such an amazing man on the trail, and in life, with me, and fell asleep. We had a big day coming up - up and over to Rose Brook. “Beep!” “Beep!” “Beep!” “Murph,” I responded to the alarm clock. “Common Polo, let’s go watch the sunrise.” It had been 6 hours since we had gotten to our “camp” in the bathroom of Long Beach. Let me just say here that I am not a morning person. The idea of waking up at 6:30 am sounded lovely in my mind when it was proposed the night previously, but now in the harsh morning light, I didn’t want to get out of the sleeping bag. Marco promised a beautiful sunrise, so I got out of my warm oasis and threw on a sweater. I have to say that the morning trek out of the sleeping bag was worth it. The sky was painted with a beautiful pastel palette; blues, pinks, purples, and yellows lit up the sky. Marco slipped his arms around me, warming me up, while we watched the colours warm up the whole sky. After a little while of watching the sunrise we headed back to bed for an extra hour of blissful sleep. Fast-forward, we ate our morning breakfast, said our last good-bye to modern plumbing, and got our packs securely on. We took one look at the footpath, with it’s ups and downs, and thought, nah, we can make it to the stairs a little further down the beach. We would take the beach route for this section of our hike. We knew that the tide was headed out and would be heading out for the next 4-5 hours. The sun was out in full force, and the day was warming up quickly. “Hey! Marco! Come look at this!” I shouted ahead to him. Marco walked back over. “Isn’t he just so...cute?!” I asked, a little too enthusiastically. We had happened upon a cute little crab. He was small, around 7 cm wide, and his shell was yellowish-green and orange. Marco went to poke him, gently, with a stick. The little crab scuttle along the beach, sideways, right behind my boot! At one point it looked like the crab was going to scuttle up my boot! I stepped away. Marco approached the crab and, again, he scuttled right behind my boot. It seemed that he sensed that I would protect him from the big scary man trying to poke him. After taking a few close-ups of this tiny, adorable, crab, we kept going along our path. We got to the stairs which we had originally come down on our test hike, and after a quick look back at the beach, we decided that we could just do a straight shot down to Seely Beach. Now, we’d heard of many hikers who would chance the beach route, being tired of the elevation change or just looking for a different way to go, and getting stuck out on the beach when the tides came in. There are no saving platforms along this stretch of beach, and it can be a dangerous situation to be stuck in. However, we had our tide guide handy. If you are thinking of walking along the beach at any point along the Bay of Fundy make sure that you have the tide schedule handy! With little difficulty, minus some wading in the water to avoid scrambling over big rocks, we got to Seely Beach. Ok, ok we’re back on the proper path now. The tide was starting to come back in, and in all fairness, we had planned on hiking the Fundy Footpath, not the beach. This was the real beginning of the footpath for us. Up, and down; down and up. The path never let up. Even when the path was a “gentle incline” or a “challenging incline”, it was a challenging hike to be had. “I…” “Need….” “A….” “Break…” I huffed, getting to the flat plane after another incline. “Sure,” Marco responded. We sat and while I was drinking some water and eating some granola bars, I noticed Marco looking around at the forest floor. I gave Marco a curious glance. He started to gather sticks. “Ta-da!” He proudly proclaimed. He had spelled his name out of sticks and a tree root. Soon we settle into our camping spot at Little Salmon River. This has to be one of my favourite camping sites in NB, so far. There are plenty of tenting spots, a beautiful view, a working bear box, and a thunderbox. What more could a girl ask for? Well, maybe some wild peas, but hey, you can’t get greedy. Oh wait! “Dinner?” I ask Marco? His stomach audibly grumbles in reply. We grab all of our cooking gear and decide to eat down by the water, out of most of the bugs. Tonight we are having instant mash potatoes, instant gravy, salami, and cheese. “Want to grab some peas while I filter water?” Marco asks. “Peas? We didn’t pack peas.” “Didn’t have to,” Marco points at a wild pea bush. PEAS! I greedily head over to the wild pea bush and grab as many peas off of the pea bush as I think the two of us can eat. I sat hulling peas as Marco made our dinner. All mixed together we had a camping version of a Shepherd's Pie. It was the most glorious dinner I’d had. Yum. We settled into our tent and went to sleep, knowing that the next day would be another challenging day. I had no idea how challenging as I slept soundly under the stars. “Honey I’m hoooo-,” “READY!?” I asked. “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff,” Marco responded, looking around at the mess that I had proudly made. I had carefully upended the camping bucket on the floor of the apartment and sorted the mess into smaller piles of mess. “I think this is everything we wanted?” I asked with a smile. Marco smiled at me. After another hour we had packed up our bags and our dinner eaten. The night before we had done the long drive (4 hours of driving!) to and from Fundy National Park; we dropped off one car at the end of the trail so that we could get back. The national park allowed us to register for the trail and park our car for the duration of our walk. They did not charge us anything as we had a park pass for the year (highly recommended if you’re a fellow outdoor enthusiast). There is a small fee for parking your vehicle otherwise. It was relatively painless, minus the driving to and from the park. It’s around a 2 hour drive between the two points, so it can be a bit of a long day to drop one car off. We looked into getting shuttles, but it seems that it was only worth if it you pack the shuttle (5-6 people), otherwise it was around $400 for us to take the shuttle. With our bags packed and ready, we headed off towards the Fundy Trails Park in St. Martin’s. We arrived at the gates an hour before they close (08:00 - 20:00, summer hours). We were registered for the path, our numbers were taken, an emergency contact provided, and our expected end date for the trail was recorded. We parked our car in P8 and prepared for getting on trail. The trail starts at the suspension bridge just behind the visitors’ centre/ interpretation centre. From there you have to keep an eye out for the white blazes around to follow. “This way?” I ask. “Nope,” Marco answered. Clearly I was not any good at finding these white blazes. Apparently I needed to get my trail eyes as well as my trail legs. Well, it’s a good thing that I had four days of practice ahead of me! Soon I started to remember the path that we had taken the weekend previously (see Fundy Test Hike). We walked along, picked more raspberries from the path, and finally found the camp site around 2 kms down the path. It was around 20:45 by the time that we set up camp. “Let’s set up the tent here?” I suggested. There was a beautiful view of the water, which would be nice to wake up to. We had decided to do the short hike because there was no way to access the trail before 08:00 otherwise. Once we had the tent set up the way we like and the sleeping bags/mats all set up, we started to look for a good bear hang for our food. Two people and four days worth of food equalled around 11.5 lbs of food. We also hang our cooking system and our hygiene kit - so it’s a pretty heavy bag. We took one look around at the trees, “Ummmmm…” Marco seemed to be in deep thought. “Er…..” I expressed. “Yeah…” Marco responded. The trees were all soft wood, with spindly arms, and very close together. In order to get a good bear hang you need a branch that is not close to anything else: other branches, the ground, etc. It was starting to get dark. We needed to find a bear hang, quickly. We thought we saw a good branch to throw the rope. Marco grabbed a rock, tied the rope around the rock, got a good swing, and threw the rope over the branch. Success! Wait, rope, no! No! Don’t keep swinging! Stop! Oh no! Now the rope was knotted around itself, around 15 feet off the ground. Huh. Well camping is always full of problem solving, right? After a moment of staring at the rope, trying to move it with our minds, Marco tried to climb the tree to try to grab the rock. However, this was not successful. We ended up having to use our hiking poles, extended as far that they would go, to get the rock to untangle itself. With a good 30 minutes wasted on trying to get the rope to work on that tree, we gave up. Time to look for a new tree. “Are you ok to stay here with the food?” Marco asked. “It’s heavy and it doesn’t make sense to drag it around the forest looking for a branch.” “Yup,” I responded while clicking on my head lamp. It was firmly night now. Marco walked off into the darkness, looking for a tree. All of a sudden, I was alone, in the woods, at night. The darkness started to press in, in the only way it can when you’re in the middle of the forest. The wide open forest, all of the sudden, closes in. Your mind starts to wander about all of the scary things that the forest holds: bears, trolls, moose, ghosts, etc. The forest has a way of worming into your mind and teasing out your worst fears. All of the sudden you’re vulnerable, and all of the things you’re scared of start to come alive. I start to sing an old camp song that still easily comes to my mind whenever I’m nervous. I wear my pink pyjamas in the summer when it’s hot I wear my flannel nighties in the winter when it’s not And sometimes in the springtime and sometimes in the fall I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all Oh that’s the time you ought to see me That’s the time you ought to see me That’s the time you ought to see me, when I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all Nosey, nosey what’s it to yeah? Nosey, nosey what’s it to yeah? Nosey, nosety what’s it to yeah? When I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all! Hey! I think us kids must have changed the lyrics at some point because when I google the actual lyrics, they’re a heck of a lot cleaner. For better or worse though, this is the song that gets stuck in my head when I’m nervous about anything. It’s super annoying and won’t leave my head for days. This was going to be a long hike. Marco must have heard my singing because he shouted out “EVERYTHING OK OVER THERE?” “YEAH!” I shouted back. He walked back and told me the bad news: there didn’t seem to be a good tree to hang our food on. We looked at each other (as much as you can with headlamps on) and a realisation passed between us: we were about to embark on a night hike. Marco and I had been jokingly saying that we were going to do a night hike tonight. Well, you ask and the universe provides, so here we go! We packed the tent back up. I said a good-bye to my bed, packed it all away, and we put our food back in our packs. We took out our hiking poles, to make sure that we weren’t going to slip on anything in the night, turned on our headlamps, and started off towards the next camp site on our map: Long Beach, another 4 kms away. “AH!” I screamed. “WHAT?!” Marco responded. “What is that?!” “What?” “That?” “Where?” “Over there!” “....the tree?” “The….oh. Yeah the tree.” Hiking during the night made all of the shadows look like animals of their own. I remembered a story that Marco was telling me about - a cougar was thought to be found in New Brunswick. There was a debate going on about whether there were actual cougars around. [link] Not to mention, I also don’t like bears all that much either - so everything looked suspicious in the dark. The trail itself is well marked and easy to find, so we didn’t have too much trouble following it all the way to Long Beach. Along the way we saw some neat small creatures (bugs, frogs, you know, the friendly animals). Soon we were making our way down the side of the hill and saw Long Beach ahead of us. We were excited to get down to the site, find a bear hang, and get to sleep. As soon as we got down to the site we noticed a parking lot, an interpretation centre, and that was about it! Where were the camp sites that were promised on the map? Did we have an old map? We could always find a bear hang and sleep on the grass in front of the interpretation centre, and we’d be ok. We took an expectant look around us, trying to find a tree that could be a bear hang. It was around midnight at this point, and we were both quite tired. The same spindly, close hugging trees seemed to surround the site. We cursed silently and tried to weigh our options. The next campsite we were going to be staying at was another 10kms or so from our current spot. I was too tired to hike until the morning. That’s when I noticed that the interpretation centre had bathrooms. “Hmmmm,” I pondered aloud. “Hmmm?” Marco questioned. “Well, the bathroom doors have handles. Those would be hard for animals to get into. We could put our food in there for the night. It’s not like anyone’s going to be using the bathrooms. The park is closed,” I suggested. We walked into the ladies bathroom and found a hook on the back of a change room to hang our food. With that sorted we turned our thoughts to setting up camp. “Hmmmm,” I pondered aloud. “Hmmm?” Marco questioned. “Well, instead of being tired and setting up the tent, and getting it wet [there was due on the ground], we could just sleep in the bathroom,” I suggested. “Is it….clean in here?” Marco asked, incredulous. “The ground is cement. They must wash it down once a day; besides, we’d be sleeping on our sleeping mats.” “...maybe.” I was convincing him! Success! In the end our exhaustion won, and we ended up setting up camp in the women’s bathroom at Long Beach. We set our alarm for the sunrise the next morning and settled into blissful sleep. |