Eh-Plus Views on the Atlantic Coast of Canada

As my time in Canada comes to a close for now, I wanted to reflect on some of the highlights of my visit to our friendly neighbors to the north. Like my travels around the U.S., this trip has largely revolved around visiting National Parks.

First up was Fundy National Park in New Brunswick. The Bay of Fundy boasts the largest tidal range in the world, with an average variance of around 47 feet and a record high tide of 53.5 feet. This extreme shift allows visitors to literally walk on the ocean floor during low tide, which I got to experience firsthand at Hopewell Rocks. Check out the video I took of this surreal landscape here!

I kept taking pictures of fishing boats out of the water during low tide but then forgetting to take the picture again during high tide to show the difference. Still, it’s pretty crazy.

Another cool part about the tide variance is that you can kayak to some of those same places during high tide. And while I did not go back to Hopewell to kayak the rocks there, I did go a little of an hour south to Saint Martins to kayak the sea caves there. As an added bonus, I ended up sharing a tandem kayak with one of our tour guides. This instantly upgraded me to "passenger princess" status, giving me the perfect opportunity to relax and shoot this amazing footage of the caves.

One of the benefits of being the passenger princess is that I got to go into the sea caves with every other kayak in the group.

After leaving Fundy, I got up super early to catch the ferry from Saint John, New Brunswick to Digby Nova Scotia. I’ve been on a ferry before, but this was the first time in the van. Afterwards I spent the day exploring Annapolis Royale before heading to Kejimkujik National Park. 

At "Keji," the weather was perfect enough for me to finally unpack my new SUP/kayak hybrid and spend some quality time out on the lake. I am so incredibly happy with this purchase—especially now that I've figured out a secure way to store it on a hitch rack outside the van.

I’m on a boat!

The final Canadian park on this itinerary was the iconic Cape Breton Highlands. This was easily my most anticipated stop of the entire trip, but unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans. I lost two full days to bad weather, but I still had an absolute blast driving the legendary Cabot Trail when the skies cleared.You can see a quick glimpse of the drive in this video.

This is what I’ve always picture Nova Scotia looking like.

I spent my last few nights in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick staying at an Oyster Farm on a cliff overseeing the Atlantic, a top notch brewery, and a small vegetable and horse farm. I met some amazing people on this leg of the trip and have been overwhelmed by the kindness of our neighbors to the north.

I’m now in the middle of a very long drive to the upper peninsula of Michigan to undertake a bucket-list 3 day trip. I’m not going to say more than that, other than  I lucked into the reservations as they were the only ones available for the year. I hope to take a lot of video of this experience and potentially do a long form video of the trip - something that will definitely push me outside my comfort zone.

I’ll close with a moment of gratitude for the ability to have this experience. To have the financial, physical, and mental capacity—not to mention the sheer freedom of time—to experience this is something I don't take for granted. I know that losing a job doesn't always pave the way for an adventure like this, and I am profoundly grateful that I've been able to turn a transition into the trip of a lifetime.