Saint John, New Brunswick and Reversing Rapids, part 1

We drove from Calais, ME, to Saint John, New Brunswick, today.

We were a little bit apprehensive about getting through Canadian immigration

• we had heard that they might want to see the rabies certificates for the cats (the fellow didn't ask about pets, so it didn't come up - but we had them in our "crossing the border" folder)
• we had heard that they might give us a hard time, even checking our rig, looking for guns, especially since we are from Texas (they specifically asked us about guns, but we truthfully told them that we didn't have any, the fellow repeated that it was illegal to have firearms in Canada and asked us again, and we again said we didn't have any)
• we had heard that there might be problems with certain foodstuffs (eggs, raw chicken) but he didn't ask anything about that
• he did ask what alcohol we had on board, and we told him what we had (we had checked beforehand on what was allowed)
• we had been told that we needed a special insurance paper - I don't know whether that is for immigration or in case we have an incident - we have the paper with us, but he didn't ask about it

So - there were no problems, and we got across the border in about 10 minutes time (allowing for the two vehicles ahead of us, one of which was a class B motorhome (a van type chassis) who got slotted over to the side for additional searching, I guess).

The road from Bangor to Calais was a nice two-lane road with nice wide shoulders and truck passing lanes on the uphills. The road from Calais to Saint John is a 4 lane divided limited access highway with very little traffic - very easy driving.

We stopped at the visitor information center just south/west of Saint John to find out where we should go and at what time to see the "reversing rapids". We should have also asked "What time is it now?" Our Garmin knew that we were on a different timezone (I kept on wondering why it was telling me we would get to the campground an hour later than I was figuring we were getting there) but it didn't occur to us that we would be on a different timezone in New Brunswick - Atlantic time zone, an hour east of eastern time.

We got the times of high and low tide - and they gave us a book with the tide information throughout the year.

After we got checked in to our campground (Rockwood Park - right in Saint John - just a gravel lot, but it is a great location), we drove the Jeep to the reversing rapids. We were planning to get there about an hour before low tide, but, given that we were an hour off, you guessed it... we arrived right at low tide.

A picture of the map with the markings that Kyle, at the visitor's center, gave us. Bay of Fundy is on the lower right. The Saint John River comes in from the middle top. It turns out that the height of the river is at the mid-point of the tide at this location. So, when the bay is at low tide, the river is flowing strongly downstream, making rapids and whirlpools at the constriction point right where the bridge goes across on the middle left of the picture. But when the bay is at high tide, the water pushes in causing the rapids to reverse, or so we're told - we're going back for high tide tomorrow, as the high tide tonight is after dark.

Dwayne and Patti at Reversing Rapids

The river is flowing from left to right under the bridge, and turning to head out away from us toward the Bay of Fundy.

On the other side of the river, looking down toward the bridge - the river is flowing past us from right to left to go under the bridge.

From what we were told, the rapids are most impressive at low tide (so that's what we've seen). At "slack tide", the river is navigable through this area for about 20 minutes, twice a day, about halfway between high and low tide. We will go back tomorrow at high tide and get more pictures and see if they show the difference. We also have video that we might upload if the pictures don't show it.

By the way, we weren't able to get online with our phones for most of today. We have WiFi in the campground, so I got on a chat session with a Verizon rep, and he was able to tell us how to change a setting on our phones to enable global data. So we should be in good shape for our on-going Canadian trip!