New Brunswick- St Martins, Fundy Trail Parkway, Kouchibouguac National Park

Covered bridge in St Martins being rebuilt

Monday and Tuesday were basically rest days at St Martins Century Farm campground. Tuesday it rained off and on pretty well all day, so it was easy to be lazy for the day. 

Wednesday arrived clear and sunny though. We headed for the Fundy Trail Parkway (FTP, for more info Click here), a 26 km (16 mi) scenic drive along the Fundy coat. St Martins is one of the jumping-off places for a FTP tour, which normally includes going over the covered bridge in the picture above. There was a bypass while the bridge is being rebuilt, luckily. 

The West entrance to the FTP is about 10 km from St Martins. It's a scenic area even before you get to the FTP, but the FTP is designed for the views and coastal hiking/biking trails. Here are a number of views from driving/stopping along the FTP. We didn't do much actual hiking today:

Lots of moss, it's a Maritime climate

A crew working on the steep steps on a hiking trail. We were going to take this one, but it was closed. 

Auto and pedestrian bridges over the Big Salmon River

Lots of rocks to examine along the shoreline, you may even find fossils here:

And even more seaside views:

After exiting the East end of the FTP, we headed pretty directly northeast to Kouchibouguac National Park, where we hoped to get a campsite for 4 nights. Kouchibouguac National Park is on New Brunswick's eastern shore (for more information on Kouchibouguac park, click HERE ).

There is a large campground in the park, and they have always had sites available, as long as you don't need electrical hookups. Those get reserved early. Amazingly enough, we had a choice of 5 sites available for the whole 4 nights, and one had electric, so we took the electric site. We were concerned that the tall trees and possible bad weather would hamper our solar panel charging.

Creative use of an old phone booth at the check-in

We set up our little screen shelter in case of bugs. Lots of mosquitoes at times.

We did have a nice campfire though.

Our largest campsite wildlife

 
The campground gives easy access to a shoreline trail, perfect for our style of biking. These pictures are all from sections of the trail:

Nice dock, across from a working fishing boat marina

Sittin' on the dock of the Bay...

A little minnow nibbled on my toes while we were minding our own business

Fishing boats starting to return to port

They go out real early in the morning, not too far offshore

The mouth of the river is tidal, so lots of fisher-birds as the tide goes out

A nice viewing deck, complete with comfy chairs

 

Great Blue Herons were common

Bench along the trail, the once-nice view is not so good anymore as things grow up

At one end of the nice part of the trail is Kelly's Beach, accessed via a boardwalk (no bikes or dogs allowed):

Lots of interesting things to look at here:

A cormorant drying its wings

Lots of smaller shorebirds picking up small prey

Several Piping Plovers here, still a rare bird

Minnows schooling in the clear water

A couple (not us) trying out their inflatable kayaks

Wednesday's drive: