Trying To Do Too Much: St. Martins, New Brunswick and the Fundy Trail Parkway

If you’re thinking ‘damn, that’s a really long title for a blog post’, I absolutely agree.  But this is a post about one VERY long day!

For the first week of our trip I’d done a pretty good job not going overboard on planning and activities.  Yet, for some reason, as soon as we crossed the Canadian border, all common sense flew out of my head.  The plan for the day was ‘drive from Bar Harbor to St. Martins, eat dinner, sleep.’  That was it.  Nothing else.  But of course that’s not what happened.

After a minor meltdown related to the inability to find food, an ATM, a restroom, or the charming touristy town of St. Andrews (it wasn’t as ‘on the way’ as we’d hoped, but we didn’t figure that out until we were ten miles off of the highway and still nowhere near the town) we stopped at a little road side restaurant right on the exit to St. George (they like their saints in New Brunswick!) and finally had something to eat.  With the combination of the meltdown and the meal stop, we arrived in St. Martins around 3:00 in the afternoon.

This is when it all went wrong.

The very friendly innkeeper said something that didn’t seem dangerous to her.  When I said that I didn’t know if we’d be going to see the Fundy Trail Parkway, her response was something like ‘oh it would be a shame to be so close and not see it!’

So of course we had to go.

After driving all day, the aforementioned minor melt down, and only a brief stop in our rooms to drop our stuff off, we got back in the car and set out for the Fundy Trail Parkway.

The husband on a very precarious staircase on the Fundy Trail Parkway

To be fair, the parkway would have been a great way to spend a day.  An entire day.  Like after a leisurely breakfast and before a long night of relaxing.  It was not a good way to spend one very hurried late afternoon.  But even though we were worn out, we had a good time–for the first three quarters of our visit.  We checked out some scenic overlooks, found a waterfall, and generally had a nice time.  but then we pushed onward and got very cranky.

The reason we walked down the scary staircase

So around 6:00ish we finally decided to leave.  Did we go back to the B&B to relax?  Of course not!  After all, we passed by this place touting ‘the best chowder in the world’, and it shared a parking area with a beach strewn with sea caves–and the tide was out.

This is as close as I got to the sea caves

So we tried to get this famous chowder–and failed (the line was around the building) and then tried to walk out to the sea caves–and failed (I was wearing birkenstocks, possibly the worst shoes in the world for walking on a rocky beach.  Finally, finally we returned to the B&B.

We didn’t try to do too much again for the remainder of the trip.  So, at the very least, it was a good way to learn that lesson.  See?  I’m totally growing as a person, don’t you think?

Up next–the dinner at the St. Martins B&B and the couple that saved it from turning into another melt-down.