dventure Guide to New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island Barbara Radcliffe Rogers & Stillman Rogers HUNTER PUBLISHING, INC. 130 Campus Drive Edison, NJ 08818-7816 % 732-225-1900 / 800-255-0343 / fax 732-417-1744 www.hunterpublishing.com E-mail [email protected] IN CANADA: Ulysses Travel Publications 4176 Saint-Denis, Montréal, Québec Canada H2W 2M5 % 514-843-9882 ext. 2232 / fax 514-843-9448 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: Windsor Books International The Boundary, Wheatley Road, Garsington Oxford, OX44 9EJ England % 01865-361122 / fax 01865-361133 ISBN 1-58843-118-5 © 2002, Barbara Radcliffe Rogers & Stillman Rogers This and other Hunter travel guides are also available as e-books in a variety of digital formats through our online partners, including Ama- zon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and eBooks.com. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Brief excerpts for review or promotional purposes are permitted. This guide focuses on recreational activities. As all such activities contain elements of risk, the publisher, author, affiliated individuals and companies disclaim any respon- sibility for any injury, harm, or illness that may occur to anyone through, or by use of, the information in this book. Every effort was made to insure the accuracy of informa- tion in this book, but the publisher and author do not assume, and hereby disclaim, any liability for loss or damage caused by errors, omissions, misleading information or potential travel problems caused by this guide, even if such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause. All photos by authors, unless otherwise indicated. Maps by Lissa K. Dailey and Toni Carbone, © 2002 Hunter Publishing, Inc. Indexing by Nancy Wolff 4321 Authors’ Foreword Our adventures in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island go back to the very first days of our marriage, when we chose to explore these prov- inces on our honeymoon. We set out for two weeks in August in a gutsy lit- tle TR-4, without hotel reservations, but with a good road map and a sense of humor. Our car’s bigger now – to hold all the camping equipment and to carry racks for the bikes and kayaks – and the growing popularity of the provinces has made reservations wise in the summer, but we still carry a good map and the sense of humor. We’ve traveled much of the world together, and with the family that grew from that marriage that we celebrated on that honeymoon in the TR4. But no place on earth has constantly offered all of us so many adventures or so many chances to broaden our repertoire of outdoor activities. In these two provinces we first went deep-sea fishing, dug our first clams, saw our first whales, found our first fossils, paddled our first kayaks and handled our first dog teams. Here we’ve hiked deep into the only remaining stretch of coastal wilderness on the Atlantic side of North America. An experience need not be a “first” to be an adventure, and Maritime Can- ada continues to surprise and delight us with its variety after all these years. Until we were writing this book, for example, we had never seen the tremendous sand dunes along the new section of Prince Edward Is- land National Park, near St. Peters, take on the contours of the Sahara. The wildlife we see is a continuing source of surprise and wonder: swirling clouds of sandpipers at Mary’s Point, deer in the backyard of the Hiram Walker Estate in St. Andrews, moose beside the road in Keswick, harbor porpoise in Charlottetown, salmon jumping in the Miramichi, seal pups in Murray River, Osprey nesting at Point Escumiac, puffins off Grand Manan, bald eagles on the Tobique, the continent’s largest great blue heron colony at Souris, cormorants on the seastack at Pokeshaw and an island solid with birds in Malpeque Bay. And, of course, the Fundy whales. Other places in the world boast to us of their whale populations, but we try to be good guests and not remind them that we have the best right in our backyard. We don’t even have to go out in a boat to see them: our favorite spotting point is from a lighthouse on Campobello Island. Barbara and Tim Rogers A Word of Thanks Even when it has only two authors, a travel book is a group project. No two humans could possibly gather all the information, sample the activi- ties, hike the trails, taste the food and paddle the waters required of a reli- able guide book without a lot of help from other people. We’ve been singularly blessed in writing this one. Help has come wherever we travel and more help has awaited us at home. Two people stand out for their continuing role in our work: Valerie Kidney in New Brunswick and Carol Horne in Prince Edward Island. Their knowledge, diplomacy, perseverance and good humor makes them each a pleasure to know and work with. Others stand out as well, joining Valerie and Carol in smoothing the road before us and putting us in touch with just the right people to answer our questions (or answering them them- selves) – Percy Mallet, Lee Heenan, Nancy Sears, Candee Treadway, Ralph Johansen, Dick Griffiths, Monica Campbell-Hoppe, and Lois Ger- ber. Throughout the two provinces, we have never failed to be amazed at the wealth of knowledge and information that waits for travelers in each of the local and provincial tourist information offices along the way. What the people who staff these don’t know themselves, they’ll find out within a couple of telephone calls. Their enthusiasm for their homeland and the eagerness with which they share it is one of the great pleasures of travel, not to mention making our work a lot easier as we try to ferret our obscure bits of information. We can’t list them all – we often don’t even know their names – but remember especially Lisa Cormier and Philip Barnhill, the good-humored duo in the information office in Bathurst. Other people seem to appear randomly, in gestures typical of Maritime hospitality – we remember especially a conversation on the dock at Shippagan with Muriel Savoie, as we watched a veritable fleet of little puk-a-puks set off for the Blessing of the Fleet one morning. There are the travel companions, too, with whom we have shared the laughs and wonders of travels there. Paddling companions Darrell Me- sheau and Glen Larsen come to mind, and the ever-laughing Melanie Coates. Innkeepers in general are a rich source of local information for travel writers, and we exploit them mercilessly. While all we have met in these two provinces have gone out of their way to be helpful (and are supremely hospitable by nature), some have gone so far beyond the demands of hos- pitality that we think of them whenever someone uses the word. Eliza- beth Cooney in St. Andrews, Katherine Van Weston in St. Martins and Ida and Larry Adair, who are never too busy to drop what they are doing to show us some new wonder in the vast Fundy wilderness they call home. Fellow travel writers are just as generous of their time and knowledge, es- pecially Tom Bross, who shares discoveries made as he travels in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and Lura Rogers, who took time from writing her own book to help us prepare this manuscript when time grew short. While we’d sometimes prefer to be writing with our favorite fountain pens, reality requires many hours at a computer, and ours seem to wait until a manuscript is almost due, then either develop highly eccentric habits or stop working altogether. To Tracy Pillsbury, computer guru extraordinaire, who hops into his truck and makes house calls from two hours away, goes our eternal gratitude for setting them right at a mo- ment’s notice. We’ve left the ever-patient Lissa Dailey for last, although she’s the one who actually made this book real. As our editor and our friend, she’s a treasure, and to her goes the heartiest thanks of all. It is, after all, the friendships that will endure, long after the travels are over. Dedication To Wayne Kidney, without whom New Brunswick just won’t be the same. About the Authors im and Barbara Rogers have been wandering around Canada since Tthe very first days of their marriage, hiking its trails, camping in its parks, climbing its mountains, kayaking its waters and skiing its snow. Until recently, they saved the Atlantic Provinces for themselves, going there for family vacations while they wrote about other places in the world. Their books have covered such widespread locations as the Galapa- gos Islands of Ecuador, African safari parks, Portugal, New England and the rivers and seas of Europe. Their articles in magazines and newspapers have described their adventures on several continents, from climbing a volcano on the back of a camel to “driving” their own houseboat through the canals of England. Exotic, they insist, is simply a matter of perspec- tive, and they find a lion in the bush no more exciting than looking a Fundy whale straight in the eye. Contents Introduction Geography & Terrain 3 History 3 Getting Around 5 Rental Cars 5 Driving in the Maritime Provinces 6 Exchange Rate & Taxes 7 Adventures 7 On Foot 9 On Wheels 10 On Water 11 On Snow 14 On Horseback 15 Cultural & Eco-Travel Experiences 15 Fauna & Flora 16 Wildlife 16 Insects 17 Sightseeing 17 Where To Stay & Eat 18 Prices 18 Local Foods 19 Information Sources 21 New Brunswick Introduction 23 New Brunswick’s Parks 24 Day Adventures 25 Fishing 27 Information Sources 27 Tourist Information 27 Recommended Reading 27 The Quoddy Shore 29 Geography & History 29 Getting Around 30 Information Sources 31 Adventures 32 On Foot 32 On Wheels 33 On Water 34 On Snow 38 Adventures On Grand Manan 39 Grand Manan On Foot 39 Grand Manan On Wheels 40 Grand Manan On Water 42 Wildlife-Watching on Grand Manan 43 Grand Manan’s Culinary Delights 45 Cultural & Eco-Travel Experiences 46 Salmon Rule the Waves 48 Wildlife-Watching 50 viii n New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island Sightseeing 51 Campobello Island 51 St.