Summer 2005 Week 3

Today we are headed to Kejimkujik National Park but first some errands. We go back to the Canadian Tire store where they wash the motorhome and the car while we shop at the supermarket next door. They spend about 90 minutes cleaning the coach and do an excellent job. Next we drive to the far corner of their parking lot with a good view of the sky. We connect to the internet and spend over an hour checking email, paying bills on-line, updating our web site and looking up stuff on the web. The drive to Kejimkujik takes less than an hour. The campground is nearly empty so we drive around in the car until we spot a campsite we like. The woman at the visitor center was very helpful, telling us about the hiking trails and canoe trails in the park. It is the peak of black fly season here and the mosquitoes are out as well so we will have three days of Deet and bug jackets. After supper we walked to a campsite where a Barred Owl nest was reported. We had no success finding the nest, even though we tried to replicate the owls call of “hoot, hoot, who cooks for me” (these phrases are supposed to remind us of the cadence of the call ;-). We then walked down to Keji Lake but didn’t see any loons. Back at the campsite we built a fire and watched it huddled in our hooded mesh “Buzz-Off” jackets. It was a great fire even though the bugs persevered. Early to bed so we can go birding early tomorrow.

his is a beautiful park so we set out today to hike several trails. The first was “Hardwoods and Hemlocks”, a lovely three mile trail that leads through a large stand of old growth Hemlocks, the oldest of which is over 400. Although the forest was beautiful, it was very buggy and unpleasant to stop for more than a minute or two to look for birds. While in the Hemlock grove we began to hear distant thunder. Though the sky had patches of blue and occasional sunshine, the thunder persisted and grew louder. The sky darkened and the squall struck when we were about a quarter mile from the car. It was plenty of time to get soaked in the downpour as we hustled back to the parking lot. This is one of the situations when camping in a motorhome is wonderful. We drove back to the coach, turned up the heat, changed out of our wet clothes and hung them around the coach to dry. Life is good even when we get soaked. After lunch we hiked a couple of other short trails. It was fun but still too buggy to do much birding but the scenery was delightful. We saw several White Tailed Deer as we drove around the park. They graze alongside the road and are used to traffic so we could get some close photographs without getting out of the car. We grilled up some more Digby scallops for dinner and had another quiet evening by the campfire.

Today started with the mail fiasco. Our first batch of mail was supposed to be in Digby last week. We got an email from the forwarding service saying it was sent six days late due to an error reading the date. Today is our last chance to get this mail before we drive 350 miles away but Digby is 45 miles back where we were on Thursday. We decided to call the Post Office to save ourselves the needless drive in case the mail has still not arrived. There is no cell signal in the park so Carl tried the pay phone. The call would be $4.10! He didn’t have that many quarters and the operator would not take a credit card number. OK, so we’ll drive towards Digby until the cell phone works. Ten miles from Digby, Carls phone stops working. Oh, well, we are so close now, let’s just drive to the Post Office. Guess what; the Post Office is no longer open on Saturday! We’ll have to deal with the mail on Monday by phone. Hopefully they will forward it to our next stop instead of sending it back to NH. We stop at WalMart as long as we are in town. One of the things we buy is a phone card. For five cents a minute we call Tara to wish her a happy birthday and talk to the boys (we would have called for eighty cents a minute on the cell phone but this is not so hurried, even if we have to call from a pay phone outside a supermarket). Back to the coach for lunch then we decide to visit the “Seaside Adjunct” to Kejimkujik National Park. It’s a long drive to get there but there’s a nice trail along the ocean. If it wasn’t so foggy, we might have seen Harbor Seals offshore. Still, we got some close looks at a Yellow Warbler singing his heart out and the rocky, foggy ocean coast has a beauty all it’s own.

We went for a bird walk before breakfast but the birds were scarce and the mosquitoes still ferocious. After breakfast we packed up and headed to Glenholme, NS, an overnight stop between Kejimikujik and Koochabguac National Parks. Elm River RV Park is a wide open, grassy campground with the nicest bathrooms and laundry room we have ever seen in a campground. We spent a couple of nights here last year on the way to Newfoundland. We easily got connected to the internet and spent the afternoon catching up on email. Late afternoon we drove over to a market we saw while driving in earlier. It turned out to be a delightful marketplace with a bakery, ice cream shop and small grocery section. We bought some fill-in groceries and got an ice cream on the way out. After a tasty grilled salmon dinner, the evening was spent doing laundry, more internet stuff and some chores around the coach.

We were up late playing on the internet last night so we slept later than usual. We only had 150 miles to drive so we planned to arrive before lunch. We made one stop in the self proclaimed lobster capital of the world, Shediac, NB. We had read about it and wanted to see their 35 foot long lobster statue. It is steel and cement and you can climb up between the claws for a photo. We did. And how could we visit the lobster capital of the world without buying some. When we arrived at Kouchibouguac National Park we stopped at the visitor center to get trail maps, view the exhibits and a slide show about the park. Once again the campground was nearly empty and we got a really nice secluded site that even has electricity. Once settled in our site we hiked out to the barrier beach to check out the birds. A winter storm in 2000 broke through part of the sandy peninsula, creating a small island. Birds prefer nesting on islands where they are safe from land mammals like raccoons and foxes. There were no nests in 2001. By 2004 there were 1,041 Common Tern nests and an assortment of other shorebirds including 31 Piping Plover nests (sorry Judy ;-). We hiked two miles along the lagoon watching she terns feeding in the shallow water. We also saw two pair of Red Breasted Mergansers along the shore of the lagoon where they nest. As we walked out on the boardwalk to the beach, the wind picked up and the rain started. We watched a few terns feeding at close range but the rain got heavier so we wrapped up the cameras and headed back to the coach. It was a wet two miles but gore-tex is great. Once again we warmed up the motorhome (it was 54 degrees out) and spread our stuff out to dry. Once in dry clothes, we downloaded our photographs and relaxed with a glass of Merlot as we looked at the pictures. The lobsters were excellent and after dinner we looked over the park maps choosing trails for tomorrow.

Heavy clouds and 53 degrees greeted us this morning though it was dry. We set out to hike a series of short nature trails in the park. As we drove out of the campground we spotted a really big woodchuck and a small Snowshoe Hare. The trails were nice and had very informative interpretive signs. However, the mosquitoes were fierce again and it was still difficult to stand still long enough to look for birds. After lunch back at the coach we did some more hiking. We walked across the boardwalk again, walking the beach looking unsuccessfully for Piping Plovers. On the way back we stopped to watch and photograph the terns feeding in the lagoon. At one point a tern landed on the boardwalk railing about 20 feet from us and regurgitated what turned out to be the front half of a small fish. He flew off after Carl got just a few frames. The next trail was bunnyville. As we got back to the car we spotted three snowshoe hares feeding in the grass. One was being harasses by a Red Squirrel that kept jumping out from under a nearby tree. They were cute and we took lots of pictures. We spent the evening before a roaring campfire. The park sells kiln dried firewood bundles, mostly small pieces of birch which burn very well. Early to bed for tomorrow we go in search of moose.

DING! It’s 5:30 AM, do you know where the moose are? Well neither do we but we are going to try to find them. As a good omen, we spotted a white tailed deer as we exited the campground. We hiked the short nature trails we walked yesterday and drove slowly down the park road between the signs warning drivers to watch out for moose. We then headed for our best spot, a trail where we had spotted fairly fresh moose droppings yesterday. As we pulled into the parking spot, there it was. Not a moose but a Black Bear. She ( a guess at the gender based on size but it might have been a young male) was foraging in the low growth around the parking area. We stopped the car as soon as we saw her. She looked up briefly then slowly wandered across the parking lot into the woods. We caught glimpses of her through the trees but she looked to be heading away. “You still want to hike this trail?” asked Carl. “Sure!” Sandy replied and off we went. The trail had the same moose droppings but no moose. We heard an Ovenbird and Ruffed Grouse as we hiked the trail and spotted a male American Redstart and Magnolia Warbler. We headed back to the coach for breakfast after about two hours. No moose but the bear sighting was wonderful. After breakfast we headed down the coast to the community of Bouctouche. First stop along the way was a neat little craft shop built in the form of a lighthouse. The main product was jewelry made from beach glass, beautifully hand painted. A cute shop and now they have one less piece. Next was the soapery, a small “cottage industry” soap factory that gives interesting demonstrations of making soap and explanations of the ingredients and different kinds of additives. We had a private narration of the process in English while the main presenter spoke in French to a room full of school kids on a field trip. Sandy loved the soap and bought a bunch. Along the road we had an unusual sight; an American Woodcock sitting by the side of the road. He flew into the brush as we slowed down. We finally made it to Bouctouche and discovered a small seafood shack where the special was two lobster rolls for $9 and the best home made french fries since the Ziggy Peelgood truck in Saint Johns Newfoundland. As we headed north towards the campground we next stopped at the Irving Eco-Center, a mile long boardwalk that winds it’s way down a barrier beach sandspit. Along the way, we spotted Piping Plover, Lesser Yellowlegs and numerous Song Sparrows and Great Blue Herons. Just north of the Eco-Center was a small winery, another cottage industry. They grow and bottle grape, blueberry and elderberry wines. All were good and we brought home a couple of bottles of the blueberry, which is quite dry and should be good with seafood. One more craft shop and we made it back home for dinner and a campfire (if we don’t doze off first!). Before the campfire we took a brief walk along the river. There we spotted a Snowy Egret. This is far north of their breeding range and the park bird list shows it as a rare visitor.