These pictures were taken in my garden and around Oat Hill Lake where I live.

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Map to Conrads Beach

Almost at the end of our strole at the beach I found this huge rock heart and carried it home in my backpack. It turned out that it weighs 5 lbs (2.5 kg) and is about 9 inches wide and 8 inches tall.

kite surfing practice

The first thing we saw after parking the car was this huge kite in the sky over the beach. It turns out a man was practicing  his kite surfing technique.

the beach

The beach is a very flat and has a low grade which gives a wide area to walk on at low tide. The man and his dog seem to literally have a ball.

seaweed

Amazing the different varieties of seaweed that had washed ashore and at some places were really thick. In the rocky part of the beach walking over the seaweed felt like walking on a materess, but a  really stinky one.

rocks

I don’t know what it is with rocks, but I am attracted to them. Maybe it is my Swiss heritage. I loved climbing over them and looking for different shaped ones. The 4 rocks at the top right of the picture are granite ovals. The smaller the shapes the smoother they were.

dunes

The dunes at the edge of the beach are held in place by seagrass and  hide all kinds of stuff that must have washed ashore during storms and high tides.

salt marsh

Behind the dunes started the salt marsh an area where the water flowing towards the ocean gets mixed with the salty seawater.

Minas Basin Day Trip

August 16/2007

Finally the weather was just perfect for the long planned trip to the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin. It was not too hot and not to cold, just right.

I really like the satellite picture, from 1975, I found on the net of the area at the Canadian Government Resource site.

We left after the rush hour was almost over at 9 am and had very little traffic going North on the 101 towards Windsor and Wolfville. Just after Wolfville we took the turnoff to the right onto route 358 and followed it to the end.

First the road crosses the valley and then at Canning it makes a turn towards the hills separating the Bay of Fundy and the valley. On top of the hill was our first stop at a place called the Look Off. The view was just breathtaking. To the West spread out the Annapolis valley and to the East are the tidal flats of the Minas Basin. Today low tide was around 10 am and that added to the colors of the landscape. The tidal flats are a rusty brown color.

view from the Look Off

I really wanted to go the Bay of Fundy, so we got back in the car and kept on driving. The further North we got the more the sun pulled a disappearing act and by the time we reached Scotts Bay at the Bay of Fundy we were surrounded by heavy fog, a real pea souper as they say here. There was no reason to take any pictures as there was plain nothing to see. So we turned around and drove back the way we came. As we were reaching again the top of the hills, the sun came back out and the weather stayed that way all day long.

Halfway between Scotts Bay and the Look Off we took a dirt road down to Blomidon Provincal Park our next destination.

Tangled Garden

August 16/2007

After a delicious lunch in Wolfville we continued on the Grand Pre to the Tangled Garden. I delightful garden with a labyrinth and a store where they sell delicious jellies and highly unusual ice creams. Hubby had lemon thyme and I had rose petal ice cream.

sculptures at Tangled Garden

There is a $2 entrance fee to help support the garden. This is the first time I walked a labyrinth. I had never seen one with flowers. There were all kinds of flowers, but also poppies in various colors. Each poppy had a color matching thread around the stem to help them differentiate the colors of the seeds for next year.

flower labyrinth at Tangled Garden

The inscription above the gate to the labyrinth says:
Nosce te ipsum and that means Know Thyself.

This concluded our site seeing and by 4 pm we were back home, relaxed from a delightful trip.