Want to go through the posts in order? Click on the links below, and they’ll open in new windows so you can follow along chronologically!
Day 1 – 2: Day 1: Home to Lévis, Québec. Day 2: Lévis, Québec to Bathurst, NB.
Day 3: Bathurst, NB to Beresford, NB to Bouctouche, NB.
Day 4: Bouctouche, NB to Hopewell Rocks Park, NB, to Alma, NB through Fundy National Park to Saint John, NB.
Day 5, 6: Day 5: Saint John, NB to Rivière-du-Loup, Québec. Day 6: Rivière-du-Loup, Québec to Home!
Day 5: Saint John, NB to Rivière-du-Loup, Québec (490km)
Started off the day by going to Irving Nature Park! We checked out this beautiful beach before heading up the trail to see what other beaches were there. We didn’t realize at the time you could drive to various points in the park… we also didn’t realize the trip around the entire park’s coast was an 8km hike.
Started off strong on the Squirrel Trail!
The sky was split in two with clouds forming an almost perfect line:
From the observation deck, we saw seals hanging out! The Seal Trail did not disappoint!
Can’t pass up checking out the tide pools…
We weren’t sure what these tracks were from, we’ll need to look it up!
This boardwalk looked really nice… but we were already several hours into a hike we hadn’t intended on taking, so we skipped it.
A few minutes later, we found a random car scrapyard of several Minis. It was totally weird and out of place, but the highlight of the hike for my other half, who identified them as Minis based off the rain catch tray from the dashboard, and the air intake. Then we found this one semi folded in half…
Angry red squirrels followed us around hoping for food. This guy had a stash of sunflower seeds in here and yelled at us when we grabbed a few to feed the chickadees that were flying around and happy to land on a friendly hand offering seeds!
Here’s a map of the park – too bad we didn’t look at it before we set out, but it was an excellent hike, especially with all the time we spent sitting in the car the past several days.
Couldn’t leave without stopping at more beaches as we passed by them! It was chilly and damp with some rain, but we stayed another few hours later having fun looking along the shore.
We have a competition any time we got out beach combing… and this was the winner, even though I found some pretty great pieces. This bottle was from a broken Fellows & Co Chemist – Saint John, NB bottle! It was fun to hang out in the hotel room that night and try to figure out where it was from.
Even though we left for Québec a lot later than expected, we had a very full and very fun day – definitely worth it. We stayed in Rivière-du-Loup when we were ready to stop driving for the night. Wish we could have explored it a bit too, but we needed to get an early start for our very long 10-11 hour drive home the next day.
Day 6: Rivière-du-Loup, Québec to Home! (1020km)
We spent a solid 10-11 hours driving today. It was long, but not as bad as I expected. We got this gorgeous sunset, and made it home safely – what more could you ask for!
Day 4: Bouctouche, NB to Hopewell Rocks Park, NB, to Alma, NB through Fundy National Park to Saint John, NB! (300km)
Over breakfast we met a gentleman from Germany that recommended we check out La Dune de Bouctouche! We’ve had incredible weather the whole week and have been so lucky!
More treasure!
A barnacle:
We checked the tide schedule so we’d know how much time we could spend on the beach before heading to Hopewell Rocks. I hadn’t been in several years, and it’s just as gorgeous as I remember!
In almost every wall you could see snails in holes, patiently waiting for the tide to come back in.
We decided to brave the huge, slippery boulders and rocks to get to Daniel Flats. It was quite a workout, but worth it to see the sun setting over the flats as they slowly drained.
We were making our next plans to decide where to go next, when one of the parks guys came by on a cart to let us know the park would be closing soon. He offered us a ride back up, and we took it. He absolutely gunned it. We both came very close to flying off the back, but it was really fun, and we realized how much of a hike he’d saved us! (uphill too!)
We paused in Alma when we saw this huge long beach where the tide was out as far as you could see. There was a couple playing tea party with their daughter around the middle as they looked in the tide pools and played.
We looked in the tide pools too and found a few little crab friends!
We must have gone out at least a km or two before decided to head out to find some food and get to our next hotel for the night.
This brightly coloured rope stood out in the field of flat brown rocks, and it was worth the puddle I couldn’t avoid to see what it was.
There were a few places like this where the ocean floor was lower and it created rivers.
Off to Saint John!
Day 3: Bathurst, NB to Beresford, NB to Bouctouche, NB! (200km)
Got up and explored the beaches around Bathurst and Beresford for the morning, found a few treasures too!
Always eager to explore tide pools and what critters might be hiding in them!
We found a few of these painted rocks! They were so fun to find just by chance! We left them exactly where they were so the next explorers could enjoy the surprise too!
From Beresford, we drove down to Kouchibouguac National Park to look for hermit crabs on the beach!
The wind whipped plants around on the beach, making these neat patterns all over the place:
Hermit crab!
Here’s a moon snail – they’re really huge and beautiful. We saw them all along the beach. Their big footprint helped them stay grounded as the waves pushed them around.
It took us a couple of hours to get to the end of the beach to where we’ve seen hermit crabs in the past, so walking back, the sun was starting to set and it was stunningly beautiful!
Off to Bouctouche as we make our way towards Hopewell Rocks and Fundy National Park tomorrow!
Day 1: Home to Lévis, Québec! (818km)
Nothing like a last minute decision to make use of a week off! We decided on Sunday that we’d head out for coast in New Brunswick the following morning. We ended up leaving closer to lunch, but not bad considering we decided less than 24 hours beforehand to head out!
Some nice scenery along the way, including taking the scenic 1000 islands parkway, and we ended up just outside of Lévis, Québec after a looooong drive and a lot of bugs on the windshield. Also – thank you to the lady at Tim Hortons that understood my rusty French while I clumsily ordered our coffees! Since we left late, it was too dark for photos, so we’ll start off with the morning of the next day!
Day 2: Lévis, Québec to Bathurst, NB! (565km)
Yay! The beach… finally. The ocean has always been so calming to me, and just hearing the waves lap the shore was so welcome. We stayed on the beach looking for treasures and enjoying the view until we were both cold and hungry so off we went to find a place to stay for the night and a bite to eat!
I’ve finally finished going through the entire trip. It was great to relive memories and make a mental note of the places I’d like to visit again and spend more time.
Here’s a quick list of links to each of the posts:
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 1
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 2
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 3
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 4 part 1 • part 2
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 5
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 6
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 7
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 8
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 9
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 10
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 11
East Coast Roadtrip: Day 12
Route: Mont-Tremblant, QC -> Toronto, ON
Mont Tremblant is so beautiful in the Fall!
So we decide to take the gondola to the top of the village. I’m afraid of heights, but I figure, how bad can it be? I was underestimating how high it was for SURE. Turns out you stand on a grate, so you can see through (not a fan) then it goes up, up and up… The “door” is not really more than a piece of metal that sort of blocks it. I was freaking out on the way up.
Me to G: “I DON’T LIKE IT. ”
G: “you don’t have a choice now, we’re in the air”
Me: ” I don’t like it”
G: “I know…”
He thought it was pretty funny. We walked around looking for a place to eat and decided on a place at the top. Being the genius I am I decided to overcome my fear, so back on we went. I knew what to expect this time so I felt better. Just finished saying so when we were in the middle, and… It stops. We were stuck for only a few minutes, but I immediately thought, “overcoming fears is overrated!”
Route: Edmundston, NB -> Mont-Tremblant, QC
Welcome to the creepiest hotel ever!
I know they didn’t intend for it to come off this way – Believe me, I asked. This is the Days Inn, Edmundston. I’m really sorry if you’re the person the created this “enchanted castle” look. I know it’s not meant to come off as creepy (or so the lady at the desk told me), but… really? No one has ever questioned it before??
Not what you want staring at your while you eat your Fruit Loops.
Needless to say, we didn’t consider a second night here, and off to Québec we go!
Route: Kouchibouguac, NB -> Edmundston, NB
There was another family in the cabin next to ours last night, so that made it feel less like a horror movie 🙂
We spend the morning on the beach again (most of the photos are in the previous post), and then planned to drive to Edmundston for the night.
As we drove, we stopped to look at these beautiful boats. (Ok, we saw a beach and tried to find a way to get to it, but the boats were really nice too.)
Route: Kouchibouguac National Park
Today we decided to explore the Park and check out the beach! (Noticing a theme here?)
These are baby eels!!! MILLIONS of them. It was SO cool to watch them from the bridge.
Pic is a bit blurry, I zoomed in as far as I could – this is one of the seals from the colony that lives on the beach. We watched them play and hunt all day, it was awesome when they came closer to shore to check us out. They stayed far enough away that neither of us was worried. We’d picked up some binoculars which made watching them a lot easier.
Hello!
More eels:
This shrimp decided to hitch a ride!
Of course we caught our fair share of hermit crabs 🙂
This is a Moon Snail, they can get HUGE.
Teeny starfish!
Moon snail… kinda gross, actually.
It took us a few hours to walk to this boat. We were so curious to see the inside… until…
SURPRISE! Naked guy. yeah, he was chatty, we were not. 
