Still More Fundy Fun

Saint John, New Brunswick is on the Bay of Fundy and when we got to town we spotted a sign for “Reversing Falls”. Now, I’m no physicist, but even I know water doesn’t run up hill, so we figured it was something to see. Now, a few days ago, when we were in Digby, Nova Scotia, we saw, and followed, a sign leading us to “Balanced Rock”. We drove along a narrow, bumpy road for 25 or 30 miles and never found the rock. So we turned around and went back to camp. We figured “Balanced Rock” was one of those things like the moose -- signs put up so the locals could laugh at tourists.

We hoped that “Reversing Falls” wasn’t the same kind of deal, so I looked it up on line and Wikipedia, that reliable source of all information, said that although it had been renamed “Reversing Rapids”, it was quite real.

So here it is. This first picture was taken at low tide. The water flows rapidly out the river into the Bay because at low tide the Bay is lower than the river. By the way, there’s a jet boat that takes passengers through these rapids, but we didn’t go for a ride.

Here’s the same place at high tide. Although it’s difficult to see in a still picture (I haven’t figured out yet how to shoot videos with my smart phone), the water is flowing in the opposite direction, out of the Bay and into the river. And yes, that is a power plant across the river. And yes, I wondered why they burn fossil fuel instead of using the obvious energy from the changing tides like they do at the tidal generating station in Nova Scotia mentioned earlier. And no, I don’t have an answer to that question.