A Day at the Beach

As I mentioned in my last post, my sister Krista, her husband John, and their daughter (my niece) Emily, are all in town for a visit.

Krista wanted to take Emily to a beach where she could make a sandcastle, write in the sand, etc., and so the plan was to head out to Mispec yesterday morning. It was supposed to be low tide at 11:30, so we figured arriving at 10 AM would be perfect.

I believe I may have mentioned the famous Fundy fog before, but I'm not sure if I've mentioned the tides. The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world. Here in my area, the difference is about 28 feet between high and low (the further up the Bay you go, the greater the difference gets.)

We arrived at Mispec to find that the fog was incredibly thick -- we could just barely make out the beach at the foot of the stairs. After a long moment, Krista asked, "Is there water here?"

"Yes," I replied. "It's out there." I gestured out into the vast nothingness.

So we decided to walk out into the fog to get to the waves. And it was surreal. We walked and walked and walked, and before long we were surrounded by fog and couldn't see anything except each other. No sign of the beach behind us. No sign of the waves somewhere in front of us.

In trying to decide if we could see the water yet or not, we eventually made out the shapes of some people coming towards us. You can just barely make them out in this picture, and, if anything else, the camera saw them more clearly than we did at this point. (That's why they're not centred in the picture -- I just aimed and hoped for the best.)

We did eventually reach the waves, after walking several minutes on the ocean floor to get to them. The variety of ripples we crossed was astounding. The really deeply-entrenched ripples, I explained, were from the bigger waves, before they broke just offshore when the tide was in.

Emily and John did get to play in the sand, building a sandcastle back closer to shore. Krista and I, both being scrapbookers, took lots of pictures -- including pictures of us taking pictures of each other! (This is me doing just that.)

The fog lifted a little bit, but didn't burn off before the tide turned, much to the chagrin of the beach-goers who arrived after we did.

"Do you think it's going to burn off?" one asked me.

"Yes," I replied.

"Any idea when?"

"September," was my response.

Personally, I think the fog made yesterday the fantastic experience it was. For about thirty minutes, the four of us felt like we were the only people in the entire world, which isn't always a bad thing.