Alan and Sandra's RV Travels: Truro, Nova Scotia

We stayed a few days just outside Truro, NS, which is considered "the hub of Nova Scotia". The main highways coming in to that Province go east to west and one major road south to Halifax. They all branch out from the Truro area. Therefore, called the "hub".

Our stay there was to see the famous TIDAL BORE at the Salmon River in Truro, where you can see the flow of the river change directions. The Bay of Fundy is noted for having the highest tides in the world. Twice daily, a wave of water rushes from the Minas Basin to fill the channel of the Salmon River in a matter of minutes. As the tide passes toward the head of the bay, it is in effect squeezed by the narrowing sides and by the constant shallowing of the bottom. As it reaches the very head of the bay, the advancing tide becomes a wave varying from just a ripple to several feet in height, and this wave, called a "tidal bore" continues up the river which empties into the bay. Thus, you have the phenomenon of a river changing its flow before your very eyes, as the bore rushes in "OVER" the outgoing river water.
The height of the tidal bore increases with the range of the tide, which in turn varies with the phases of the moon. Equally interesting is the fact that it takes the river just over one hour to fill to high tide, as compared to the conventional six hours to reach high tide along coastal waters.
You can actually go white water rafting along the tidal bore on the Shubenacadie River, which has a much higher tidal bore.

The times listed for the tidal bore on this day were at 7:30 am and again at 8:00 pm. We opted for the evening tide. There is a small road just off the main highway called "Tidal Bore" road you can go to watch this phenomenon. We were told to arrive at least 20 minutes early.....glad we did. The tidal bore was about 10 minutes earlier than listed. I have posted some of the pictures below, but they don't really do it justice.

This first picture was taken when the bore (wave) was just picking up speed as it came around the curve in the river.

A little closer......a little higher.

I took this picture as the wave passed in front of where I was standing.

Picture below was taken just as the bore was passed us. Obviously, this was not the bore that you could white water raft on, but it was very impressive to watch this phenomenon.

Truro, NS

We drove into town the next morning to the visitor's information center to get local maps and to see what there was to see in the area. However, before we left the info center, Alan climbed aboard the mail wagon for a photo op. The statue on the left of the wagon was carved from a dead Elm tree. There are around 40 carved statues throughout the town. The Dutch Elm Disease killed most of the Elm trees in Truro in the 1990's, so they carved figures featuring many of the past town's people. After driving around town for a bit, we decided to take a road trip along part of the coastline.

Below is a picture of a typical barn throughout the countryside. We drove through a lot of farmland and saw quite a few dairy farms. Very pretty scenery.

In the picture below, we are headed into Hall's Harbour. This is another excellent place to view the high and low tides. We happened to be there at low tide. Would have loved to have been able to hang around until the high tide came in.

Alan had read about a lobster pound and restaurant on the water, so we decided to stop and have lunch. In the picture below, you can see cars parked across from the entrance to the restaurant. We parked there and walked around to the restaurant the long way in order to get some really great pictures of the boats sitting on the ground.