Campobello Island

Location: St. John, New Brunswick

We traveled from Ellsworth, Maine to St.John, New Brunswick today with a side trip to the very interesting Campobello Island.

Campobello Island was the summer home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the place in 1921 where he fell ill to polio, contracted in a Boy Scout camp in New York. Once the polio struck, he ceased his frequent trips to Campobello and only occasionally visited.

Here is a picture of his retreat there, called the Roosevelt Cottage. There is a wonderful view of the Bay of Fundy behind the house:



Next we went to the tip of the Island, where the tides of the Bay of Fundy control access to a lighthouse on the point. The Bay of Fundy has the largest variance between high and low tides in the world. When the tide is low, one can cross on a sand bar that lies between the foreground rock and the rock with the lighthouse in the photo below. When the tide begins to rise, the water rapidly rushes over the sandbar (here it is moving from the right of the photo to the left and creating the small eddies on the bottom left), making crossing impossible. The water continues to rise until about half the cliff is covered -- the high water mark is seen here as a darkening of the rock. The rock in the distance on the middle left is covered with white specks that are actually sea gulls -- they will lose all but a tiny remnant of their perch when the tide is fully in.



We are all tired tonight -- while the drive was only 200 miles or so, many of the roads were in poor shape and traveling speed was greatly reduced. Plus we entered the Atlantic Time Zone and lost an hour. We will be staying here one more day, which will give us all a welcome rest!