Alma, New Brunswick

Yesterday was another short driving day. In fact, we had our drive for the day finished by 7:30am! As soon as we got up, we drove the 24 kms (15 miles) into the town of Alma.

Alma, New Brunswick is right at the entrance to Fundy National Park. It's a bit of a touristy place with a lot of guest cottages and rentals. And because it's a bit touristy, the main parking lot and the community rink parking lot both have signs saying "No Overnight Parking". So we parked at the community rink parking lot for the day, and made arrangements with the Alma Lobster Shop to overnight in their lot.

The town of Alma

It was an overcast, rainy day. We took the little car and drove into the park and took Whiskey for a walk around the main campground just to see how busy it was. The full hookups section has 29 sites and there were maybe 8 empty. But this year, the park has decided to rent out seasonal sites, and I asked how many they got. Turns out that 14 of those sites are taken for the full season at a cost of $2,000 each. Not sure I agree with having seasonals in a National Park, but they probably did this because the sites sat empty most of the time. Maybe if they weren't so expensive they wouldn't be empty? You can see their convoluted fee structure here... http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/nb/fundy/visit/tarifs_fees_e.asp?park=17

The main campground was pretty quiet

Then, there are 85 unserviced sites. There were quite a few empty sites, but of course it was also a miserable day.

Then, we drove about 10 kms (6 miles) to the Point Wolfe campground. This is mainly a tenting campground, with no services and no dump station, although smaller RV's would have no problem getting in there. Again, not very busy, but we didn't count how many of the 157 sites were taken. There is a third, larger campground at the northern part of the park, maybe we'll visit there today.

It was pouring rain, and we spent the afternoon in Sherman reading, napping, and on the computer.

Around 4pm we walked to the main drag and bought some milk and a loaf of bread. We were going to buy a green pepper, but they wanted $3.95 for a single green pepper! This same store wanted $3.55 for a head of lettuce. Sherman's propane is getting low, and I checked their price...they wanted $1.19 per litre. For perspective, you can get it in some parts of the U.S. for half that! We'll try and make it to Maine before we buy propane. You can tell this is a tourist town.

But, they do have good prices on lobster. Because we are going to overnight at the Alma Lobster Shop, we went there to buy our dinner. $14 for a decent size lobster, and $10 for a pound of scallops. We don't often spend that kind of money, but this was a kind of a treat for us.

Fred, the lobster.

What a mess getting the meat out.

And this is what you get for your $14.

It was yummy though!

It was a good meal and lobster is nice for a change. I think it's pretty overrated myself though. Given the choice, I think I'd rather have a top quality steak cooked to perfection.

The people at Alma Lobster Shop are really nice though. It's a family run business and there was an older fellow standing by the lobster tank. Turns out he's been fishing lobster for over 50 years. He was really interesting to talk to and was showing us the lobsters in the tank. One weighed about 15 pounds and was about 100 years old. They are certainly interesting creatures.

Parked up at the Alma Lobster Shop

Today is supposed to be bright and sunny, and it's starting off that way! So we're off to do some hiking in the park!

Yesterday's drive, only 24 kms (15 miles)