Grand Falls, New Brunswick

We arrived in Grand Falls (or Grand Saulte), New Brunswick on Monday.
It is the only city officially bilingual city in New Brunswick; as per their tourism brochures.

Statue of Malabeam

The falls and gorge are the main attraction. The story goes that about 300 Mohawks killed the chief and abducted the chief's daughter Malabeam. The Mohawks threatened to kill her but if she were to lead them to her village, they would spare her life and get her married to one of the Mohawk warriors. Malabeam agreed and had them tie up their canoes to one another so they would not get separated. In the dark of the night she led them over the falls and to their death thus saving her tribe and village from certain annihilation. In the light of day, her tribe found the bodies of the 300 Mohawks, but there was no sigh of Malabeam. She is said to tread the water at the bottom of the falls on moonlit nights.

View from Malabeam Center - right downtown

The city is built around the falls. It is sort of a surprise to see the falls right in the middle of the city.

We took a two hour guided walking tour of the falls and the gorge. A very sweet bilingual college student was our guide. It was her second tour since she started this job and was very tentative. Plus English was not her first language. It took me a while to figure out that she was referring to father when she said 'fodder'.  

At the first lookout station

The walk was very good but also made up for lack of exercise for the last few weeks.The weather forecast predicted a high of 72 and when we left that morning my cell phone indicted the temperature was 49 deg. So I dressed warm and within the first 15 minutes of our walk I was wishing that I had on something lighter. 

The dam - not very impressive

Halfway down to the gorge 

John coming down the last of the 250 steps

At one point we had to climb down 250 steps to get down to the bottom of the gorge. John wanted to know if there were fewer steps going up than going down. By the end of the climb up I was wishing the same. However, I would not have missed it for anything. The scenery was beautiful and at every lookout station I thought the falls looked more stunning than in the previous one.

We left Grand Falls, New Brunswick yesterday and made it into a campsite in Pictou, Nova Scotia. I say, made it into, because we made the mistake of not checking the route chosen by the GPS and as a result we went through an hour of hellish drive through rain sodden unpaved 20 mile stretch with what seemed like potholes every bit if the way. 
I never thought our brown Toyota truck could look any browner but when we pulled into the campsite and got out we saw that it was caked in mud from bumper to bumper. I should have taken a photo of it. By the time I returned from registering at the office John had started washing his precious truck.

We will be in North Sydney, Nova Scotia (a 3 hour drive from Pictou) today and have reservations for the 3:00 am Ferry Saturday morning (Aug 13) for Newfoundland. We met 3 to 4 other campers in Grand Falls who had just come from Newfoundland and raved and raved about it. So we decided it would be foolish to miss this opportunity. John promises that if we do not get the time to visit PEI this time, we will come back to NS again. Never in my dreams did I think I would be able to visit Newfoundland and I am so....  excited. Can hardly wait.