Day 105
Amherst has a population of approximately nine thousand and is the retail centre to the Cumberland region. The area south of Amherst, down to the Bay of Fundy, is a rich geological area loaded with fossils and rock types. We started our day close to the mouth of the Cumberland Basin at the Joggins Fossils Cliffs. The cliffs apparently loaded with fossils and are only accessible when the tide is out. Our timing was a little off in relation to the tide and we arrived when the tide was on its way back in.
It would have been another five hours before we could get down to the cliffs, so we moved on. Our next destination was the Fundy Goelogical Museum over at the mouth of the Minas Basin. The museum had a daily tour that explored the Basin for two hours during low tide, of course, we just missed it. The museum itself was filled with geological history and artifacts of the area. We both got the heebie jeebies when we discovered a massive three foot replica of a centipede that existed 300 million years ago….yuck! The museum had a tent located outside with tables loaded with geological rocks of all sorts that you could examine. If you found any you liked you could take them home for a small donation to the museum, we found three.
After the museum we headed to the Five Island Lighthouse for a little picnic. I did not know what to expect, especially after my last attempt on a picnic by a lighthouse flopped. Much to my surprise the place was amazing. The lighthouse was in a well groomed park overlooking five small islands in the Minas Basin. What was neat about the island is during low tide you could almost walk out to them. There were warning signs along the beach informing you not cross to the islands as you would get stranded when the tide came in.
Our last stop for this tour was the Springhill coal mine. The mine played a huge roll in the Canadian coal boom from 1871 to 1940. The museum provided a tour of all the gear and equipment used in the mines, including a walk down into the last mine that closed in 1970. I have never really put much thought into what it took to be a miner, but after today I have a new appreciation of what these men and kids did, and the working conditions they endured to make a living. The mines were prone to explosions and underground earthquakes, as evidenced by the multiple disasters. In 1891 and 1956, coal dust explosions rocked the mine and resulted in 46 fatalities; in 1958 an underground earthquake, or "bump", caused sections of the mine to collapse killing 75 miners.
