Exploring NEW BRUNSWICK 🇨🇦 | TWO national parks, trying Acadian food, & MORE!

Over the next couple weeks we're exploring the province of New Brunswick for the very first time and after crossing the border into New Brunswick we headed to Mount Carleton Provincial Park where we hiked to the highest point in not only New Brunswick but the entire Canadian Maritimes. But unfortunately it didn't really turn out as we hoped. Check it out! We did it! Highest point in New Brunswick! New Brunswick is showing off! What a view! But thankfully there's still a lot more to see and we're hitting the road for the next few days to check out some of the province's national parks, unique sites. That was weird. That was so weird! And more. Last night we boondocked at Pabineau Falls which is just south of Bathurst and this spot is incredible. There's a raging river going through here, all these rapids and little waterfalls. It was not a bad spot to wake up to. But our goal this morning is to drive about an hour and a half south to Couchibouguac National Park which that is a very hard word to learn. We watched so many YouTube videos of how to say it but in the video every time they would say it so fast Couchibouguac, Couchibouguac, Couchibouguac. I think we're saying it right. Hopefully we are. We went the way Google Maps recommended us to go and it's usually you know pretty trustworthy but this road has been pretty gnarly, very bumpy, big puddles and now there's a giant tree in the way. I'm gonna have to get out and move that and there's also like hornets hovering around or some kind of bees. Good luck out there. Yeah. Don't bring them in. I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I don't think I got stung by anything. Hopefully we can get by this. Give me a nice seatbelt. Oh I heard one scratch. Good job tree master. What was that? That was just a branch hanging down. Hopefully this road widens up a little bit. I got out of the van and ran up the road a bit. See if it got any better. It looks about the same as far as I can see but now I shot up the drone to do a little reconnaissance mission. Take to the skies and it looks more the same as far as I've gone so far and there's also like a really muddy spot right here which could be fine. Probably pretty shallow but I don't really like the looks of it. I hate to say it I don't want to do this but we might be turning around. Now let's see if we can get turned around in this tight spot. We're lucky there's even somewhere to turn around. Yeah if you've ever seen Austin Powers you'll recognize what I'm about to do. Back through the claws now again. The road to the waterfall was totally paved but Google wanted us to keep going south on that road and right after the waterfall it turns into this gravelly rugged narrow mess so just don't go on that road. Just turn back and go on the pavement if you go to the waterfall. All right we made it back to smooth sweet smooth pavement. That was quite the adventure to start the morning. So for the U.S. National Parks you typically pay per vehicle and your entrance fee covers you for up to seven days but for the Canadian National Parks you actually pay per person per day which can add up pretty quickly and since we're going to quite a few national parks here in Canada over the next few months we got ourselves a discovery pass. This is their annual national parks pass which costs about 145 Canadian and covers up to seven people in one vehicle. So if anyone wants to come crash our van we have room for five more. Couchibouguac National Park is located on New Brunswick's Acadian coast and means river of long tides in the Mi'kmaq First Nation language. It is known for its barrier islands, beaches, marshes, bogs, golden sand dunes, estuaries, and rivers. And we hear one of the best ways to experience the park is by bike so we're renting bikes from Ryan's Rental Center inside the park to explore a bit. All right first time ever on a fat bike. There are 60 kilometers of bike paths in the park and our goal today is to ride as much of the 27 kilometer loop that goes around the park as we can. If you've been to a Parks Canada park before you've likely noticed red Adirondack chairs like these. This started in 2011 in Gros Morne National Park which we'll be visiting later this summer and they were placed around lesser known parts around the park to encourage visitors to visit them and take photos with them. There are now chairs in over 100 Parks Canada parks with nine sets being here in Couchibouguac and what's extra neat is all the chairs are created from recycled plastic from Canadian landfills. We're making a stop at Kelly's Beach which is probably the most popular thing to see here in the park and to get there we have to go on a one kilometer long boardwalk and no bikes are allowed. This water has such an interesting color. Adam keeps saying it looks like apple cider vinegar. It has kind of like a reddish hue to it. I don't know if it's always like this or not but it's very unique. She tried to get me but I think I got her better. We would have loved to hang out at the beach longer but we're already over halfway through our bike rental time and I think we've only gone a mile so we gotta get moving. So we have just under two hours and I think around 16 miles to bike. Adam do you think we can do it? Heck yeah! Kathryn's bike is super squeaky. Brakes are really bad and then also it just makes tons of squeaks. It's the worst noise ever. All right well we have a little bit over an hour left and we've gone about seven miles so we've made some progress but I just don't think we're gonna make it. We're not going fast enough and there's a lot left so it's probably best if we just turn around here. 13 miles oh boy. We headed over to the bog trail which is just a two kilometer hike and one thing that we really like about the Canadian National Parks versus the U.S. National Parks is that they are a lot more dog friendly. Over the years Kona has explored Banff National Park in Alberta, Pacific Rim National Park in British Columbia and Kluane National Park in the Yukon. In most of this park minus Kelly's Beach is dog friendly so Kona gets to check another Canadian National Park off of her list. They don't call it a bog trail for nothing folks. It is super muddy and just standing water as far as you can see on the trail which is probably about 100-150 feet but it's just tons of mud. It looks like a river's running through the trail. Yeah like if I step off in this I think my feet is gonna my foot is gonna go straight like my foot's gonna get covered in mud basically is what I'm trying to say. Do you want to do this? While we were getting ready for the hike in the van another car pulled up and a family got out and then within a minute they came back and left and we thought oh that's kind of weird. I think we know why now. Kona what do you think? I love getting muddy. As excited as we were for this trail because it looked super cool there's this observation tower and this really interesting bog terrain. I just don't think it's gonna be worth getting Kona completely muddy, ourselves completely muddy, so I think we're gonna we're gonna turn back. Sorry Kona. Not for you, that's not for you. Tonight we're staying at the campground in the park and we whipped up a delicious looking dinner. We grilled some kebabs, some veggies, then we have some rice and some salad and this might be the most beautiful plate of food we've ever shared with y'all. I'm really proud of it. This is a art piece here. It's almost too pretty to eat. Yeah. It's so colorful. It's like my dream meal right here. Yeah. Shout out to Walmart. Shout out to Walmart. Got these, what were they? Pre-marinated like shawarma skewers. Yeah shawarma chicken skewers. We figured since we're on the eastern side of New Brunswick that we should try to get up and see a sunrise. Even though the sunrise is at 5 30 a.m this was a must. One big perk of getting up for sunrise is that you get an early start to your day which is something we really need today because we have a lot we want to check out including one final stop here in the park. That's right we're back at the bog trail. Last night at camp we just kept thinking about how we really wanted to do this hike and we think the muddy part will be super short so we're just gonna go for it. This feels a bit like deja vu. I think our plan is gonna be to skirt the edge of the trail as much as we can. All right this part's a little trickier. We've only gone like 30 feet but I don't know which side's gonna be better. I think we made it through the muddy part. It wasn't so bad. Yeah it definitely was not as bad as we thought it was yesterday so I'm really glad that we came back. Honestly the worst part of this trail is the mosquitoes. If you stop for two seconds you just get swarmed. A bog is a freshwater wetland of soft spongy ground that consists of peat which is partially decayed plant matter. It kind of reminds me of the tundra terrain that we saw in Alaska last summer. You have all these tall trees off in the distance but in this vast area right here it's just like this low-lying brush. It is super unique. And what's crazy is this bog began forming over 6,500 years ago which is 2,000 years before the great pyramids in Egypt were being built and also we're standing on a six meter tall observation tower and at its deepest the bog is about that same depth. That is crazy. Yeah. All right let's hit the road. We have made it to La Dune du Boctuch which is one of the few remaining great sand dunes on the northeastern coast of North America. This dune stretches for 12 kilometers across Boctuch Bay and there is a half-mile boardwalk to check it out. This dune is the result of the constant action of wind, tides, and sea currents since the last ice age and with every major storm its shape changes a little bit so if you visit here multiple times you might get a slightly different experience every time. We have made it to Moncton which is the largest city in New Brunswick by population and we have a couple spots that we want to check out here and first we're going to try some Acadian food. As we mentioned a couple months ago while in Louisiana this part of Canada was once known as Acadia and was home to French settlers who arrived in the 17th and 18th centuries. They developed a distinct culture that blended French, indigenous, and other cultures and they were thriving in the area until the area became contentious between England and France and during the great expulsion of 1755 thousands were forcibly deported by the British. Some settled in other areas of North America like Louisiana while others slowly made their way back to here and have strived to preserve their language, traditions, and identity. There is a ton of Acadian pride here and one way to experience the culture is through food so we're going to head to a local spa and try a few Acadian dishes. It smells like a did did you fart? I've never farted in my life. That's false. Oh it must be something in here. Oh oh it's a nun fart. Adam has been waiting to do that whole little bit for weeks now so I hope it made someone laugh. So this is a pedesour which literally translates to nun's farts. It's an Acadian pastry that kind of resembles a cinnamon roll. It's flaky pie crust rolled with a gooey paste of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon and I can guarantee you it does not smell anything like a fart. All right let's give this nun's flatulence a try. As you can imagine with all those ingredients it's delicious and it tastes you know really similar to a cinnamon roll but I mean the main difference is the pie crust instead of like whatever kind of dough they make for cinnamon rolls. I'm guessing it's different but the dough the crust is super good and it makes it just unique and freaking delicious. If the name alone didn't make it unique. Yeah. First impressions it is super soft and super gooey. I got a middle piece so it's all just soaked up all the gooeyness. That is darn tootin good. Next up we have putin rapi which is a boiled potato filled with salty pork. First impressions it doesn't look super appetizing but it does smell pretty good. Smells like smells like potatoes. Okay so the woman inside told me that some people put salt, white sugar, or brown sugar on there. I would have never have expected to put sugar on. It seems like a savory item. Oh wow it's very like gelatinous. Not a whole lot of flavors coming through. You taste like the flavor from the pork and then the flavor from the potatoes. Kind of tastes like Thanksgiving. Like mashed potatoes. It has a very simple flavor like Adam said but it's nice and hot and it's super just kind of hearty and comforting. Very interesting texture too. It's unlike anything we've ever tried. Last but not least we have a rapi pie which is actually not a pie but it's a mixture of potatoes and meat baked into a pan to create a crust. It's gonna be hot because this pan is smoking hot. Again this one has really simple flavors. You're tasting a lot of potato and then I think it's pork in there so you're tasting pork and I read that for this one and the putin that they use the broth that they use is to reconstitute the potatoes is what gives it a lot of its flavor and I think I'm like kind of tasting some herbs in there. I can't pick them out but it does have some other herby flavors. I really like the crust on top. It kind of gives it a different textural element with it. One super unique attraction here in Moncton is Magnetic Hill. It's a gravity hill and basically you put your car neutral and you'll roll backwards while going uphill. I don't even understand how that's gonna work and apparently in the 1950s it was the third most popular tourist attraction in all of Canada after Banff and Niagara Falls. I'm a little nervous of what this is like. How does this work? What the heck? Hello. Magnetic Hill? Yes please. You guys ever been here? We have not. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna go all the way to the bottom of the hill. You're gonna see a white pole. You're gonna merge into the left lane. Then you're gonna be in the left lane right next to that pole. You're gonna put the thing in neutral and it'll pull you uphill backwards towards us. Look at this car. It's rolling back. That's so crazy. We're supposed to go to this white pole stop here and then put it in neutral and then let go of the brake. Okay we're in neutral. Active risk of rolling. You're not doing anything right now? I'm not doing anything. Oh my gosh. Oh wow. We're going so fast up this hill. This is weird. This is trippy. Okay at first I didn't really feel it. Like I thought like I could see that hill is going up but now like now I'm kind of freaked out because it looks like that's uphill. Oh my gosh. Wow. That was crazy. That was weird. That was so weird. So what the heck causes this phenomenon? Is it aliens? Is it paranormal activity? Is there a big magnet at the end of the road? It's none of these. It's actually an optical illusion where your brain misinterprets the slopes because there's no view of the horizon line. It costs seven dollars and they actually let you go as many times as you want. We went two times and I will say it was well worth it for 30 seconds of just complete mind confusion. For our final stop on this part of our New Brunswick adventure we're at Fundy National Park. This park is located on the Bay of Fundy which is home to the highest tides in the world. We plan to share much more about the tides later as we plan to properly explore it in future videos but our goal while here in the park is to check out its coastal views and waterfalls and we're starting with the Third Vault Falls Trail which is about 4.6 miles round trip and gains 718 feet. So far the trail has been a pretty easy walk. There's been a slight decline but now that we're getting closer to the waterfall the trail is getting a bit steeper going down so that means it's going to be a bit steep coming back up. The trail leads you down a staircase and ends right here on the water. We also see a trail sign right there so we're confused do we need to keep going that way because all trails says the falls are still a little bit that way. I guess we're going to be going through the water. This trail was so deceptively easy and then it turned into way more of an adventure than we thought it would be. And now we're back on the trail there's more staircase here and now there's a rope to help you get across this water. This is so fun. This is the last obstacle though because I see the end of trail sign and I think the waterfall is just around the corner. Holy cow! There are 25 waterfalls in the park and this is the tallest of them all at 16 meters and it is epic. As we mentioned there are tons of waterfalls here in the park and unfortunately we don't have enough time to check out all of them but we did pick one more that we'd like to see which looks beautiful and is just under a one mile hike, Dixon Falls. I sometimes underestimate these super short and easy hikes and think they'll be a little lame but this hike is beautiful. There's this rushing river with the clearest water and these hillsides that are just covered in this bright green moss. There are a lot of stairs though it's a little bit of work. This is a lot cooler than I thought it'd be. All right we've checked out a couple waterfalls and now it's time to go see the coast. Fundy National Park has a coastal trail which runs for about 12 miles round trip and while we don't have enough time to do all of it we are going to try to hike a small portion of it. So we made it about one and a half miles in but the entire coastline is suddenly just engulfed in fog. The fog's been hovering all day and we are just in a cloud right so it doesn't feel totally worth it to continue. We feel like we got to see some really nice views and to be honest this hike is actually kind of hard. It's pretty steep so we figure let's not exert the effort if there's gonna be no reward. There are a handful of campgrounds in the park and tonight we're staying at the Point Wolf Campground. We have one of their power sites since we're very low on power the site has very little privacy so it's not ideal but the perk of this campground is that it's super close to Point Wolf Beach. Because the Bay of Fundy has such high you have to be mindful of the tides when visiting this park because some areas are not accessible or safe to visit during high tide. We had heard that Point Wolf Beach is only really accessible during low tide. We're here an hour and a half after low tide so the tide's rising right now but as you can see there is water coming in but there's still a ton of land behind us. What's crazy is if you look over at the rocks there underneath the trees that is where I think I'm Kona just loves eating the waves. So one interesting thing about this campground is that they automatically charge you $13.45 Canadian for a firewood permit. However, it comes with all the firewood you can burn. I don't think we're gonna get our money's worth but we're sure gonna try. I have never seen so much firewood in my entire life. This room is full of it. King of the firewood. Alright so we've got bad news. It seems this endless supply of firewood is pretty wet. I just can't get it to catch. I've been trying for an hour and a half and I just can't get it hot enough so we're gonna go to plan B and we're gonna cook inside. Nothing like the classic 9 30 p.m dinner. Oh and check it out the fire's going now. Come on. If you're not having your s'mores with Reese's you're doing it wrong. Good thing I like mine super burnt. Heaven in a bite. We have one more thing we want to check out in the park and it is something we have never seen in a national park before. They have a golf course in the national park. This apparently isn't that uncommon of a thing in Canadian national parks. A total of seven of them have them so I think I know which parks we're going to next. I'm playing the role of caddy today and I gotta say the view from the first hole is amazing. Golf was a ton of fun. Maybe not my best round but definitely not my worst but I realized while we're out here that I think this is the first time I've ever played outside of the U.S. That's so cool. But that's gonna do it for the first part of our New Brunswick adventures. There's still a ton more to see in this area and tomorrow we're gonna drive what some say is the most scenic drive in the whole province, the Fundy Trail Parkway. I'm getting attacked by bees though so we gotta go. By the way does anybody else call it the cooch? That's what we call it off camera, the cooch. Coochie boogwack cooch. This isn't going in the vlog but we got lots of tush and cooch in this video. And soon to be farts too.