My Slice of Summer

Today I am doing a blog post as part of Brittany of Gallery No. 8's fabulous Summer Blog Crawl.  Brittany has organized an amazing line-up of bloggers to each do a post on summer.  It has been such a pleasure to follow along and experience summer through other people's eyes, with snapshots from all over the world.  For my turn, I simply had to feature New River Beach, where I have spent a ton of summer time (including last weekend). It is on the Bay of Fundy, home of the highest tides in the world.  Growing up here you get accustomed to watching one hundred billion tonnes of water flow in and out of the Bay every 12 hours, but every time I come back to visit I am amazed to see the entire beach appear and disappear completely!

Growing up in the Atlantic Provinces (I have lived in PEI, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia!) summers were always spent on the beach.  I remember going to New River with my grandparents in their wood-paneled station wagon long before we had a cottage there.

Now I get to watch my little guys jumping waves and splashing around, oblivious to the fact that the water is FREEZING cold!

Some time in the mid-eighties (we can't remember when) Dad bought a property at New River and designed and built our cottage.  It has no internet, no TV, but it does have plumbing!  It is a lovely and restful place, where I must have read a few hundred or so books over the years, and a great place to enjoy a glass of wine with friends while the sun sets.

It is also where my husband and I got married almost eight years ago.  We had the ceremony on our neighbour's lawn on a cliff overlooking the ocean (where the chairs are in the photo below) and the reception at our cottage.

Last weekend was the annual Sand Sculpture Contest (it has been running for the last 23 years) and there were thousands of people there.

However, more often than not it looks more like the following photo, and it feels like you have the whole place to yourself. (There is a person in the photo to give you a sense of scale.  When the tide is in this entire beach is completely under water.)

Then you can go for long beach walks and find all kinds of treasures in the sand.

I think it is one of the most beautiful places on earth to spend your summer days (even if I didn't always appreciate it when I was a teenager!).  I feel lucky to have been able to enjoy it every summer for most of my life.

All photos taken by me (Except those taken by my my folks)