Travel date: June 23, 2018
The first time our tour guides called us all over to look at a 300 million year old fossil, everyone was awestruck. “Did he just find that right now…on the beach?” someone asked in wonder. But by the end of our beach walk these discoveries had become routine.
We went on a fossil trail in the Badlands awhile back and didn’t see any fossils. Some people find fossils there–every once in awhile. We know because we saw pictures of them, posing proudly with their finds, in the visitors center. So I thought our fossil walk at Joggins would be the same kind of thing: we’d walk around, and we’d learn about fossils, and maybe they’d show us a fossil that someone found there one time a few years ago, and it would all be very pleasant.
But no. At Joggins you just find fossils all over the place, hanging out there on the beach like it’s no big deal.
Gus was especially good at finding fossils:
Nothing to see here, just a piece of a tree that’s 300 MILLION YEARS OLD.
Our guides told us that fossils like this are so common that people in the area collect them and use them as door stops.
There’s a lot of complex geology involved, I imagine, but the gist of it is that the dramatic oceanside cliffs and the equally dramatic Bay of Fundy tides come together at Joggins to make for an especially rich fossil finding experience. The fossils date to the Coal Age, 310 million years ago, when Nova Scotia was a tropical rainforest.
There are a few different options for tours; ours was basically an informal, two hour stroll along the beach with two guides, who would stop and talk about things we saw and found along the way.
Tips for Visiting
*There’s not a whole lot in the area. Joggins itself is a tiny town with a couple of restaurants. We couldn’t find any camping particularly nearby (at least not with RV sites and hookups), so we were 45 minutes away at Glooscap Park Campground in Parrsboro, and the drive between the two was pretty lonely.
*There’s a cafe on site, but it closes before the rest of the visitors center, so beware of that if eating there is part of your plan.
*As of this writing, they’re not offering guided beach walks, but say they’ll be back in April, 2019. When we were there (June, 2018) access to the beach from the centre wasn’t available because a storm had washed out their wooden stairway (we had to drive down the road a ways to another part of the beach for our tour). I don’t know if the lack of tours right now is because of that or if it happens every winter.
*Three different tours are offered: a half hour “Wanderer’s Experience,” a two hour “Explorer’s Experience,” and a four hour “Adventurer’s Experience.” When we were booking, a note on the website said that they recommended the half hour tour for kids under 10 (I actually can’t find it anywhere on the website now, though), and we had a 5 year old with us, but it sounded considerably less interesting for our older kids than the longer tour, so we called to ask about it. We confirmed that the two hour tour is all walking along the beach; it’s not as if it’s in a historic home full of priceless antiques where young kids have to stay still for long periods of time. Most younger kids will indeed get tired of hearing about fossils after awhile, but they are free to wander off and explore the beach. And while there’s two hours of walking, it’s flat walking on mostly easy terrain, with lots of stopping along the way: it’s not an arduous hike. So we opted to book the two hour tour, and Abe was fine. He did get bored midway through and Dave ended up turning around early with him….but that was mostly because Dave was really cold and wanted to go back to the car anyway; had it not been for that it would have been pretty easy to get him to hang in there to the end. The four hour tour, on the other hand, is more or less the same thing as the two hour…only for twice as long. There’s really no need to go on that one unless you’re REALLY into fossils.
*You have to wear hard hats on the tour, but no rocks fell on any of our heads:
*Even if you really need a new doorstop, you aren’t allowed to collect fossils here. Most of the ones we found went right back on the beach; a couple of more interesting ones they saved to bring back to the centre.
*There’s a small museum all about the geological history of the site to explore before or after your tour. They have a scavenger hunt thing in here for younger kid, where they go around the museum and collect stamps. Also there’s a labyrinth outside:
Incidentally (this isn’t really a tip), Joggins was where we had our first Donald Trump comment from a Canadian. We were there right after there was a lot in the news about Trump attempting a trade war with Canada, so we wondered when it would be coming. When it did it was, of course, terribly polite and understated. We were chatting with a older guy outside the museum at Joggins and, when he learned we were American, he shook his head a little and said mildly, “that president of yours sure does have a habit of sticking his foot in his mouth, doesn’t he?” ….then spent 20 minutes telling us about everything we might be interested in seeing within a half hour’s drive of Parrsboro.
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Wow. So much fossil!
I am glad no rocks fell on your heads OR your feet.
me, too!