King of tides

We made our first trip to the province in July with our son, Daniel, 12, and his best friend, Nick. Every morning, we had a predictable debate at the breakfast table: How far would Dan and Nick let us venture that day to get to the next unforgettable vista or the next historical landmark?

The boys usually won; only once did we spend an extra couple of hours in the car. But we all agreed it was worth the work to get to the delightfully named Burncoat Head. This otherwise modest provincial park on Minas Basin, barely signposted on the main coastal road, is arguably the epicenter of the Bay of Fundy - the site of the highest recorded tide change in the world.

Guinness World Records lies open on a desk in the restored lighthouse that serves as a reception center for the park. The relevant page tells you that this was where the greatest tide change was recorded: 53.6 feet from high to low tide. The day we were there, the tide rose 43 feet in six hours, and then fell that same length in the next six hours.

It is breathtaking to witness the immense changes in the height of the sea in the Bay of Fundy over the course of a day. We arrived just an hour before low tide, and climbed down a staircase to the red sands on the floor of the bay. We wandered around eerie formations of slippery mud and rock, and around a suspended island that is reconnected to the shore at low tide. The phenomenon is most dramatic at this top end of the bay. At the nearby Shubenacadie River, you can even ride the “tidal bore,’’ where the tide rushing into the narrow river creates a wave that rubber boats ride.

Seeing the tide change was one of two principal reasons for picking Nova Scotia for our getaway, and we weren’t disappointed. The other was to experience the Atlantic coast, with echoes of Maine but in an earlier, less-McMansioned era. And truth be told, you don’t go to Nova Scotia to lie on the beach, but to stroll and bike and sightsee. That means it is just as attractive in the fall, when the crowds thin out, as in the short summer.

We split our trip, half on the Fundy side and half on the Atlantic side, near the UNESCO World Heritage Town Lunenburg, “the best surviving example of a planned British colonial settlement,’’ as the UN website puts it. We spent three nights in a simple cottage on the Bay of Fundy, and four nights in a rented vacation home on the southeast Atlantic coast, which we found on an online list of cottage rentals.

Given our aversion to driving, we chose the high-speed CAT ferry from Portland, Maine, to Yarmouth. The 5 1/2-hour journey was choppy, and quite a few people didn’t take their Dramamine. The various movies and TV screens were playing too loud for my taste - not to mention the chinking slot machines in the casino. But the vessel is remarkably fast. It sails some days from Portland, some from Bar Harbor, so plan carefully. It leaves Portland at 8 a.m. and you must arrive an hour earlier, so we had a 4:30 a.m. wake-up in Boston. We spent $1,035 round-trip for the car, two adults, and two children.

The other nonflying options are to drive the whole way, at least 11 hours from Boston, or drive eight hours to Saint John, New Brunswick, see the Fundy coast there, and take the cheaper three-hour ferry to Digby, Nova Scotia. The Digby area and Digby Neck are among the most developed for visitors on the Fundy side, with superb local scallops, fresh off the boats each day, and whale-watching excursions. And don’t miss nearby Annapolis Royal, a historic town on a peninsula north of Digby, with several quality inns.

As we discovered driving from Yarmouth toward Digby, the Acadian coast on the Bay of Fundy is quite basic and starkly charming. This was home to the French-speaking Acadian settlers, thousands of whom were rounded up in the mid-1700s for deportation by the British, in one of the sorriest chapters in Canadian history. Vast wooden churches still loom over several small towns on the coastal Route 1 that meanders through the towns on the Evangeline Trail, named for the Longfellow maiden.

It quickly becomes clear that Nova Scotians manage to live more simply and more slowly, with time to chat and ask about your visit and offer suggestions. The houses are plainer, and even the coastal vacation homes fit the landscape.

We stayed high up the bay, where the tidal swings are greatest. We chose Harbourville, a tiny, isolated village with a classic fishing harbor, where Elke Huber has restored a set of six fishing cottages and rents them by the night or the week, for $100 to $200 per night. We stayed in one of two cottages up on a bluff about 60 yards from the harbor, with a bedroom downstairs and two small single bedrooms upstairs. Other cottages are right on the water.

Elke’s Schnitzelhaus restaurant is the town’s lone eatery. We prefer to cook most meals on vacation, so look for equipped cottages. We bought lobsters - $6 a pound - from the fish shop minutes after the lobster boat unloaded its catch, and steamed up a feast.

The harbor’s rocky beach could use a cleanup; it was edged with tidal junk. But the tidal change is stunning: The lobster boats bob on the full water at dockside at high tide - and lie stranded a few hours later as the basin drains. There’s little to do but stroll the shore, fun for the kids for a while, but soon you have to get in the car.

We explored the Fundy coast communities of Wolfville, a small college town with several quality restaurants and B&Bs, and Canning (great home-made sausage lunches at Al’s). Blomidon Provincial Park has a fine beach, set against red cliffs, that offers a great setting at low tide. The more ambitious can hike to the end of Cape Split, which juts out into the bay.

From there, we looped around the Minas Basin and made our extra trek to Burncoat Head (some spell it Burntcoat) on the Fundy Shore Ecotour, an easy half-day journey.

For the second half of our stay, we drove for two hours over the forested middle of the peninsula to the Lunenburg area. The southwestern Atlantic coast is far more developed than the Fundy side, with more to do. We stayed in a gracious, high-windowed 19th-century home in Dublin Shore, near LaHave (anglicized to rhyme with behave) and available until mid-October. Jo Stern, the owner, spends half the year there with her partner Dave Scarratt, living in the adjacent original post office. The stately three-bedroom, two-bath home is set on four acres on a point with the ocean on three sides, great for kids to explore. We often biked two miles north along the Lighthouse Route to the LaHave Bakery for scones and coffee. Two miles south are two wide public beaches, Crescent and Rissers, and the local maritime museum. Rissers has a wonderful boardwalk over the dunes and wetlands behind the beach, great in any season.

The coastal area around Lunenburg is packed with things to do. Lunenburg, a beautifully preserved 18th-century shipbuilding town, is worth a day itself. We frequently took the cable ferry across the mouth of the LaHave River to shorten the trip to Lunenburg; get a book of tickets if you’ll do it often. It leaves every 30 minutes from each side. Nearby is The Ovens, a coastal warren of caves and cliffs (with an admission charge).

We made the 90-minute trip north to Halifax just once, to see the Tall Ships visit there. The capital is worth a full day of exploring the waterfront and meandering the nearby streets and cafes. There’s a bohemian feel to many neighborhoods. But we preferred to get back to the Lunenburg area for quiet strolling and meandering in the surrounding fishing towns turned vacation escapes, including Mahone Bay and Green Bay. A colleague recently spent a week in a similar cottage rental, in the tonier St. Margaret’s Bay, and also found himself drawn to slowing down and doing less.

We completed our circuit with a final three-hour drive back south to Yarmouth along the Atlantic coast, including a lunchtime stop in Shelburne, another inviting, restored coastal town. The ferry to Portland - a smoother ride that day - leaves at 3 p.m. and gets you to Portland at about 8:30 p.m., making for a near midnight arrival back in Boston. And we felt we’d barely gotten to know the province.

Next time, on to the northern half of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island.

James F. Smith can be reached at jsmith@globe.com.