Designed to protect the delicate necklace of beaches and barrier islands that stretch 15 miles along the warm water shores of Northumberland Strait, Kouchibouguac National Park forms a shifting panorama of sandbars, lagoons, and bogs. On the landward side, remnants survive of the Acadian forest primeval; a few wonderful white pines, overlooked by lumbermen, still tower above an intricate landscape of cedar swamps, sea meadows, and bogs.

Most visitors come for the park’s beaches and swimming but they leave as accidental naturalists. That’s because reaching Kellys Beach entails a walk through a stretch of forest that is dense in summer with trilliums and trout lilies and lively with thrushes, warblers, and woodpeckers. The beach trail leads over a boardwalk, through bogs and lagoons, and across sand dunes to a seaside expanse that is more than 4 miles long.