New Brunswick

Monday August 24
Today we poured it on and finally made it out of Quebec across the bridge and into New Brunswick. Along the way we took time to drop into a recreation of an Empire Loyalist village. Interesting to come across an old organ made in Woodstock Ontario. Further down the road in the town of Bonaventure we came across an interesting group of condos on the beach. I’m sure I’ve seen pictures of them before. They were all connected in a sort of village by a board walk. It was interesting that even though they all looked the same no two were alike. Just before leaving Quebec we passed through a town called Carleton. It had great beaches on the one side and mountains right down to the road on the other with a river running down the middle. It seemed to be a very sheltered place. I talked with a fellow who moved there from Montreal about eight years ago. He says you can buy 100 acre properties backing onto the mountains, (which are really the beginning of the Appalachians) for about $60,000. He paid $45,000 for his. It’s a very remote area miles away from anywhere and still in Quebec, but I say it’s one of the areas we’ve been that I could live forever. That night we found another great spot backed right up onto the beach about an hour into New Brunswick. It’s a good life.

Leaving Gaspe

Sunday Aug. 23
Sunday after a week of convalescing, ( well actually not, really we were just visiting with my sister, rebuilding some long overdue relationships ) we headed out down the road again. It felt good to be driving again. We stocked up on food in down town Gaspe. Because of the hurricane a big cruise ship had come way back into the safe harbour. It was somewhat of an anomaly for this port of late so the whole town came out to take pictures. The ship had a bunch of tenders running people in and out to shore, so the grocery store was full of foreigners. Kind of made us feel like long time citizens.
Next stop down the road was Perce Rock. This big rock that God built right out into the water has a big hole washed in it and has become a tourist attraction for people wanting to see it. It used to have two holes but one night after a huge lightning strike, one of them caved in. Also here just off shore is Bonaventure Island which is a huge bird sanctuary. We took a boat ride out there and took to get a better look at these two marvels. The town of Perce is a bit of a tourist zoo though so it wasn’t long for us getting out of there. We found a great spot further down the road, right on the beach to put in for the night. We backed our van up on the beach and had a great nights sleep. Just before bed we took the bikes off the truck and went down to the dock to watch the fishing boats come in and unload their catch. A good day.

A Week at Wilma's

Being at Wilma’s for a whole week was just the rest we needed. It will be hard to put my memories in one blog. Her place is a little clearing in the trees just peeking out from the perennials. It would be easy to miss except for the wild orange house with the blue door. Her dog Burd, (short for Burdock) did his best to be vicious. After eyeing everyone’s garden for the past few weeks hers is an inspiration. Lilies and lavender and some ground covers are the only ones I could name. She knows them all. (And she apologizes that it has been an off year. I can’t imagine what an on year looks like.) I really couldn’t get enough poking around her green house, wood shed, pathways, vegetable garden, berry patch, meadows and trees. Stopping at the many sitting spots. It was fun taking pictures. She has lots of projects on the go and ideas for the future. The most daunting project of all is her stairs to the beach. There is a 120 metre cliff at the back of her property that ends at a small strip of beach on the St. Lawrence. The stairs are almost finished. (For someone who can barely wield a screw gun the dynamics of building such a solid staircase with railings down a ravine is mind boggling.) She obviously has no lack of energy. One of her latest passions is her bees. She has 3 hives that she carefully monitors. One afternoon she was concerned about the way they were behaving and dawned her beekeepers suit and sorted and separated the shelves. (A great photo op!) Each tray was a buzz of activity caring for larvae, building up wax, and making honey. I have forgotten most of what she explained to me but definitely something I’d like to learn about someday.
Wilma had a lot of office work to do so we spent time reading, blogging, and ravaging her bookshelves. (It is so safe to go through pottery books, gardening, woodworking, decorating and cookbooks when you are far from home.) I did a bit of weeding and berry picking. I got my laundry done, Henry got 2 new tires put on the van and Wilma gave up her hair appointment for me. Henry and I spent some time in the museum learning about the history of Gaspe and poking around some shops. We spent some time on the beach, lots of good old lazing around and generally pestering Wilma with talk when she should be working. And we ate, and ate. Salmon, cod, pates, breads with jams and honey, cheese, garden fresh berries and veggies, (purple potatoes!) and of course wine. Wilma’s close friends from Montreal came for a visit. They are enthusiastic mycologists. They came equipped with microscopes, cameras and books. They go tramping through the bush looking for mushrooms. It’s sort of like birdwatching except the mushroom sits very still. Some need a microscope to be accurately identified. Sometimes they eat what they pick. It was really fascinating to see microscopic mushroom patches.
Well the longer we stayed the harder it was to leave. Thank-you Wilma for an awesome week.
Grace
Listening to- the engines of ferry taking us fromIles-de-la-Madeleine to PEI
Wish I left at home- the fold up grocery basket. (Glad I could leave it at Wilma's)

The ferry to Matnane

Aug. 16
Traveling South on the North Shore, if you want to go across the St Lawrenec, the first opportunity you have is the ferry from Godbut to Matane. It runs only once a day at 8:00AM in the morning. So camping out in the visitor parking lot the night before gets you there well before the action stars. Waiting for the ferry is kind of a social event. Tractor trailers have been pulling in at all times during the night. They get their own lanes. By 6:30 cars are beginning to line up. Rv’s of every sort of description are coming in from who knows where they spent the night. People are getting out and walking around, stretching, going to the bathroom in the waiting area. Some of us are making new acquaintances, all be it ever so temporary. People are checking out each others motor homes. Finding out where they’ve been. It’s all kind of a neat waiting time. Then, way out to sea you can see the ferry coming. People get their cameras out and start taking pics as it gets closer. By the time it docks there’s a whole crowd watching. The front end opens and the big trucks start coming off, and then the cars and RV’s in what ever order they’ve been parked in. Then it’s our turn. Everyone starts their engines and bit by bit we get loaded. Our boat was called the Camille – Marcoux. She holds 144 vehicles and 600 people. The ride across to Matane is 2hrs and 15 minutes. People are not allowed to remain in their vehicles but we can walk all over the ferry including outside on top where there are lots of places to sit out in the open and watch the sea. It was a great trip across for us. Once in a while it’s fun to travel and not have to do anything but sit back.

Back Again

Aug. 12
We had made it to the end of the road. Looking back now, the Cote Nord is a quiet remote part Quebec with a small population base spread along 1250K of coast line, and some of the freedoms that come with fewer people around to bother each other. It’s a relatively undeveloped area so the land and the shore line seem more unspoiled. It’s a very long way from Quebec city so people don’t tend to just up and go there. Construction is big, especially on the big Hydro Electric projects so those employed there make a lot of money. You can see that in the trucks and quads they all have. Yet the remoteness of the region gives it a very laid back character. No Wallmarts or anything else that’s for sure. Having accomplished our objective, we started our journey back again. We no longer plan to travel over Labrador on our way to Newfoundland. Instead we have decided to travel up river west again as far as Godbut, and then take the ferry across to the South shore to Matane. From there we plan to take the South shore to the Gaspe instead. Wednesday night we arrived again at the beach in Longue Pointe de Mingan and decided to stay for a couple of nights just to get a day in on the beach. Thursday was a great sun kissed day of just laying back watching the waves roll in and the odd whale roll over out from shore. We had booked the ferry in Godbut for 8:00Am Saturday morning, so Friday at 6:00 Am with Grace still in bed we drove off with an early start on the road. We stopped for a bit in Sept Ilse to repair one of the bikes, and stock up on groceries. Somewhere West of Sept Ilse we crossed the 50th parallel and by early afternoon we had arrived at the ferry. We parked right there at the terminal and called it home for the night. We took the bikes down of the van and checked out the town for a while. I love having bikes along. It’s such a relaxing way to see places. We went down to the dock to watch the guys fishing for herring. It was the hotspot in town that night for sure.

Further Down the Road

Aug.10
Driving further North East the road continues to wind along long stretches of emptiness and then down through small fishing villages until after about four hours we finally arrive in the small town of Natashquin. This has been officially referred to as the end of the highway. From here the highway goes another five kilometers to where it ends at the gates to a rather large native reserve of about 1600 people. I guess they don’t count. There are a few more miles of gravel of recently completed road and then it quits completely. They keep on pushing the road along further down the coast each year, but there are dozens of bridges to build and thousands of tons of rock to blast so the building doesn’t move along very fast. From here to Blanc Sablon in Labrador it looks to be about another thousand K or so. Along that stretch of coast there are 14 villages. The first four are Francophone, and the remaining ten are English speaking. For now they are connected by the cargo ferry “The Relais Nordic “ . About thirty kilometers West of Natashquin is the little town of Anglinish. After supper in Natashquin we headed back there and set up on another lovely campsite on the beach. Earlier travelers had encouraged us to take in a canyon tour there through some very rough red granite saw tooth rock formations. We did so the next day and it was truly worth our while. Here a river with a lot of water comes together and is forced through a very narrow canyon flanked by tall walls of polished red granite. To get there we had to take two small motor boats from one lake to the next and then portage into the next. The trip there reminded me a lot of my fishing trips to Northern Ontario. The aluminum boats were the same, and the motors, the smell of the exhaust, the same rock cliffs along the shore, with the same white pine and spruce and very remote. It was a very nice sunny day, with a hot sun and cool air. A perfect Northern day. A distinguishing feature, besides the red granite in this gorge are the bore holes. These are created by the force of the water spinning large soccer ball size rocks round and round in one spot for hundreds of years till they wear a perfectly round hole in the rock sometimes a meter or two deep. The rocks also become perfectly round and just remain laying in the hole waiting for when the water rises and takes it for another spin again. One of these was on display in the local interpretation center.

The Human Element

Aug. 8
As in all of life, when traveling, there’s always the human element. On one of the islands in Mingan there’s a light house. This was an operating lighthouse with a lighthouse keeper who lived there till the mid 1970’s. During the 1950’s there was one particular fellow who was out in a small boat late in the season. The ice in the Gulf set in and trapped him and his little boat so bad that he was sure his life was over. He prayed very hard and he promised God that if he would save his life he would erect a statue to Mary when he got back. Well God came through and that year the lighthouse keeper also came through and spent most of his year’s salary importing this statue. The old lighthouse keeper is long gone, but Mary’s statue is still there.
Often along the way we also meet other RV’rs who we get to know for a brief bit of time. We often compare notes on where we’ve been and where to park, dump our taks and take on fresh water. Sometimes we visit for a while and talk abut our lives families etc. Sometmes after we part we meet each other again later down the road totally by chance. Such was the case with Aubin and Helen from Quebec city. Very gracious people who showed us their travel piks one night, and left us with a standing invitation to park at their home when we get to Quebec. We saw them one more time later as we passed going in opposite directions on the South shore.
Grace and I took the opportunity here to leave you with a couple of personal piks too. Also a pik of our Trecker parked on the beach taken from the boat coming back.