Our Travel Blog

This morning was cold, 6C (43F), wet (pi**ing down) and windy, final proof that we wouldn’t be whale watching today. We had a fairly short drive planned (about 220kms) for today, around the coastline and finding lighthouses!

Although it was raining quite hard, the visibility was a lot better than in previous days. As there is really nothing too exciting about the trip today, this will be a short entry.

Initially the road was fairly flat and went past many fishing villages with their sheltered harbors and a couple with fish processing plants. Later on the road started to climb as the cliffs rose, followed by quite a bit of ups and downs, then back to flat for the final part. We climbed as high as 1000ft.

Below are the 4 lighthouses we saw.

1.Cap des Rosiers is Canada’s tallest lighthouse at 34m, it was built in 1854

2.POINTE-À-LA-RENOMMÉE was built in 1906, and is co-located with the first North American Maritim Radio Station, courtesy of Marconi

3. cap Madelaine

4. le Martre

The next couple of shots are of a differently decorated house, and views of the water along the way.

That’s it for today, tomorrow we start our trip back, no doubt the weather will improve!!

Woke up to a brighter but still overcast day, with storing winds. There is a wind warning and surge warning for the area! The temperature had dropped to around 12C (54F). We lazed around the hotel for a couple of hours after breakfast, then went for a walk down to the waterfront. As you reach the road on the way down from the hotel you can see that the walls of the property have been decorated.

In addition the parking meters have been “knit bombed” according to Lyn

On the way down to the waterfront there was a nicely themed building.

Gaspé is know as the birthplace of Canada, Jacques Cartier landed here in 1534. There is a small heritage site on the waterfront to highlight this. Of course as we arrived there the rain started!

As part of the site there was a reconstruction of a general store

We did a little more walking, unfortunately the best way back to the Hotel was through the shopping Centre!

After lunch we headed for the Mi’kmaq interpretation Centre, about 10kms away. Of course as we arrived, the rain started again! One advantage of not speaking French was that we got our own English speaking guide for the tour. This was great, as we had a knowledgeable and passionate guide and we were able to ask a lot of questions. On the other hand the French group had upwards of 20 visitors. As I have done in the past, I’ll put a link (Miꞌkmaq – Wikipedia) to a Mi’kmaq information source, and just post a number of pictures

Below is a “cut away” of a wigwam built with birch bark

Below is the complete structure.

Below is the communal hut, built in the same manner as the wigwam

Back in the “pre-European” days, making fire was a problem. The only method available was to use a small bow like structure to rotate a cedar stick on a cedar plank until the friction caused fire. The picture below may give an idea, but it is a little blurry due the the amount of effort our guide was putting into spinning the stick!

As creating fire was an arduous task the Mi’kmaq discovered a way of transporting it! There is a fungus that grows on a birch tree, they would take a lump of this about 2inches cube and make a small indentation in it where they would place a small ember. The fungus would burn VERY slowly and the ember would remain active for up to to two weeks.

When the Europeans arrived two of the most important items the Mi’kmaq traded for were metal belt buckles and shirts. They discovered that by striking a piece of flint on the buckle that they could produce sparks, and by charring the cotton shirts they could use that as tinder. Fire making became a whole lot easier.

The Mi’kmaq were nomadic, staying near the water for the summer and living primarily off fish and other sea food. In the winter they would move inland and hunt bear, moose etc. Like many aboriginal groups they believe animals were sacred and if killed all parts should have a use. Bones were used for tools, kind for clothing, meat for food etc. They even had a use for caribou brains!

Below is a picture of a bear trap, at the back is a box like structure big enough to house the bears head and shoulders. In the box they would put waste meat or fish pieces as bait. The bear would be attracted and stick its head in the box, in the process it would knock the branch that you can see between the horizontal and angled logs. This would cause the angled log to fall, killing the bear.

Finally a couple of pictures of a birch bark canoe, not yet finished.

All in all a very good and informative trip.

Unfortunately, again harping back to the weather, our plans have had to change. Tomorrow was to have been a whale watching boat trip, but the forecast winds and sea conditions have scuppered that idea. I think Lyn has a couple of replacement trips in mind.

Well, we had a few things planned today, including a boat trip out to a bird sanctuary and our first attempt at zip-lining. We woke up to a dull, damp morning, but it looked as though the rain that was forecast had passed through during the night. Depending on which forecast you read the rest of the day was going to be:

• Cool and dry
• Wet and warm
• Sunny with cloudy periods and showers
• Cloudy with sunny periods and showers
• Any combination of the above

We headed off for breakfast, and the rain started, although there were promising light patches and the occasional patches of blue sky out over the St. Lawrence. Unfortunately these clear patches disappeared very fast.

After breakfast we headed out to our first stop an UNESCO Geo-Parc, where among other things were the zip lines. As we got closer the clouds got darker and the rains got heavier. For good measure Mother Nature threw in some thunder and lightning as well!

The rain continued on and off as we drove through what would have been spectacular scenery. Our next planned stop was Percé Rock, a small island in the St Lawrence that is a bird sanctuary, populated with a multitude of Gannets. Well that didn’t happen either as the weather was still bad AND the boats weren’t running!

The images below show the rock from different locations, it is the one with the arch.

So with the previous two visits a bust, we come to the new highlight of the trip…… fire hydrants! The small town of Paspebiac has painted its fire hydrants, see a selection below.

And just for Lyn a fire hydrant wearing a kilt!

We slowly wandered on towards the hotel with the weather not improving along the way, more rain, thunder and lightning.

For some reason we were both expecting the auberge we had booked to be a little “iffy”, we were wrong! The only issue we had with it was the fact it was located between two streets, one way above it and the other below it. Which ever way we chose, there were a large number of steps to negotiate!

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So far we have been lucky with rooms, they have been spacious and two out of three have had separate living areas. Tomorrows forecast is as bad as todays, so we’ll see what happens.

Ok, back to the old problem…. a title for each post! I’ll apply the K.I.S.S. principle until I find something better! I sent out a group eMail last night to those I thought might be interested in the blog. Among those people are some who probably haven’t come across this blog before. It started way back when we got our first trailer and did a lot of touring around the States. Initially it was made just as a record of the trips for us to look back on, but others got to hear about it, so it went “semi public”. It covers not only trips in the RV but also our trips to Australia, New Zealand, China, S. Africa etc. Feel free to delve into the archives and see what you come up with!

Today was forecast to be cool with a max temperature of 15C (59F). As usual the met people got it wrong, it warmed up to 26C (79F), it really takes great skill to be as consistently wrong as weather forecasters are.

One thing we have noticed post-covid is that hotels that used to offer a “free” breakfast no longer do so, however I am sure their rates have not decreased to reflect this.

We managed to find breakfast locally, and then returned to the hotel to take a walk along the waterfront in search of a couple of geocaches, which we found.

From there we headed out to an historic site at Pont au Pere which has an old light house, many old cottages, a museum featuring the Empress of Ireland ( a cruise ship that sank after a collision in fog close by the site) and a de-commissioned Royal Canadian Navy submarine built on the 1960’s. Although this one was British, it was able to fulfill its role, unlike the Trafalgar class submarines that were purchased this century!

We took a tour through the submarine, I have read many novels centered around submarines and the underwater lifestyle didn’t seem too bad. Having seen the lack of room and the conditions that the crew lived in, I think the novels lied!

We continued driving through some very good scenery, unfortunately it was very misty for most of the drive and the photos didn’t do the scenery justice. Initially the area was farmland then it transformed into heavily wooded rolling hills. Lumber is a major industry around here with every other truck transporting either raw lumber or the finished product.

Below are some random views and a covered bridge for a bonus!

As the day drew on we were pretty much up in the clouds which finished the scenery gazing. We finished the trip at Carleton sur Mer, just across a small strip of water from New Brunswick.

Please be gentle with the comments, I haven’t managed to get spell checker working on this programme yet!

Well, after a 2 year or so break we are back traveling…… sort of. My last post made mention of a wedding in Jamaica, well that never happened! The cab was meant to pick us up for the trip to the airport at 6AM. We got a call at 4:30AM saying that the wedding was off as Jamaica had closed its door to tourists due to you know what! The wedding finally took place a month or so ago in Ottawa.

We were also meant to fly to Machu Picchu in the fall of that year for a week and the fly down to Chile to join a cruise around Cape Horn, to the Falkland Islands and then on to Buenos Aries. We canceled that one! That trip will now take place in early 2024…. hopefully!

We are currently starting a tour of the Gaspé Penninsular. This ia area in the province of Quebec in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River about 1100kms (685 miles) east of Ottawa. We haven’t been out this way before, but the scenery is meant to be good.

I’ll keep this short fo a couple of reasons, I am trying to remember how to make these entries, and my stomach is a little upset after an explosive decompression earlier in the day!!

A couple of shots as we approached Rimouski.

Ok, that’s enough for now. Let me know if the photos are “viewable” as they have been compressed quite a bit.