September

Northeast '06 September, p.2

Baie St Paul

They grow some large marshmallows in Quebec.

Right picture shows how they do it. Individual silos.

Wednesday, September 13

We neglected to mention that the weather is great - sunny in the low 70's. (In fact, it doesn't rain, and we didn't experience much cloudiness until September 18th.) Maple tree are starting to turn all shades of red, orange and yellow at this latitude; we remember that the optimum color time for the New York Adirondacks is about a month away.

We drive up as far as you can go on Hwy 138 to the town of Baie Ste. Catherine, at the junction of St. Lawrence river and the Saguenay fjord. A ferry can take you across to the town of Tadoussac, but there is not much north of here expect for some very small villages and many lumber mills. We saw numerous trucks hauling lumber south.

The Saguenay is a real fjord - a deep water trench with high walls exiting to the St. Lawrence river. Here, the different water flows create an environment especially rich in nutrients and many krill - the favorite food of many whale species.

At 9:30 am, we signed up for a 3-hour whale watching and fjord cruise! What fun! We saw the backs and fins of many surfacing whales of several species, and one of them actually swam under the cruise boat about 10 feet under the surface. There were not as many as earlier in the year, but the first whale is a Minke whale and the second, white, is a beluga (no fin).

It was cold on the boat, since the temperature of the water in the St. Lawrence here is less than 40 degrees F, year round.

We had lunch again at the spot we spent last night, and traveled further south to the junction of Hwy 138 and 170 at St. Simeon, which we would take in the northwest direction towards the small inlets of the Saguenay fjord. We stopped first at the village of Anse St. Jean, and decided to spend the evening, then night, overlooking the beautiful marina... after, of course, eating some French Canadian pork pies we bought at the local boulangerie (bakery). It's so much fun using the truck camper, where we can park in so many free and wonderful places that are forbidden or inaccessible to trailers.

Thursday, September 14

L'Anse St. Jean, was a wonderful place to spend the night. Going west again, we turned off the highway to enter Eternity Bay. Here is the Quebec Provincial Park of the same name, a wild place where the St. Jean river cuts through to the Saguenay fjord, creating a wide and deep water bay. The cliffs are specially high here, and there is a statue on top of the cliff at the entrance to the bay. There is also a long and challenging hike to the top of the cliff to see that statue. Let's just say we made it about one-half way. It's the pits getting old! We were able to shower and dump sewage at the park after the hike, so we all were clean to go.

We're starting to see more color in the trees now.

In the village of Baie Eternite, there is a park with are many large, life sized, nativity scenes created in different styles by local artists. During the normal visitor season (which ended on Labor day), visitors can also see the 250 smaller crèches in the basement of the local church. We'll show some of these on the next page.

We were anxious to get to Lac St. Jean (Lake St. John) tomorrow, to tour around this large lake, so we drove west all the way to St. Bruno. Again, we found a parking spot for the night at a local furniture store. On the way, we saw this license plate. Canada?

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