August 2017

It’s been about a year since my last blog post (so I’m a bit rusty) and our August 2017 at Crow Lake is in its final days!

(Remember, you can click on any photo to see a larger version.)

But 2017 activities began a bit earlier.

As in recent years Bob James and I came up in June to “open” the place with the main job being to get the water system filled and functioning. The Spring in Ontario has seen record breaking rain so the water levels in the lakes has been extremely high and when Bob and I were here we found the dock under water, a water level that we have seen only once before in our 40 years here.

The next activity was at the end of July when our friends Rick and Joanne spent a few days here - a time which turned out to be more eventful than they had planned. During their stay the pressure valve on our kitchen hot water heater failed, spreading hot water over the kitchen floor. Fortunately, Rick knew how to deal with the immediate problem but we still needed a new hot water heater before our next guests -  long time friends Vic and Babs along with their son Mark and his wife Robynne Edgar and their boys, Jacob and Coleman as well as V and B’s youngest son, Reid. Eight people without hot water in the kitchen would have been a challenge. Fortunately I was able to install the new heater in time for their 3 day stay.

Sorry, only a few photos from those visits. Not sure how that happened.

Not sure if that is Reid or Vic in the canoe.

Below, that is definitely Reid swimming but not quite sure if the other is Mark or Jacob.

On to August, which, as usual, has been a great month for us though a bit quieter than many. Thankfully, Michael was able to be here for a long weekend during the 5 days that Ann and Pat and Shayla and Ryan were also here.

Shayla has two rather large "ducks" - this is the larger of the two. Both have been given names - the smaller is Daryl and this one's name has varied so I'm not quite sure what it is.

And for part of a day we were joined by Jesse, Ruth's godson, and his partner Theresa.

Jess is an avid fisherman and Michael had brought his new fly fishing rod so they had a bit of a fly fishing "expedition".

Michael and Jesse perhaps in conversation about fly fishing.

Ryan has also developed an interest in fishing and he spent quite a bit of time catching fish both from the dock and the canoe.

Ruth and I have had to manage on our own, along with Kita and some local Loon friends, 

for the rest of the month while we look forward to a brief visit with Rod and Hope before Michael, Rod and I leave from Toronto for 14 days in Iceland!

So, stay tuned as I hope to post the next blog with images from Iceland, images as good or better than this Crow Lake sunset!

The End of This Trip

I know that I sort of implied in the last post that our trip had ended and, in a way it had, but in another way it was not yet complete.

As I mentioned at the end of the last post,

Kita enjoying the morning walk

we stopped at our second home by Crow Lake for a 4 day weekend with Michael. He arrived Friday evening around 11 pm (one day later than originally expected due to Thursday being occupied by important stuff at work). On arrival he told us that he had run into a deer on his way here from the airport! The animal suddenly appeared in front of the car and there was no chance to avoid hitting it or stopping. Fortunately he was not injured and the damage to the car appeared to be surprisingly minor.

Cribbage on the deck - but, why the oranges?

We lucked out with the weather as it was a beautiful 4 days with lots of sun and warmth with highs in the high 20’s, even 30 C on one day. Warm enough one day that Michael actually immersed himself in the lake to cool off and  he found the water to be surprisingly temperate. Swimming in Crow Lake on Memorial Day weekend has been a bit of a ritual for a lot of years but it was more often a “chilly challenge” than a means to cool off and usually it was Ann, occasionally Michael, and, more recently, Shayla and, possibly, Ryan who stepped up to the challenge..

To keep the cards from blowing away - of course.

At least on one of our morning walks it was sufficiently warm and humid that even the mosquitoes were there in fewer numbers.

In addition to the regular early morning walks there were others as well, a couple later in the day along our usual route on the road and one at Meisel Woods on the west side of Crow Lake. And Kita enjoyed the freedom of the walks and this morning she had her first encounter with a wild “critter”, closer to her size than the usual squirrels and chipmunks, in the form of a red fox! The chase was brief; there was a bit of a yelp when Kita caught hold of the fox, also briefly, and then a there was a stand-off for a few seconds before the fox took off again into the trees. Kita went after it but we presume the fox was quicker as Kita soon came back to join us on the walk. No injuries to Kita - not sure about the fox.

Meisel Woods

More Meisel Woods

On Saturday Michael and I did a bit of grocery shopping which included a visit to the nearby  “gourmet”  meat store, “Seed to Sausage”, where we picked up steaks, burgers, some of their specialty sausages and bacon as well as cheeses and condiments.  It was fortunate that we worked in our walks because, as you can discern, we ate well! And the great weather made it possible for our snack times and meals to be outdoors, either in the gazebo or on the deck.

Reading

There was a game of “13 handed rummy” and a little cribbage happened on the deck as well as the usual reading. With good internet access we were also able to watch a couple of Blue Jays games on the computer monitor.

A great weekend made even better by a classic Crow Lake sunset!

Michael left today so now the work of getting organized and shrinking the volume of our paraphernalia. Some of it we will leave here so that we can deliver the Thule roof top carrier to its source on our way back to Dundas on Thursday, June 2nd.

That will be the end of our trip which began on April 26th.

St. Anne des Monts to Notre Dame des Neiges and further!

Another nice day and we were able to get a pretty early start on our trip to Notre Dame des Neiges. At this point on

our journey we are beginning to feel that we are gearing up to get home. Twenty- one days, or whatever it is, has been great but both the driving and unloading and loading the car every night and morning is increasing wearisome. So, once again we have planned no particular places to stop on our way to the Motel Trois Pistoles. (Apparently I spelled this incorrectly in the previous blog.) While on the topic of this unusual name it’s interesting to note that the word pistoles, according to the Oxford Dictionary, refers to “any of various gold coins used in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries”. One source suggested that it referred to Spanish or Basque coins.

Snow covered mountains afar.

Lots of wind turbines.

Another also indicated that this area is one which was frequented by Basque whalers and fishermen in the same time period or even earlier. So, it appears that we are headed for an area with historical links to the Basques.

Now, for me the the number of photographs that I have made.is a measure of our feeling that this part of the trip is definitely homeward bound.  I think about 6 or 7 images! On earlier days I would likely make that many or more in one stop. And, from Motel Trois Pistoles to Drummondville, Québec, our next stop,  the number of photos was zero!.  As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I am not sure precisely where these photos were taken, with two exceptions. The photo above from Saint Flavie is interesting because someone has decided that it would be nice to have some sheep and a shepherd on the lawn by this building so, he/she created this "flock" of sheep, we think carved from wood, though we weren't able to get close enough to be certain.

On this part of the trip we noticed a couple of significant changes in the landscape. First, with the warmer and sunnier weather things are much greener in large part due to the deciduous trees having begun to sprout leaves. And the second change is in the topography. From St. Anne des Mont en route to Notre Dame des Neiges we are moving out of the mountainous region and, especially between Notre Dame des Neiges and Drummondville, flatter almost prairie like landscape. This is clearly farming territory.

In Notre Dame des Neiges we checked into a tiny motel, Motel Trois Pistoles, and a tiny room with a reasonably comfortable bed but no extras. We had booked this motel only a couple of days before and in some desperation as others we had tried who would take pets were full because of the beautiful long weekend. We were a bit surprised at a couple of things in this motel, most significantly the electrical arrangements.

There were very few outlets and the grounding piece on the air conditioner plug had been cut off to allow it to be plugged into an ungrounded extension cord! And the air conditioner itself had seen better days. We did not use it. The owners were very pleasant and friendly but the general state of repair suggested that they might be struggling to keep the motel in operation. Like a couple of other places we experienced, because  the owners lived on site they were able to keep a small business alive under difficult circumstances. But, it worked fine for us for one night then we were on our way to Drummondville and a few more comforts in a Comfort Inn. In walking the dog Ruth had discovered quite a lovely view of the valley south of the motel - see the photo above.
The drive to Drummondville was just that, a drive. We were now in high gear to get closer to home and we stopped once, maybe twice, during the approximately 370 Km drive. 

I have talked about going home but, in fact we were actually heading for our cabin at Crow Lake to meet Michael who will be there for the US Memorial Day weekend and the timing was working out perfectly as we had one day more than we needed in order to be there before Michael.  So, we decided to take another break and stay in Drummondville for 2 nights in ordered to rest and prepare for the nearly 400 Km drive to Crow Lake with a stop in Perth to pick up some groceries. And we are at Crow Lake as I write this and the photo left was made on our first morning walk.

It’s been a terrific trip and we are extremely happy we had the experience and we are equally happy to be here at our second home at Crow Lake!  We are now looking forward to a relaxing 4 day weekend with Michael before we do go home to Dundas.

Gaspé to St. Anne des Monts

We had a good breakfast at the Adam’s Motel restaurant and got a fairly early start on

Somewhere between Gaspé and Farillon National Park 

another weather friendly morning.  The motel is close to the highway so we were able to leave the city quite quickly.
Just a word about my preconceived notions about the Gaspé Peninsula. I’m not aware of the basis for these preconceptions but I had pictured it as mostly flat with some hills and populated by a few folks living in tiny villages.

And there are, of course,  lots of small villages but there are also cities like Rimouski and Gaspé which are bustling places with lots of traffic and fast driving Québecers.

At Farillon National Park

And the topography I, obviously, had completely wrong. I had no idea, for example, that the northeastern tip of the Appalachian mountain chain extends from the south eastern USA to the Gaspé Peninsula and beyond, even to the Scottish Highlands, apparently.

Boardwalk at Forillon National Park

And, while these mountain are only a shadow of their former height due to erosion over a few hundred thousand years, some are still pretty high - Mount Jacques-Cartier in the Chic Choc’s,  for example, reaches 1,268 m.

First Lighthouse - note sure exactly where.

But onward.

Not long after leaving Gaspé we stopped at Forillon National Park at the far eastern end of the Gaspé Peninsula. Near the Park entrance and information centre there is a fairly extensive, very sturdy looking board walk. We decided to see how far this easy walk would take us and about 20 minutes later we were at the end. This is a large park with many kilometres of excellent walking/hiking trails but for many reason we are, unfortunately, not really able to make use of them, so we terminated our walk at the end of the boardwalk and returned to the parking lot.

As we hadn’t identified additional specific locations to visit, the remainder of our journey to St. Anne des Monts was punctuated by lots of stops at places where we hoped to find yet the perfect spectacular view and photo opportunity. The photo above on the left was made at what we thought might be place for lunch combined with a nice view. But the gazebo and the general area were not really very attractive so after this photo we moved on.

One of the towns mentioned below.

I think it worth saying that, while the trip was terrific and I certainly enjoyed it, it turned out, from a photography point of view, to be less rewarding than I had hoped. The weather was a major contributing factor with lots of rain and cloud in the early days.

Passing through...

Also, driving and hoping to find excellent views is tricky as so many of the “ones that got away” did so because they appear suddenly and fleetingly as we pass at 80 km/hr or so and there was no place to stop in any case.

On some roads there was little traffic so it was possible to stop and back up or turn around and reasonably safely pull off onto the shoulder long enough to make a quick photo or two but not really time to think it through carefully.  Another difficulty is presented by the time of day during which we are on the move - mostly during hours in which the light is not the best for good photos. Not excuses, just observations.

Second Lighthouse, not sure of the location.

During our Cabot Trail drive we were promised, by signs, that we would at some point come to a lighthouse, but we never did find one. On the Gaspé route, however, though there were no signs announcing lighthouse  we actually came across 3 of them.

As we had left Clifton Park on May 2 we have now been on the road about 20 days so, as you can imagine, note taking is less precise and the blur of time and places tend to make it difficult to match the photos with the exact location. 

We know that we visited Rivière au Renard and the towns of Saint Maurice-de-l’Echouerie, L’Anse-à-Valleau and Grande Vallée but which of the photos here were made near which of these places we can’t be completely certain. And, in the end, it probably doesn’t really matter.

We were there and enjoyed seeing everyone of them. The small villages nestled down in valleys at the water’s edge (obviously for practical reasons) all presented a lovely romantic image to passers by like us.
At this point we are still travelling through a pretty mountainous area so, as you can see in a couple of the photos, we often had a view from well above the villages.  One of the things you may also have noted in a couple of photos is that in each village, seemingly no matter how small, there is a fairly prominent church with steeple visible from afar.

The mountainous topography continues on to St. Anne des Monts, as indicated by the name, but before we reached St. Anne the road made its way out to the edge of the mountains and down very close to the shore, so the drive and the views along the ocean were much different from earlier images.

I have included a few images made from along the shore, one which shows a gathering of Gannets and we are both quite sure that the group of Gannets was near Riviere la Madeleine.

Around 4 pm we arrived in St. Anne des Monts and the Hotel&Cie, an unusual name but it was a nice motel and all arrangements were in order.

A cluster of Gannets

This was our most expensive place so far, partly because their fee for the dog was $35 per night! Again, by far the most expensive dog fee.


One night there so not time for two increasingly weary travellers to do much more than rest for tomorrow’s drive to Notre Dame de Neiges and the Motel Trois Pistales where we found ourselves in the most spartan of accommodations so far.

Carleton sur mer to Gaspé

I enjoyed our brief stay at the motel in Carleton sur mer. Funny how circumstances change how one feels about something  Initially I was quite disappointed in the somewhat “long in the tooth” motel in which we found

ourselves.

However, the cheerful friendliness and helpfulness of the owner and hearing her story about establishing the motel and now running it, essentially single handedly, made me see the place in a different light.

So, on a beautiful sunny morning we left in a buoyant mood after a simple but enjoyable breakfast and looking forward to the trip to Gaspé which included passing through Percé, home of “the Rock”. More about the rock later.

The inside of the church taken through a window

Ruth had found another heritage village near New Richmond which was a short drive from Carleton sur mer. This initiative is a memorial to the United Empire Loyalists who emigrated to this area during the US war of independence. This is a pleasant place but less developed than the previous heritage villages we visited. There were a few buildings, including a church from the period, brought from Stellarville, if I recall correctly. Beside the church was a small pile of snow which delighted Kita!

She doesn’t look delighted in the photo but she defintely was excited, running, rolling and burying her nose in the snow! The property also offered a very convenient and attractive place for a much appreciated walk, which we did.

We continued on along the south coast of the Gasperie stopping frequently to try to capture in photos the spectacular topography but, as impressive as some of these images might be, photos fail to convey the visual experience of actually being there. Better photos might come closer but whatever the quality of the two dimensional photograph, it will still fall short of being there.

We stopped for lunch at a “viewing site” near Bonaventure and while enjoying some food and the sun, we noticed some gulls, or what we took to be gulls, cruising above the bay. A couple of them seemed particularly enthusiastic in their pursuits, circling about then diving at full speed crashing into the water, surfacing, then scrambling off the water to get airborne, circling again before repeating the dive and crash into the water. Not typical gull behaviour we thought. Then Ruth noticed the black wingtips - our first experience with Gannet fishing techniques! 

Sorry - no photos of the Gannets.

Back on the road we stopped briefly in New Carlisle, the birthplace of René Lévesque, the once influential and still esteemed Québec Premier. I know, I said in the previous blog that we were in New Carlisle, but I was wrong. Memory of what we saw and when we saw it is not always accurate. Which is why Ruth’s notes are usually necessary to minimize the blur of places and times. In any case, I also previously mentioned that there is a life size statue of Lévesque in a small park, actually a children’s playground, in his home town of New Carlisle. Now, Lévesque was a fairly short man and the statue, being life size, reflected this fact to the displeasure, I have been told, of some of his more ardent admirers. They apparently felt that statue should be more like the man, larger than life!

We left the life size Monsieur Lévesque in New Carlisle, moving east to another heritage site at Haspebiac which Ruth’s perusal of the books had revealed. This one is a tribute to the cod fishermen who laboured for decades under the harsh conditions presented by the ocean and the brutal behaviour of the fish processing and distribution industry. It is an impressive project with some beautifully restored historic buildings on a very

attractive site which is uniquely integrated with a gathering of currently active fishing boats.

Among the unusual artifacts that attracted me was a “skeleton” of what I assume to be an old fishing boat - an opportunity for a couple of potentially interesting photos!

At this point we were getting close to a place of interest that I was really looking forward to seeing - Percé and the famous rock! Now, as we are driving we are constantly on the lookout for places that we can stop for viewing and photos, some of them “official” and some,  just areas that we can safely pull off the road. For the “official” areas there is often a sign a couple of km in advance informing us of an upcoming “official” site and, as we had just seen one of these advance signs, we were anticipating the turn off.  We came to a fairly sharp turn in the road and there immediately in front of us was the turn off which we managed to negotiate. This turn in the road, we learned later,  is called La Côte Surprise, and we were indeed surprised because there in front of us was the famous Rock!

This is NOT the Percé rock.

T

This is the Percé Rock

Percé Rock (Rocher Percé, "pierced rock") is a huge sheer rock formation at the tip of Gaspé Peninsula off the Baie de Percé. It is one of the world's largest natural arches located in water and is considered a geologically and historically rich natural icon of Québec.  It's difficult to grasp the size of the rock which they say is 88 meters high. The last photo with the building on the nearby mainland may provide some perspective on the size and the map locates the rock and the larger nearby island in relation to the mainland.

Fortunately, here we found one of few open information places so we were able to get the information we needed to best see and photograph the rock. At one of the recommended locations there was a boardwalk in a sad state of repair due, I learned in an extended conversation with a local man I met on an intact part of the boardwalk, to serious storms this past winter.

During this delightful conversation we also exchanged some information about our personal family histories and each of our careers! He accommodating, as we Anglophones generally assume they will do, to my inability to communicate in French.

I have to say that on this trip I have found it particularly embarrassing that I cannot speak French and I that come into a French speaking community automatically assuming that, since I cannot speak French,  they will accommodate by speaking English!  It’s an arrogance of a large part of the English speaking world and I am not happy to be one of those, especially in “bilingual” Canada and especially since I have French roots! Thankfully, most folks here are willing and able to accommodate.or this trip would have been much more difficult for us.

On to the city of Gaspé and our motel, the Adams Motel, where I was informed the they do not accept pets! Here is my opportunity to vent my view of the "middle men",  both those on line and through 800 numbers. These groups, I have found during this adventure, to be much less than helpful.  My experience has been that they know nothing  about the location of the motel/hotel, or about the facility for which  they are supposed to be arranging a reservation. And, if a reservation is finally completed it may well not be what you expect. The Adams motel incident was only one example of problems we had with these folks who are far removed from the accommodation. On several occasions I gave up in frustration. When we could find a phone number for the actual facility, which is often not possible if the facility is not in the CAA books, things went smoothly. At the Adams motel, an exception was made so, in the end,  we were able to stay.