Rob-n-Hild, Eastward Ho!

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Forillon National Park - Rimouski 387 km. 5:20 hours. Elevation maximum 292 metres.

Today was a day of driving and enjoying the north shore of the Gaspé Peninsula. Lots of tiny but very busy towns along the way proved that life goes on with fisheries, forestry products, and tourism. It is good to see what appears to be a thriving part of the world.

Mary Jane also got to exercise a bit more with lots of uphill and downhill bits of road. Many had to be taken in second gear - even if the speed limit often was 90 km/h! Other bigger cars zoomed past us, but such is life in a heavily-laden Corolla...

Waking up early in Forillion National Park is a given when you sleep in an Oasis, facing southeast, and without blinds to shut out the rising sun. We could have used our blinds, but what is the fun in that? We are so far east in the eastern time zone that sunrise at 4:20 kind of wakes you up. There was time to catch up on some work emails and card writing.

Then while we were having breakfast and packing up Mary Jane at the same time, we learnt the lesson: "don't leave your car doors open and unattended". We turned around and a nosy chipmunk was rifling through the car looking for treasure and food. We tried a few times to coax it out of the car, but he kept sneaking back in another door. It was clear that visitors before us have fed the little guy as it came right up to us - begging.

Driving through Grande-Vallée made us think we were somewhere in rural USA, nearly every power pole along the road had a cowboy/girl silhouette on it. We've been searching the internet but haven't found a backstory for this choice of decoration. At least we could tell that they were sponsored by BMR - a chain of hardware stores.

We stopped in Matane for lunch. We wanted to visit because our friend, Fiona, has lived here and we found a park to have picnic in next to a salmon ladder. It was fascinating to study the salmon ladder up close. It would be interesting to know how the salmon does find that one little hole in the wall next to the dam where they can enter and climb through a man-made tunnel to the top of the falls. While pondering this mystery we didn't hang around waiting to see an actual salmon climb the ladder. A handwritten poster showed an average of 25 salmon per day, and it turns out that they climb mainly just before sunrise or just after sunset.

So instead, we went for a walk around a fun downtown park. In addition to the typical art piece (this time "variations on triangle", we found a fun swing where an adult could sit in one swing and a baby could sit in another swing attached to it. Talk about close supervision!

Yet again our matching and colourful "Valle IL" jackets helped start a conversion with a local gentleman. He was walking loops in the park - like so many others. He called out to us - in French - something along the line of "Do you have relatives in Grande-Vallée?". That is a town further up the coast. We explained the concept of "Valle Idrettslag" (the sports organization in Hild's home village in Norway) and we shared a good laugh. He then regaled us with stories about his travels around the world since he was 25 - visiting 40 countries including Narvik in Norway, and Goa in India. Rob and him agreed that the area around Goa still has the best food with the yummiest combinations of spices with Portuguese influence. Most of his travels had been in the last 15 years since his retirement. Now he spends his time walking to stay fit and writing books. Such an interesting chat!

Our drive was interrupted on a regular basis by roadworks - although more while Hild was driving for some reason! 'Tis the season for roadworks after all. Some of the contra-flows were managed by a person and a walkie-talkie, while others were by automated traffic lights. We felt comforted by the lights that were counting down to green light. It made the wait a bit more predictable.

After checking in at our hotel in Rimouski, we went for a short walk to have a look around and to help loosen tired muscles from yesterday. Down at the harbor we found their tide tower which indicates by lights if it is high tide or low tide or something in between.

What was even more fascinating was to see and feel the fog blowing in from the St. Laurence River. So odd, the sun was shining, it was 18 Celsius, and the fog did not make us wet even if it looked like rain. Odd.

Back home in our hotel room it was time for noodles for dinner while writing web pages and watching Star Wars movie on the TV - and drinking lots of tea.

Coming up: The hunt for Bonhomme Carnaval and a drive to Montreal.

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