Camping Baie de Gaspe & Forillion Nat'l Park

Saturday, June 18, 2011. Today we traveled to the eastern end of the Gaspe Peninsula. I included more of the area to better show where we are.  The distance traveled today is about 212 miles today. I had to buy gas and that should take me into New Brunswick where I ‘m told gas is cheaper than the $1.299 per Liter or $4.92 per Gallon, which is the common price for regular gas in Quebec Province.

Our story for today starts with “It was a dark and stormy night”. Well not really. How about it was mostly a rainy, foggy and just plain nasty day with occasional clearing with the sun almost peeking through before the next shower started. This isn’t a surprise as I was reading various blogs about travel in this region. You should expect and be prepared for rain. These are examples of the rainy, foggy part. You can see the waves splashing close to the road. There were some areas that had been repaired due to the waves washing a portion of the road away. You can see the red cones in one of the portion that was under repair. There are few sandy beaches,  but typically the bottom is rock. As we rode along Jackie & I were impressed by how much this coast line reminded us of the Oregon coast. In the picture on the left below there is a motor home ahead of us. If you look at the albums you will see more pictures of another motor home. It belongs to our friends, Les & Mary, who are full timers and spend the winters at Southern Palms RV Park in Eustis which is about 3.5 miles from our house.  We follow them or they follow us on our travel days.

  

There were many sharp curves and steep hills. The steepest one we were on was 15%. Fortunately these hill aren’t too long so it is fairly easy to control your speed going down. Going uphill the engine is really cranking.

                                        

We made a picture stop at a waterfall, there was a light house nearby.

 

Although the distance we traveled today isn’t all that far, we make it a much longer time wise than you would in a car. We stop frequently for sightseeing and on this day we took about an hour and a half for lunch. As the four of us were finishing up lunch another couple pulled up in their motor home and came in the restaurant, so we stayed around to chat until they were ready to go. There is no rush when you are on RV Time.

More pictures at: http://summer2011jb.shutterfly.com/pictures/855

                                                                                     

Sunday, June 19,2011. The weather had cleared by morning and as I opened the front curtains I had a view of Gaspe Bay. I took a few pictures of the campground and our RV’s

                         

                 

At the eastern end of the peninsula is Forillion National Park. It isn’t all that large in area but has lot of wild life, mountains, cliffs and the sea. There are two main roads. On the western boarder is RT197 and going along the northern and southern borders and through the eastern part is RTE 132. The area bounded by these roads is the largest part of the park. There are only hiking trails here. East of RTE 132 are access roads to the North and South Areas. On our way here, we drove on RTE 132 around the borders of the pakt to the campground which was just west of the South Area entrance road. We started our sightseeing in the South Area.

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 The scenery starts out great and got better as the day went on. At the first stop at Petit-Gaspe we saw seals. Later we were talking to a local person, she told us that there was a colony of harbor seal living here.

                      

Here are some other pictures in the South Area.

                             

In the North Area we started at the Interpretation Center. At the main building we saw a movie about the history of the park and various displays that included aquariums with examples of the local sea life. There was a trail with information signs along the way. The first sign indicated you could do the trail in 20 minutes, with all the stops we made it took us a lot longer. It was windy and with temperature in the 50’s it was on the chilly side.

                          

A lobster trap had apparently broken loose and was washed ashore. There were small pavilions along the way with “comfort stations” (look close between the building and the tree).

After the center our next stop was Cap-Bon-Ami which had some spectacular scenery. One of the park rangers pointed out some whales off shore. I took pictures of the spouts and maybe even a part of a whale (maybe). We could look down at the birds and even saw some perching on the side of the cliffs. There was an observation tower on top of the cliff. The sign said it was 2.3km away but we think they forgot to say that it was 2.3km straight up. Anyway, we decided to skip that one and just enjoyed the scenery where we were.

More pictures at: http://summer2011jb.shutterfly.com/pictures#n_118