Monday the 23rd and the sun is shining

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We were away from our lovely spacious Montreal flat by 8:15, fortunately heading away from the main flow of traffic. Within 30 mins we were out of the city and into the calmer countryside. As we drove northwest towards the national park, we realized that we were indeed late for the leaves, but the tamaracks were still brilliant. Kent Ohio has some of these artic wonders – deciduous but with needles. A local told us that the recent rains and winds made everything fall a bit early.

Once at the park we dutifully paid our entrance, even though no one was there. The roads were sometimes paved, sometimes not, but were a lot better than the state parks in upper Michigan where we go looking for petosky stones. We were soon rewarded by seeing a Rough Grouse on the road (not a new bird for us) and a horned lark (also not new). We aimed for Lac du Sable, a large lake with good ebird reporting and a dark sky location. Yes, Canadian Jays were curious and came calling, and almost ate the nuts out of another photographer’s hands. We also saw a lovely white winged cross bill – second new bird of the day. Many of them in fact. It was fun chatting with the Canadiens here. I enjoyed the interesting vegetation as well, including many different mushrooms, Megan.

On the way out we saw a male loon and then a female with 2 young.

It took another hour to get to our little place in Mont Tremblant, which has 102 ski runs and lots of lifts and such we will try to explore tomorrow. We found a waterfall with a red-breasted merganser and met a nice Swiss family. They got chatting about how the local French differ in pronunciation and even words. They say bWe drove as far up the mountain as we could (lots of fancy chalets and homes), seeing some more lovely trees lit by the setting sun, and a blue moose in the parcours area, for some reason!

We sent a note to our hostess asking how to get to the top, as the lifts only go on weekends off-season and she said there are steps. Oh yeah right. It's a vertical drop of 2116/!! it's 2800' in elevation. Right now in fact it's 36F. Has many experts only runs! no thanks.

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