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Published: June 24th 2011
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Start of the 2 week trip through Gaspe and New Brunswick Acadian Penninsula.
Paul got out of school on June 17th, so on the 18th we headed out for a 2 week holiday. A chance to see things we may not get to if we have to travel all the way from Alberta another summer. Saturday the 18th we travelled from Quebec City up the north shore of the St. Lawrence to Tadoussac. To get to Tadoussac, you cross the Sagueney river via a ferry. We were really hoping to see whales, especially Belugas on the crossing, as both Claude and I have seen them there in the past, but we were not in luck today. The whales come to the mouth of the Saguenay as there are a lot of fish there. We had hoped to go the aquarium there, but it hadn’t opened for the season.
Sunday morning, we were up very early to drive 45 min further up the St. Lawrence to Forestville. Here we caught the morning ferry across to Rimouski. Again we were hoping for whales (that had been the whole purpose of travelling up the north shore), but again, no luck. A bit
"People" into the tide
by artist Marcel Gagnon in Saint Flavie north of Rimouski we stopped for the boys to have their first exploration of the beaches along the St. Lawrence. It was at an artist’s place where he has placed concrete figures in a line out into the water. As well as several figures up along the top of the shore. Rather interesting art work. The boys had a great time at the beach gathering shells. We found mostly mussel shells here, but the boys were very excited to find some empty crab shells and a sea urchin. We have now started a shell collection.
Between Mont Joli and Matane we stopped to visit the Jardins de Metis. I had read about this amazing garden in some of my gardening magazines so wanted to visit it. It certainly didn’t disappoint. It was an amazing network of gardens intermixed into the surrounding woodlands, created by Elsie Reford – a very wealthy Montrealer – starting back in the 1920s. Even with it being early inthe season there were many plants in bloom. I loved it. Claude thought it was the most impressive he had seen and even Paul, who loves gardens too, really enjoyed it. These gardens are famous for their
blue Himalayan poppies. Unfortunately they don’t bloom till July, but I did buy some seeds to bring home. They are supposed to be very difficult to grow, but I’ll give them a try. The lady told me that they like it very cold. The package says zone 4, but I didn’t tell her that zone 4 was way warmer than my growing climate at home!
The weather has been very cloudy, foggy and sometimes rainy on the trip so far, but we did manage to get some sunshine at the gardens which was good. Temperatures have been around a high of 10, so colder than normal. We stopped for the night in Sainte Anne des Monts.
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