The little electric heater we bought at Matane, worked well last night. I have one sitting on the shelves at home and considered bringing it, but it still sits on the shelves at home. When we took Spice for her evening walk, it had cooled considerably. In fact, most of yesterday wasn’t what you would call warm. Carol said it all last night, “it’s the first week of September and I’m wearing a ski jacket!” So this morning as I prepared to take Spice for a morning walk, I dressed as I thought would be appropriate: undershirt, tee shirt, long sleeve heavy weight shirt and my ski jacket. For you purist, I also wore jeans, socks and shoes. It wasn’t really that cold; in fact it felt warmer then the previous evening. However, as we got down towards the shoreline, away from the trees, the wind became very apparent. As I would look out at the water, it was white capping with a pretty steady 15 mph wind. But then you would see an area of water roiling black suddenly burst with liquid smoke as the white caps exploded into mist driven by a 40 mph gust. It was awesome to watch.
After breakfast, we three merry travelers took the Dakota to the south side of the peninsula, where you can hike out to Shipshead rock and light house. This is still with in the National Park but is a different recreational area. On the way, we stopped at La Chute, a nice waterfall area with a loop hike of one kilometer. The trail is entirely boardwalk and very well maintained. We passed through primarily evergreens, but after we crossed the stream and climbed up the opposite side, we were in a large
Then it was on to the South Sector. We drove to Les Graves. There we parked the truck for the four kilometer hike to Cap Gaspe and the light house. When you start out, you have a choice. You can walk along a gravel service road to the end of the peninsula, or you can take the trail. The trail extends along the water, then crosses the service road to climb to the top of the ridge, before descending a short distance down to the lighthouse. The service road was fine as it gave us some nice views of the
Once back at the lighthouse, we ate the snack we had brought. The area around the lighthouse is similar to a small park with benches and picnic tables. So we sat down in the shade, broke out the banana bread I had baked, grabbed water bottles and a bowl for Spice and dug in. Thirty minutes later with food in our tummies and our fluid replenished, it was time to start back. We opted for the trail which climbed a short distance to the ridgeline. The wind we had earlier in the day had all but disappeared. The sun was high overhead and it got warm. The trail through the forest provided almost full shade and cooler temperatures. Along the way, we passed several pines which had been uprooted by high winds, but had not fallen as they were held erect by the denseness of the adjacent trees. The trail took us across the service road and down toward the water. On the lower trail, there were no trees, but an abundance of wild flowers. Carol was in photog heaven. Finally, back at the truck, we gave Spice some more water and headed home. Spice did well when you figure we covered over 10 kilometers during our walks today.
Tomorrow we are off to another destination, we just don’t know where it will be. But before we go, the is a hike from Cap Bon Ami, named for a sea captain Bonamy, to a look out tower on Mont St. Alban. It is only 1.8K but climbs 282 meters. No, I haven’t done the math, but looking at the tower from the parking lot, it appears to be a nearly vertical climb.
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