Seetheworld2: July 2012 Quebec Part 2 of 2

When we entered Canadian customs, they were not busy; in fact they were looking for something to do. I wanted to get some wildlife photos in Canada, but guess they misunderstood me when I told them the purpose of my trip was to “Shoot some moose”. They decided they would search our RV. Two agents went through every compartment in the RV looking for drugs, weapons, sex workers, aliens and rednecks. They automatically assume that all Americans carry weapons. Well, they didn’t find any contraband.

We set up camp across the St Lawrence River from Old Quebec City. We would park the RV and take the ferry right to the Old City. We spent two days exploring the historical part of town. We even took a sightseeing boat down the river. We moved across the river, visited the Aquarium of Quebec and stayed at a timeshare 20 km NE of Quebec City. From here we saw many local attractions and waterfalls. We planned the rest of our trip, making camping reservations for the next 6 weeks. The most impressive sight was St. Anne Basilica Beaupre; on par with the best churches in Europe or Russia.

We were surprised to find that Quebec has its own National Parks, run by SEPAC. There is no connection with Canadian National Parks. First we took a day trip to Grand-Jardins NP where we did some hiking. We were not impressed with the park although it was a scenic area. Next we had 5 nights in Jacques-Cartier NP. We loved this park! Plenty of hiking, biking, and canoeing and we did it all; such a treasure and less than an hour from Quebec City. We saw 2 moose on our canoeing trip. Next we stayed at the Wildlife Preserve of the Laurentians. It sounded interesting, but turned out to be basically a hunting and fishing camp. We drove back to Jacques-Cartier NP for two more days of hiking.

We moved north into the Saguenay Valley and visited Monts-Valin NP. We did some nice hikes there, but it was difficult getting around the gravel roads park in a RV, so it was just a one day visit. Don’t know if the rough roads were to blame, but our TV died that day and replacement will have to wait until Oct. No Olympics for us. We visited some local attractions that dealt with the history of the area and learned how important hydro power was to develop the local pulp processing and alum smelting (ALCOA) plants. We even saw a multimedia show inside a former elevated water storage tank!

The Saguenay Valley is a cyclist paradise with 100’s of KM of trails. Point-Taillon NP is basically a cycling park with a bike trail around and across the entire park. We biked through the park in hopes of seeing at least one of the many moose that live in the park, but the moose were camera shy.

The last park we visited in this area is Fjord-du-Saguenay NP. This large park (319 sq. km) covers most of the coastline of this 105 km long fjord; the world’s longest fjord at such a low latitude. The main attraction here is the marine life in the fjord. Unusual as it may seem, a group of Beluga whales call this fjord home. We watched 20 of them feeding from shore. This was the first time we saw Belugas in the wild. We also took a private zodiac ride across the fjord, and saw grey seals. There are also minke whales in the fjord, but we didn’t pay for a whale watching tour to see them.