O Canada! June 18th - Havre-Saint-Pierre

Day 21 Saturday, June 18^th – Havre-Saint-Pierre  

We were blessed with yet another day of sunshine and clear blue skies.  Yea!

The first order of business was to change our accommodations if we were going to spend another two nights in this town.  The Hotel du Havre was noisy, hot, and the free breakfast was pretty bleak.  We were fortunate enough to secure a room in a private cabin at Gite Lamare, just a few miles out of town.  Wonderful!  Breakfast was lovely, the room was practically brand new and the view was - well see for yourself!

We spent the day strolling along the marina which happened to also have a public laundry facility that we took advantage of.  It was nice to just kick back and enjoy the town.

Havre-Saint-Pierre's picturesque marina

All along the beaches you see these pretty beach peas - members of the sweet pea family

I liked the symmetry of this dandelion against the gray rock

This fellow looked like he was right out of a Tim Burton movie.  The gulls feast on crab near the marina, and leave the remnants of their meals on the walkway.

We were enchanted by this group of eider ducks - a momma and 27 babies!  We were told that mother eiders will take on the young of others when something happens to their mothers.  So this group may well be made up of several clutches.

We could see this from the marina's pavillion where we ate lunches.  Being from New England, and familiar with the-man-formerly-known-as The Old Man of the Mountain, we dubbed her the Old Lady of the Mountain.  See her fancy bonnett? 

That evening we enjoyed the beach in front of Gite Lamare before heading to bed.

Oh Canada! June 17th - Natashquan to Havre-Saint-Pierre

Day 20 Friday, June 17^th –Minganie from Natashquan to Havre-Saint-Pierre  

When we awoke it was a fine morning  to enjoy the last few hours of our trip aboard the Relais Nordik.  We enjoyed breakfast with our fellow travelers and went on deck to see our final glimpses of the Cote Nord area as we approached Natashquan, our debarkation point. 

Pierre Alexandre and Maude

John and one of our fellow passengers

Natashquan is the easternmost village of the Minganie area within Quebec’s Duplessis tourist region.  It is, as are most of the villages along the ferry route, a small native village nestled amid the ancient rock and shoreline of the great St. Lawrence seaway. 

Pierre Alexandre, Maude and some if Pierre Alexandre's students from Pakuashipi who were also aboard the ferry.

Pulling in to Natashquan

The Highlander fresh out of the shipping crate

Natashquan boardwalk

'Les Galets' of Natashquan, a national heritage site that has been in existence for 150 years.  These are sea sheds that were used by villagers when cod was king.

Au revoir Relais Nordik

After saying our goodbyes,  we hopped into the Highlander and headed east to our next night’s destination, Havre-Saint-Pierre.  Along the way we found a number of places to stop and explore.  The first was the village of Aguanish (meaning small shelter in Innu) located along the shores of Riviere Aguanish.  There we found a one lane path leading to a beautiful, secluded shoreline of solid bedrock (Oooh, I just LOVE bedrock shorelines!).  We spent a while walking, taking pictures, eating our lunch and just admiring the unending beauty of this part of the world.  We had hoped to see and possibly ride down the Trait de Scie Canyon near Aguanish, but we saw no signs for it anywhere along the road.  I suspect we were, again, a bit early in the season.  Ah well.

Above and below, looking up one side and down the other of the bedrock shoreline

This lady slipper and rhododendron were growing along the shore

I cannot resist tidal pools!

Do you see the crayfish?  He's not much more than an inch long.

We stopped briefly along the road to take pictures of the Riviere Watshishou as we crossed it.  Another glorious salmon river.  There just is no end to them. 

A special find this day was the small town of Baie-Johan-Beetz.  It is named after a Belgian naturalist who loved the region and founded the Quebec Zoological Society.  There is a park along the shoreline where you can walk along broad flat bedrock surfaces and see all manner of interesting geologic features – fault lines, chatter marks, dikes, potholes, on and on and on.  We were enthralled!

These next 4 pictures give you a view of the town of Baie-Johan-Beetz and the proximity of the park.  Who needs a sand beach when you can have a bedrock beach!

A lone fisherman.  Notice glacial chattermarks in the foreground.  

See the large quartz dikes?  More pictures of them later.

The rest of the pictures are of some of the interesting and beautiful features we noticed in the rock.  I'm tellin' ya, this is a fabulous spot on the Earth.

Here and below are shots of a very visible fault line.

This and the next few pictures show closer up views of the long quartz dike you saw above.  This was just so beautiful!

The hat gives you some scale to see how wide the dike was in spots.

Feel free to use this as your wallpaper.

I'm not sure what this inclusion is, but it adds a lot of texture and interest.

Another wallpaper worth shot.  God, I love sparkly rocks!

And this is interesting.  A circular spot about the size of a silver dollar, if memory serves, that I'm thinking must be a cross sectional view of a dike vs a longitudinal view.

And of course, my obligatory tidal pool denizens.  This fellow, here and below, was perhaps two inches long.

Our day ended in Havre-Saint-Pierre, the largest town we’d seen in several days.  Our hotel, the Hotel du Havre was a bit of a disappointment, and we decided we would look for another place for our remaining two nights in Havre-Saint-Pierre.