Gaspésie

Last Sunday, we were the last vehicle on our ferry to cross the St. Lawrence and enjoyed our 2 1/4 hour crossing, but unfortunately did not spot any more whales. We spent much of the week on the Gaspé (sounds like gas bay) Peninsula - it was wonderful. Our good luck with the language continued, and we were able to get by with our basic understanding of French. Our first day on the peninsula we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset, though it was behind us as we were driving.

Piton loved the view out the back window. She is pretty good at noticing stuff - like the wolf we saw our first morning in the Gaspé region. For the record, Piton doesn't like wolves, horses, squirrels, or chipmunks.

Gaspé Sunset

We did stop several times to photograph the sunset (and of course by "we" I mean Ian).

There are a ton of lighthouses along the coast - apparently there were lots of shipwrecks back in the day. We did a tour of the tallest one in Canada, which is still operating.

Also on the Gaspé Peninsula, we spent a bit of time in Forillion National Park. Again we were able to explore the beauty of yet another of Canada's National Parks. Highlights from our time here include...

Pretty waterfalls

and lots of wildlife.

We saw a bunch of porcupines, and Piton apparently likes them. She found one on the trail out to the Cap-Gaspé (the point of the peninsula) that both Ian and I had apparently walked by. We also saw a huge bull moose one morning on our way out to watch the sunrise at Cap-Bon-Ami. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of it, but I've never seen such a moose with such a big rack!

We also headed over to Percé, which is known for its "pierced" rock and northern gannets (a type of bird). We did a boat tour out to Bonaventure Island (provinical park) to see the gannets, and the boat goes in close to the rock for a better view. You can walk out to the rock during low tide, but it's not safe because of frequent rock fall. I have a feeling you get a better photo when you are a little further back anyways - although it would have been fun to get your picture taken in the middle of the hole!

Perce Rock

The gannets on Bonaventure Island were a little overwhelming. They are beautiful birds with a wingspan of about 6 feet.

Gannet

The neat part about Bonaventure Island is that this is the largest gannet nesting colony in North America - there are over 150,000 birds here. This clip really only shows maybe a third of the birds on top of the cliff, there a bunch more living on the wall of the cliff - all on the east facing side so they get the morning sun to warm the egg and babies.

They are incredibly beautiful (assuming you can get past the overwhelming stench). It was definitely a worthwhile afternoon to hike across this little island and see the birds.

We stopped in the village of Gaspé to see the Jacques Cartier Monument National Historic Site. Reading his notes from the monument with my bias / morals, it's pretty shocking and racist, but as the 475th anniversary of his arrival in North America there was a bit of a to-do in town.

There are six of these large metal plates, with pictures on one side and different quotes on the other.

Our last major stop in Quebec was in the town of Bonaventure (complete different location from the island). We went to the BioParc, which although it's not normally my thing it was kind of cool. They had lynx, mountain lions, wolves and sea otters, among other animals. Although the lynx have a reputation for being solitary, they were quite social with us. We sat beside the fence and he came right over to check us out.

The other animal highlights...

A wolf that looked just like the one Piton found us only a few days earlier.

A mountain lion who actually seemed like it would like to eat us.

A moose who was a little distracted, he seemed more interested in chasing the two cows (female moose) around the habitat.

Caribou! Apparently we may see more of these in Gros Morne National Park over in Newfoundland!

We spent a day or so on Prince Edward Island, and didn't end up really getting that into it. We went to watch the sunset on the northwest corner of the island, missed it by a few minutes, but did enjoy this view:

We headed from PEI to North Sydney, Nova Scotia to catch the ferry to Newfoundland. When they say "book ahead" they mean more than 15 hours, so we ended up booking our passage on the 11:30am ferry Monday morning. We went over to the park on Saturday evening and spent the day on Sunday exploring the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We'll get those photos downloaded later another time and share those in the next post. In the meanwhile we are really amped about Newfoundland and planning on spending a week and a half or so out there.