July 25 – To Perce, Quebec

View Larger Map

We saw a strange sight when we woke up this morning. It looked like these city workers were trying to mow this field with whipper snippers.

The drive along the bottom of the Gaspe Peninsula is quite scenic. The highway hugs the coast so you are almost always in sight of Chaleur Bay.

There we no really steep hills and there is a wide shoulder on almost all of it so we saw a lot of people biking. There were hills though.

It was only about 250 km but it took us about 3 1/2 hours because there were a lot of slow speed zones and slower traffic.

Our first glimpse of the rock passing by the crowded highway overlook. People are not very good parkers.

I had booked a site at Camping Cote Surprise about a week ago. It was a good thing I did because this place is pretty full. This is the view from our front window.

Notice in the picture below that I drove into the site head first vs. everyone else backing it. The hookups are at the back of the site so you are supposed to back in but I figured that if I am paying this much for a site because of the view then the view is going to be out my front window.  I also have long enough cables and hoses that I could still connect.

I actually fooled the guy beside me. When he came he parked like me and then realized he couldn’t reach his hookups so he had to turn around.

I went up on the roof to get some more unobstructed pictures.

After having lunch we drove the car into town to poke around. As we were driving in I thought it strange that we saw people hiking the 1.5 km into town rather than driving.

We found out why and we found where all the tourists are, at least the Quebec ones. It was packed. We had to park about 1/2 a km out the other side of town on a little side street and then hike back in.

This is a real tourist town. Lots of motels, restaurants and gift shops. This one had an interesting office.

As we were there, we went down to the beach on the far side of the point from the side with the “good” view.

 

The headland with the cross on it is called Mount Joli. We climbed back up off the beach and found our way over to its base. After paying our $1 admission fee we climbed up the path.

You can’t see the hole from here but we are quite close to the one end.

There is a sand bar that is possible to walk across at low tide but it is very dangerous as there is often rocks falling from the cliffs and the rock itself.

Even though it looked calm there were a lot of sailboats out.

The rock and Bonaventure Island, in the background below, are part of a small National Park. You can take a boat tour around the rock and then land on the island to bird watch or hike. There was a constant stream of boats going back and forth.

There is a huge colony of northern gannets on the island but we just saw cormorants and gulls on the rock.

This is the view back towards town. Our campground is on the start of that far point.

And our RV. It was from this picture that I saw that the guy beside us had initially parked like me.

We headed down to the beach in front of town and then out on the wharf.

This is where all the boats load and unload.

Mount Joli is just to the left of Jennie, below.

At the base of the wharf was a small stage. A group of young dancers and musicians was about to perform so we sat down to watch.

This guy really slowed traffic through town as he plodded along blocking a lane.

We headed back to the RV about 4 pm and stared out the window as we ate much cheaper frozen yogurt from our fridge.

Just for my record we are having problem with the power tonight. Our surge suppressor / power monitor keeps disconnecting us from their supply because the voltage is too low. I checked the voltage at the 30 amp outlet at the post with my meter and it was about 102 when it should be around 118. As soon as I turn anything it drops into the lows 90s and we get cut off. I  checked the 15 amp outlet and it was at 125 so we switched to that for one now and will just be careful with the power. Maybe later people will turn off their air conditioners and the 30 amp power will come back.

On another note, not an English word was heard all day. This is a very French area. Most people can’t speak English at all. That is not a criticism because my French is very limited. It is just that in a tourist town I expected that at least the service people would know some English. They do know the canned response to the standard questions but I tried to ask someone if it was this busy all the time and just got a stare. I could not remember what the word for busy was so I still don’t know. I guess they just do not get many “foreigners” here.

We are moving on tomorrow morning.