Monday, September 3 - Today is Labor Day in Canada, just like in the United States. In a National Park Campground, you can just FEEL the season change. When we arrived yesterday, the campground was FULL. At least no empty sites in our loop. There were lots of families, people talking, children laughing and playing in the streets. This morning we are surrounded by empty campsites.
It's different, too because Mom got up feeling lousy and decided to go back to bed. Dad and I went for a walk in the quiet campground and had breakfast. Dad left me to take care of Mom and he went to the beach.
I did a good job and Mom was feeling better in the afternoon, so they took a drive over to the North side of the park. The cliffs are bigger there.
They saw another lighthouse on a big bay.
They went through a town that still derives much of it's income from fishing.
After their drive, Mom and Dad came back to me and we all had dinner in the motor home.
Tuesday, September 4 - Today Mom and Dad decided to hike to Land's End. That is the far tip of the Peninsula and is 4.2 kilometers from the nearest road. They started out along the beach.
Eventually, they came to the Cape Gaspe' Lighthouse.
Finally, another 1/4 mile, and they reached Land's End.
It was a warm day, so they decided to go on the hike and then come home and shower. I was glad to see them for a while. They had lunch. I watched. 😞 I don't get lunch. Just breakfast and dinner.
When they were clean, they went into the town of Gaspe' to the Musee de la Gaspesie to learn about the local history. In particular, the museum focused on the impact of the Cod Fishing Industry. It's a relatively new museum, so they had a "3D Virtual Reality Experience" that took them out on a fishing trawler, as well as the standard types of exhibits found in a Museum.
The museum had a restored fishing trawler that was featured in the 3D Experience. I thought the chairs next to it were pretty cool. They enjoyed the Museum.
Mom and Dad got to go on the boat and see the trawling lines and the buoys that were used to mark the location of the lines.
After the Museum, they decided to go out for dinner and chose a restaurant called Brise-Bise (roughly translated means Kiss of Breeze). They really enjoyed it. Mom order the Mussels and Frites (French Fries). They brought her a HUGE bowl of mussels. In fact, Dad ate some of them and still she brought home a big container of them. Dad had something they called Seafood Crouton. It came in a 1/2 order and a full order. He got the 1/2 order and it was 1/2 a large roll (kind of like a hamburger bun). It had a variety of seafood on it with some sort of a creamy sauce. All of that was topped with cheese and then broiled. Mom said she got a couple bites of it and it was VERY good.
Wednesday, September 5 - Today we left Forillon National Park and drove to Perce'. It was only about 60 miles, so we got in early. Mom and Dad drove into town to the tourist information and then went to look at the rock that makes Perce' famous.
Perce' Rock
Looking down over the town of Perce'
Many of the cliffs around Perce' are red rock.
Mom thought this one was particularly attractive.
Another view of Perce' Bay. Our campground is on the point in the distance.
On the way home, Mom and Dad stopped at the grocery store. They bought cream and shrimp, so that Dad could turn Mom's leftover mussels into Mussels and Shrimp in a cream sauce over pasta. It sure looked good.
One of the other things that we needed was milk. Buying milk in Canada is an interesting experience. First, you get four liters (a gallon is 3.78 liters, so it's a little more) in a bag. Yes, I said in a bag.
Our bag of milk. All that holds it closed is a plastic thing that
looks like the thing you find on a loaf of bread in the states. Oh, this
looks like a mess waiting to happen.
When you open the outer bag, there are 3 smaller bags inside.
As if the bag isn't weird enough, Mom thought that it would be 4 bags
of 1 liter each inside. Not sure who came up with the idea to make it 3 bags
of 1.33 liters each. These bags are sealed, so you obviously need
to cut them open, but then what?
Well, we didn't know either, so Dad Googled it. Turns out that they sell plastic pitchers at the store. We saw the bags when we were in Quebec City, so got a pitcher at Wal-Mart before we left Quebec City, so we are prepared. Y just snip the corner of the bag and pour (carefully!!). Our container has a snap on lid, like Tupperware (not shown). Dad also learned from Google that 60% of Canada's milk is sold in bags. It's about 80% here in the Maritime provinces and they've been doing it like this since the 1970's. Before that, milk was sold in glass jugs that were heavy and then needed to be returned and washed for reuse. It really makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it. When you are done, you only have 4 bags to go in the trash. Not a bunch of plastic jugs. Milk is sold by the single liter in cardboard containers, like the states, but it's much more expensive to buy it that way.
Speaking of prices, before we came, we'd heard that Milk is more expensive in Canada and we've recently learned that the Maritime Region (where we are) is the most expensive in Canada. Our 4 liter bag of milk cost $6.34 Canadian. By the time you convert liters to gallons and Canadian dollars to US dollars, that's about $4.75/gallon in US dollars. By comparison, we've been paying around $2 at home and anywhere from 67 cents to about $2.50 in the US. Yup, we bought milk for 67 cents a gallon in Indiana!
Well, that's quite a lot of info. Hope you enjoyed it. I'll try to write soon to tell you more about Perce'.
au revoir,
Doolin
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