u/whateverfyou

Just got back from a terrific 12 day road trip in your beautiful area. I got some great recommendations from this sub so I want to report back.

Day 1 - Quebec City. We camped at a GoVan site at Baie de Beauport. So close to the city and yet not accessible on foot or public transit. Dinner at La Souche, breakfast at l’Antiquare, food shopping at Les Halles Cartier.

Day 2 - We camped at PN des hautes gorges de a Malbaie. Spectacular! 14km hike kicked our ass.

Day 3 - Musée de La Drave. Really charming and interesting owner. Camped at PN des Grandes Jardins. Spectacular and completely different landscape to hautes gorges. Shorter hike. Campsite up on a plateau with clear starry sky all around.

Day 4 - After exploring the west shore of the fjord we camped at PN de la pointe Taillon on Lac St Jean. Just nice but chosen for location. All SÉPAQ campgrounds are great though. La Pulperie was really interesting! We just wandered around the ruins, didn’t feel the need to go inside. Free!

Day 5 - Drove around Lac St Jean. Not that interesting but my husband wanted to do this. Camped at Ste Rose du Nord on the fjord. We visited this town last year and were totally charmed. Camping La Descente Des Femmes, dinner at Cafe Rose and breakfast at the Restaurant le 3G did not disappoint.

Day 6 - Explored the east side of the fjord. Dinner at Microbrasserie Tadoussac. I love the hippie vibe in this place. Camped at the municipal campground in Les Escoumins. Kiboikoi, the local cafe, has that hippie vibe again.

Day 7 - Baie Comeau. Camped at Parc Nature de Pointe-aux-Outardes. Nice hiking through dunes, salt marsh, boreal forest and peat bogs. Very windy but great star gazing and the showers are wonderful. We had delicious breakfasts at La Créperie de la Reine.

Day 8 - Thanks to this sub, we drove up to Manic 5. You didn’t mention that it’s a beautiful drive! The road is in good condition and very hilly and twisty. Gorgeous views! The drivers are super aggressive though. There’s is no cel reception. The dam is enormous. We wanted to keep going to the Eye but beyond Manic 5 the road becomes gravel immediately so we chickened out. I don’t know if you can even see the reservoir. We camped back on point des outardes at a Camp St-Paul Gîtes plein air. They were closing for the season but kindly let us stay.

Day 9 - We drove up to Sept-Îles just to say we did. Ate at Pub St Marc, the only place that seemed to have any character. Although if my French was better I’d go to Taverne Chez Louis for a beer. That place looks like fun! Camped back down near Colombes at a municipal campsite overlooking a little cove. Beach combing in the morning. Magical!

Day 10 - Back down to camp again at Les Escoumins. Whale watching from the gorgeous rocks at Cap de bon désir. Lots of belugas and a last minute fin whale!

Day 11 - Took the ferry from Tadoussac and drove down to Baie des Rochers. Nice little loop hike with a view. Back up to Les Bergeronnes where we had booked a tent platform right on the rocks at Mer et Monde. For the first time, the weather forecast was not good, rain and high winds, but we decided to tough it out since this experience was the inspiration for this whole trip. The campsite was quite difficult to navigate in daylight and downright treacherous in the dark. But it was absolutely beautiful and we did see whales and seals. Right before we left, a pair of fin whales surfaced and blew right in front of our site!

Notes:

It was a little late in the season so things were closed or closing. Before Oct. 1 would probably be better.

It is possible to find openings at the parc nationales without booking way in advance although it may be single nights or midweek. I love SEPAQ. You’ve got a great organization there!

I also love the little towns for the municipal campgrounds. Most are first-come-first-serve so ideal for us. We wanted to leave our schedule loose. And the trails they provide are also great. I feel like small towns in Ontario don’t understand how these things bring business or maybe the Quebec government provides funding. I’m sure Ontario does not.

Next year: Gaspésie!!!

Merci à tous!

We’re camping right now in Quebec in our Honda Odyssey mini van. This is a new experience for us so we haven’t invested much. We sleep on a platform in the back and then basically camp like normal people: stove on the picnic table, minimal kitchen set up. We’re having a great time. But it does feel a little odd that everyone else are in full on $80k Van Life vans. Our neighbours pulled in in front of us tonight and had hot showers behind their van right in our faces. It’s just bizarre! There’s one guy sleeping in the back of his Honda civic keeping it real.

I’ll be in QC tomorrow on a road trip up the north shore. I want to stock up on picnic type foods like fruit, cheese, rillettes, canned fish, bread, snacks, etc. Where should I go?

Is it just the big chains? I’d like to support restaurants that prepare their own food and use local suppliers.

I just finished Night Train to Tangier by Kevin Barry. It’s written in short paragraphs that just give you splotches of story, it’s almost like poetry but within the first couple of pages, I had a fully fleshed out movie running in my head. It was magical.
The writing style reminded me of Jenny Offil. The plots are completely different but the writing is similarly minimal. Just a few sentences and then on to the next paragraph but the writing is so strong, you can fill in the gaps. It’s thrilling.

Does anyone have a recommendation for something similar? Or know what this still of writing is called? Is this plotless fiction? I feel like they’re still good stories, not without plot.

I have started to see huge black roaches in my kitchen late at night. We had them many years ago and was able to get rid of them with some baits we got in Alabama. They were those black plastic things but with very large openings, larger than anything sold around here. I see similar on line but I want to make sure they’re big enough. Can anyone recommend a specific product?

My family are huge fans of peppermint stick ice cream but it has to be the old fashioned kind with red and green peppermint stick bits that kind of melt into ripples. The ice cream is more pink than white. Dorman’s, a very old dairy bar in Thomaston, Maine, makes my Gold Standard. Peppermint stick has always been my father’s favourite flavour so he confirms that Dormans is like what he grew up with. You can find it at other dairies in Maine because the old fashioned flavours are still popular there but if I see it outside of Maine it’s always the wrong flavour. Dorman’s didn’t make peppermint stick for quite a while after the pandemic because they couldn’t get the right candy. So, does anyone know what that candy is? Is it peppermint and the red and white candy is some other kind of mint? Or maybe the red part is peppermint and the green part is wintergreen or spearmint or ? Recipes always just say “peppermint stick” without any further specification.

I always wondered why Kingston MP Mark Gerretsen was allowed to openly and immediately advocate for a stop in Kingston, a change to Alto’s government mandate. Why didn’t Carney tell him to shut up and toe the party line? I wondered if Gerretsen was acting on Carney’s orders. Now when I compare this with the gag order on Toronto Liberal MPs around the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport, I’m sure of it. This was the plan all along.

When I plugged in my Samsung portable SSD T5 to my 2025 Mac Air this morning, I got a message that it was no longer supported or will soon not be supported by the Mac OS (Im Tahoe) and to download a new driver or something. I went to the Samsung site and started the process by downloading their app Magician but the download got caught in a loop where it wanted me to restart but my Mac wouldn't let me restart without quitting the software and the software wouldn't quit, and so on. I finally force quit the software but now my Mac doesn't mount the drive and it doesn't show up in Disk Utility or Magician. Any suggestions?

I need to book a last minute trip for a family funeral 2 people x Toronto - Amsterdam return. Booking the same flights at the same fare level, the points option is more expensive. Make this make sense to me.

$1,042.00 + $421.84 fees

104,200 points + $1744.24 fees

I just learned that there’s only a two week window for pruning. I’m trying to determine if I pruned them too late last year.