Day 8-10 Cap-aux-Os & Perce

We saw our first bit of rain on day 8 of this trip. We visited Forillon National Park.

Before the Government made it a park, it was a community of fisherman, mostly cod fish. The coast of Gaspe is where the finest cod in all America is cured. It is well-known on the markets of Spain and Italy where it is the preferred fish. They would fish hundreds of pounds per day that needed to be dried to be preserved. It was known as the “Gaspe Cure,” dried code from the Gaspe was famous for its pale, translucent appearance and its virtual imperishability. They used a quality curing process inherited from the 16th century which thrived throughout the 19th century.

The area is now a national forest where they have a General Store set up from the late 1800, early 1900 era. The clerk was trying to get Bill to open up an account.

We also visited a house and barn. In the barn, we found graffiti dating back to late 1800. Bill found graffiti from PS Horton who arrived on Bill’s birthday, May 24, only it was 1907.

We got back to the park in time to spend the evening celebrating one of our guest’s 40th wedding anniversary. We hope on our 40th we will be on a wonderful trip like this.

The next day was the most beautiful drive so far around the Gaspe Peninsula.

Once at our RV park, the view was breathtaking. We had a beautiful view of Bonaventure Island and “The Rock.”

We had a hot dog roast overlooking “Land’s End”, what a beautiful sunset that was. The rock seems to change colors “kinda-sorta” like it does in Bryce Canyon.

Our boat ride over to the island gave us a close look at this unique rock,

as well as the other side of the island, where we found the colony of gannets, the largest colony in North America and the second largest in the world.

The birds were everywhere, swimming, flying and nesting on the rocks. When they dive into the water from the air, they hit the water at over 100 miles per hour, or was that kilometers? Hmmmm…..

We even saw some puffins amongst them.

Once we unloaded onto the island, we hiked across the island, which was 5.6 km roundtrip, to get a closer glimpse of the gannets. It was worth the uphill hike! Wow, what a sight! There were thousands! They were so fun to watch.

We didn’t spend as long as we would have liked because we had to hurry back to our car to get back on the road again to backtrack to get our truck and trailer that we left in Metis-sur-mer. We saw “Mutual fencing, mutual preening, territorial defense, sky pointing, and regurgitation.”

Our truck was fixed today. It had another bad fuel injector. This was a different fuel injector from the one that went bad last year, and there are 8 fuel injectors! 6 more to go….Thank goodness for the extended warranty!!.

Day 5-7 Metis-sur-Mer, Gaspe

Our next driving day was unfortunately not uneventful. 60 miles into the trip one of our guest’s truck brakes locked up. Luckily we weren’t too far away, so we unhooked our truck to go back and pull their trailer to an RV park while they waited a day for their truck to get fixed. Meanwhile, another guest who was 70 miles ahead of us had all their cabinets over the driver and passenger seats of their motor home fall down, leaving it undriveable.

Luckily Bill is handy and fixed the problem and they were on their way. As if that wasn’t enough, the guest we just helped was just feet from the entrance of the park and ended up putting their rig in a ditch

just as we discovered that our truck is blowing out black smoke AGAIN so I guess a sensor is going bad.……So our 230 mile day turned into 13 hours in the truck for us.

We found a Ford Dealership 25 miles away and were told they will look at it on Monday or Tuesday. Hmmmmm this is Friday…..

We spent the day at Reford Gardens. Luckily we found out before we left that the bugs were biting terribly there, so we were prepared. At the entrance is a huge lawn chair, so of course we had to get our pictures.

They had a small museum with replicas. Bill was about to use the restroom

NO, NO, Bill, that’s just for show!!!!

What a beautiful garden.

Bill and I both were practicing with our new cameras. Unfortunately, we have a lot more practicing to do.

Since our truck was not fixed, we had to leave with our rental car. Don’t think it’s going to pull like our truck….

We found the most unique looking homes.

On our way to Cap-aux-Os, Gaspe, many of us stopped at the Nordais Wind Park “Eole”.

Our guide, Rene spoke very good English and was very excited to explain to us how windmills work. In the center of the park is the tallest vertical-axis wind generator in the WORLD!

That generator costs $37 million to build. As we went inside this generator, we were shown all the mechanics of what makes it run.

There was also a small windmill on display. This windmill at the cost of $75,000-$100,000 can power 3 houses.

The smaller windmills, the ones we are most familiar with, cost $200,000 per blade. They use 3 blades per windmill with each blade weighing 9 tons. Those are the blades you might see a tractor trailer hauling down the highway. I didn’t realize they had brakes! Below is a picture of the windmill with its brakes on.

One of the good things about us not having our trailer were some of the steep grades. They are not quite like out west because they are much shorter, but they are just as steep.

Since we were in a car instead of pulling our RV, we were able to visit a beautiful lighthouse

What a view!