L’automne 2024: Day 3: Tadoussac, QC: Belugas!

There are plenty of things I don’t understand. People are just 7.951 billion of those things. We settled in for a lovely night sleep down by the harbour. Around 1000, the third RV of the group parked on our port side arrived. You might think that in a pretty empty parking lot that they would pick a nice open spot. Nope. They backed in so close that Mrs Milddogs could have reached out and touched the hand of the driver of the offending class C. Whatever. Except, said class C had large slideouts so after they got all levelled they realized that their slideouts would hit our van and they had to move over 2 feet and do it all again. Screw you Mr Class(less) C. I was at least (not) amused to see that Tony and Barb also got a close parking neighbour in the night. Some pictures.

Enough griping about close parkers. The mission on my morning walk was to scope out the street closures and report back if we had an escape path. We did! The other interesting thing I noticed was the light standards covered with padding along the route for the bicycle route. Having watched the Netflix series “Tour de France: Honestly, no more doping”, I now know why those covers may be important.

Upon returning to the van after I short walk, I could hear the soothing voice of Julie McCoy beamed across Quebec City from the cruise ship that had recently docked. Don’t google what became of Lauren Tewes, it’s a bit sad.

We departed Quebec City at around 0915 headed for Tadoussac. Even though it is only 300km or so, it’s not a quick drive. Our first stop was at a farm to pick up some things I don’t like at the farm shop.

Back to the highway towards Tadoussac we went. If you have never driven from Quebec City to Tadoussac, you could assume that since they are both at “river level” it would be a smooth level drive along the river. Nope. You go up to 600, 700 meters of elevation several times and then drive down to river level again and again. Here is a cool picture Barb shot of our van barrelling towards the river below.

We split off the main highway and took the coastal road for part of the journey. Rather pretty and occasionally frightening. Sure, I drove past the turn off to the coastal road, but we recovered well.

We took an early lunch stop in St-Irenee (insert appropriate accents here). It’s a beautiful little spot. We walked out on the wharf. We ate lunch at a picnic table on the wharf. Mrs Milddogs and Barb stepped into the frigid waters of the St Lawrence. We saw a seal.

From St-Irenee we headed to the ferry to Tadoussac. It’s free! Even better, as we approached we could see Beluga whales in the river. I tried to contain my excitement and keep my eyes on the road for fear of driving down the fjord into the river. From the ferry we could see even more. This was great as we had not seen Belugas last time we were here.

After arriving in Tadoussac, we headed over to the trail at the confluence of the rivers. Last time we did not see any whales at this location. This time, we had to wait a fairly long time for the Belugas to come back into view. Didn’t they know we were waiting? We also saw one other non-identified non-Beluga whale. After just an hour in Tadoussac we had accomplished our goal of seeing whales. That might be a good thing.

Eventually we headed up to the campground, Camping Tadoussac. It’s a very nice reminder as to why we hate campgrounds. Loud and cramped. Oh well. There are not many options here and the campground we stayed at last time was fully booked. Turns out there is some migratory bird festival about to start and the Ultra Beluga running race is tomorrow. What is it with races? And why do people bring children camping during the school year? Hopefully it will quiet down. The view, from the right spot is Instagram perfect. In fairness, we lucked into these side by side spots as they had been fully booked and they are not at all the worst spots in the campground. We can see the river from our van. Here are some shots.

Shower review time. Yup, my first shower of the trip. The showers here get a 4/10. They are relatively private. A bit small. Cost $0.50 for 4 minutes of uncontrolled temperature (just about right) acceptably pressurized water. The shower curtain is dark so any mold is hard to see. But after 3 days, it felt good enough.

Tomorrow the plan is to move over to the other whale watching spot we like and basically just camp there for the day. It’s a secret. We will probably break camp here and then do coffee, breakfast and morning walk over there.

That’s about it from here for now. Sorry for being grumpy, just don’t be a close parker and send those kids to bed at 1930.

Come on baleine!