L’automne 2024: Day 6: Le-Paradis Marin, QC: More Whales

Things I forgot yesterday (Sept 15th): Happy birthday, Heather. Been a while, let’s chat!

Well hello there! We awoke to many fog horns sounding (vessels have to sound every two minutes in fog conditions). Today began with a lovely walk exploring the forbidden areas of this campground. Fun fact, the boundary of this private campground is several hundred meters from the federal park we went to yesterday. Who knew? I completed my walk by exploring more of this campground. I think your experience at this campground varies with where you are camping. It’s a pretty large space with some inland and some coastal (is that the appropriate term for a tidal river?) sites. We really lucked out with our site. Ping me if you want to know which site we had. Can’t give away all of my secrets.

Post walk we had a relaxed morning during which I was laying in my bed for a bit staring out of the front window and saw the first whale of the day. Not the last whale of the day. Mrs Milddogs made a quiche out of eggs, veg and a stale croissant. Creative and better than the quiche she bought at the fromagerie. Then we headed down to the rocks to watch for whales. We saw more whales. It’s cold in the wind down on the rocks. This time we dressed appropriately. There was a persistent fog on the south side of the river. The boats travelling through it looked eerie. The fog horn soundings subsided with daybreak.

We returned for lunch and enjoyed baguette avec buerre, viande et fromage again. Never get tired of that! While eating we saw another whale from our campsite. Back to the rocks we went. We managed to see a bunch more whales in the afternoon and some more seals. One of the whales seemed different than the others. It was grey in colour and made and obvious spout.

Before dinner, I headed over to the dump station where I kept my record in tact. Good news there as I had an audience of the 8 campers lined up to get into the campground. I dumed today as we were a little full and we have a schedule to keep in the morning. I think I washed my hands afterwards.

For dinner we had lovely stuffed peppers cooked in the 5 minutes at a time convection oven. Why five minutes at a time? This convection / microwave is way too stupidly complex. We have to have the manual handy for every single function. We don’t have the manual so the convention oven defaults to running 5 minutes at a time. Bake some peppers for 25 minutes, just start it 5 times. There is a reason people just remove these things. Dessert was 66% S’mores (we don’t have marshmallows) done in the aforementioned convection oven.

Post dinner we watched the moonrise and saw a few more whales from our campsite while we visited with Tony and Barb. A beautiful evening with just enough chill to keep the mosquitos at bay. I was hoping to get a shot of whales in the moonlight. That did not happen.

While we have seen a lot of whales, we have not seen as many per hour as the last time we were in the area. Thought about going on a whale watching boat trip but I equate those to going to a zoo. It’s cool, but not quite the same as seeing without the aide of a guide (or cage). We still feel very fortunate to have seen the whales we did this year. I shall do more research to become and whaleologist so I can identify them better.

Tomorrow we have another adventure as we take a circuitous route home. Stayed tuned for the next round of excitement. Oh, don’t forget to check out https://ourviewfromtheroad.blog/

Peace out!