Today has been totally awesome. We actually slept in a little this morning, as we were both a bit tired. Late this morning we drove out to Forillon National Park, which is the main attraction here in Gaspe.
We drove over to the east side of the peninsula, which is the side that faces the main section of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (towards Newfoundland). There were all this little fishing villages along the way, until we finally reached the actual park. We did find an even better permutation of my favorite road sign:
After stopping at the Visitor’s Center (closed, unfortunately), we took a secondary road down to Cape Bon Ami. And that’s where the scenery started to become spectacular:
We drove over the ridge, and then down towards a small campground. There was a small field off to our right, with a mother black bear and two cubs (didn’t get the 2nd cub in this shot):
Just when they trotted off, we found a porcupine hanging out in the same field.
Just past the field was a picnic area and a way down to this really cool pebble beach where I had a nice zen moment:
There were thousands of sea birds along the cliffs and in the water. Just a beautiful spot.
After passing a couple more porcupines, we continued around the peninsula, then drove out along the western side as far as we could go. We ran into a couple of moose enjoying some wild raspberries along the side of the road:
Continuing on to the end, we hopped out but decided it was too late in the day to start a 5 mile hike out to the end of the peninsula – maybe tomorrow. We started back, and about a 1/4 mile on, I spotted a whale out in the gulf. We stopped and watched for a while, there were at least two whales, probably more – I zoomed in a lot on this pic since the whales were out a ways:
They were just beautiful to watch, we stayed for quite awhile but eventually we got too cold. So we hopped back in the car, and in about 25 feet, there were two moose taking a stroll in the road:
Once the moose wandered off – thankfully without incident, because they totally could have gotten spooked by the situation, with cars on either side – we continued on our drive. We stopped and took a walk along a taiga, or a salt marsh, which had all sorts of rare plants.
Just as we were leaving the park, we saw an old Land Cruiser in someone’s driveway, so of course we had to stop. Fortunately the owner was friendly and spoke English.
By my count, we saw 4 bears, 4 moose, 4 porcupine, two whales and about a thousand birds today. Oh, and one Land Cruiser. It just doesn’t get much better in my book.