Quebec road trip — Acey Wanders

When my brother got his visa to come to Canada, I was so excited to show him the country I called home for the past 9 years prior to his arrival. Well, at least a part of it! I have travelled to most of the provinces in Canada; yet I had started discovering La Belle Province since 2016, thanks to the adventurous Frenchman I spent a few years of my life with.

My brother was gonna stay a month in Canada and the poor guy didn’t know what I was concocting: 2 weeks on the road, camping 2 to 3 nights, sleeping on a real bed for one night, and back to camping. I spent a couple hours every night for 2 weeks, to research places, create an itinerary, book campsites and rooms on Airbnb. Some of these places I had gone to once or more, but the rest were as new to me as it were to my brother. The difference was that I had them on my bucket list for a while.

We spent the first few days sauntering in Montreal, nibbling croissant and pain au chocolat at my two favourite croissanteries in Mile-End and Plateau, standing in line at St. Viateur bagel, sipping coffee at café Olimpico , strolling around Old Montreal streets of cobblestone, and ambling under and on the variegated leaves of Mount Royal in September.

We started our road trip after lunch by going to La Mauricie National Park, the closest national park to Montreal. In Quebec for some reason they call their provincial parks, national parks. But let’s just ignore that and call a spade a spade.

We arrived at La Mauricie a couple hours before sunset. We set up our tent and started looking at the map of Quebec to see the best routes in terms of attractions. Having a paper map is always better in planning an itinerary. It gives much more perspective than a palm-sized or at most a laptop-sized screen of google map. It is something that I started using again after I realized its benefits during an adventure road trip in Nicaragua a few years back.

The next day we hiked a few trails and saw some of the 150 lakes that are spread across the park.

We camped 2 nights in La Mauricie before we hit the road towards Lac St-Jean. I had heard so much about this part of Quebec, yet I had never been there. If you drive from QC-155 to Lac St-Jean, make sure not to miss the beautiful view of the lake when you turn to QC-169 just before the lake. The winding road descends to a colourful horizon of pastel blue and pink above the lake.

We had rented an RV-turned-accommodation for a night with the best view in front of the lake. I set the alarm an hour before sunrise and we woke up to breathtaking view of the lake with fast changing hues of blue and purple. This part of Quebec to me is still the most beautiful.

After breakfast and chatting a bit with our host, we headed towards the information centre and I realized that my brother was very keen to visit Saint-Félicien zoo after looking enthusiastically at the photos of grizzlies, buffalos, polar bears and black bears. None of us is a fan of zoos. I’d been to zoos twice in my life as a kid and never liked to see animals caged. St. Félicien was different though: Animals roam, humans are caged. We were sold to the safari concept and were curious to see how they had implemented it. Also, although I was excited at the idea of seeing black bears during our camping trip, I knew my brother couldn’t see any grizzlies in Quebec, something that gave him an adrenaline rush and made his eyes glitter from excitement and fear at the same time. I had seen quite a few grizzlies in The Rockies both on the road and on a hike; I could understand his feeling.

Neither of us had a telephoto lens and very early on, I decided to just enjoy watching these animals instead of hopelessly trying to take a portrait shot of the creatures in the zoo with my maximum 70mm focal length lens. I did however, take one photo from a grizzly!

After a few hours meandering in the safari zoo, we continued our drive to Saguenay Fjord National Park and went to our first backcountry campground.

Campground at Saguenay Fjord National Park — **Campground in Saguenay Fjord National Park**

Saguenay Fjord National Park is one of my favourite parks in Quebec, mainly because of the peaceful ultramarine Fjord that encompasses the park. The park has three sectors: Baie-Éternité, Baie-Sainte-Marguerite, and Baie-de-Tadoussac. I still haven’t been to the latter but there are many trails in each sector. The park offers some of the best kayaking waters surrounded by the rocks around the Fjord, Via Ferrata, and biking trails. You will most probably not be able to visit all the sectors of the park decently in one go unless you intend to spend about a week in the park. The first trail I took my brother to hike was a trail that had stayed in my memory from two years before: de la Statue trail.

**View over the Saguenay Fjord from the top of de la Statue trail**

After 3 nights in the Saguenay region and seeing some whales from afar at Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre, we drove up further to the east towards Rimouski. We arrived just in time for the beautiful colours.

We headed towards Gaspesie Provincial Park to hike part of the Appalachian trail that passed Mount Jacques Cartier, the highest peak in the Canadian Appalaches. I know what you’re thinking. Quebec is not known for hosting high mountains. But don’t be fooled by the humble 1268m-high mountain. It was the first time in my life I wish I was heavier, after being almost swept away by the strong wind several times. A little before the sunset, we arrived at our wet camping platform. My brother being more social than me, preferred to stay in a cabin close by and fortunately it had 2 empty beds for us. We hung out with a few people over dinner and went to sleep.

The next day was the hike down but with rain. We camped the night and after walking a short trail in the park, headed towards Gaspé.

The road in parc national de la gaspésie

It was almost rainy every day for the rest of our trip This caused us to change our camping plans in Forillon National Park and extend our stay in a room we had rented, which was right next to the Cap-des-Rosiers lighthouse, the tallest one in Canada.

Cap-des-Rosiers lighthouse, Gaspé Peninsula. @sajad_photogallery — **Cap-des-Rosiers lighthouse, Gaspé Peninsula.**

Although the weather was not at its best, Forillon was still beautiful on an overcast day.

After visiting the capes in Forillon National Park, we head back to Montreal and visited Quebec City on the way.

If you are planning a road trip in Quebec, you must visit a few of the provincial and national parks. If you’re not into camping, Sepaq network of provincial parks and Parks Canada has cabins, yurts, and ready-to-camps. For national parks, visit Parks Canada, which also offers a host of accommodations including cabins, tipis, yurts, etc.