Canadian Maritimes Travel

Day 23 (June 9, 2009)

A large ship was visible at night in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but we didn't see another all day as we traveled west on Rte 132. Seaside villages, one after the other dot the coast from Gaspe' to Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. Everyone has seaside property or an ocean view. The area is not too prosperous with quite a bit of property for sale, but the lived-in homes are well kept. Everyone, it seemed, was mowing lawns!

The north coast of Gaspesie is very much hillier with lots of ups and downs (grades up to 14% requiring second gear to climb!) between villages. The road was pretty decent with several spots of construction and repaving. It was windy again and quite cool (in the lower 50s all day). Plenty of nice views of the villages all dominated by a large Catholic Church, sometimes on the sea side of the road with a cemetery that stretched to the edge of the bluff.

We stopped for fuel and lunch at Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. Again, a very nice lunch of soup, choice of three entrees and dessert. As we have found throughout the trip the people are very friendly. In this restaurant the waitresses spoke only a tiny bit of English, so someone came over and helped out.

We continued on to Matane where we shopped at Canadian Tire and Walmart for a few things. We are now at a flat-as-a-table grassy campground lodged between the railroad track in the rear and the highway in front. As usual, only a few rigs here, but the WiFi signal is very strong. We ate light because of the big lunch. It's dark now and the wind is dying (At least the RV has stopped rocking.). The sound of the wind has been replaced by road noise.