For most of the day we were the only ones in the campground, but four other sites filled in by dinner time. The strangest was a truck camper followed by a car full of teenage men, the sons of the parents in the camper. They all piled out and proceeded to set up a huge tent, a screenhouse and a large tarp that attached to the camper, along with tables and chairs and a whole kitchen. The sites at Godbout are paved pads all in a row with a strip of grass between them. Needless to say, they expanded onto both sites adjacent to them. We weren’t one of them. We had taken the same site as last week, on the end, so there was no one on one side…and site on the other remained empty.
After a pleasant night, we made an early (8 am) start to get in line for the 11 am ferry as we had no reservation. Even then, we were eighth in the sans reservation line. The other lines filled up, seemingly sorted by size. There was even a separate line for EVs. Interestingy, there were 18 EVs in line by boarding time and only one was a Tesla.
When we finally boarded, we saw the reason for the sorting. There were several vehicle decks including a mezzanine around the outside of the main deck with very limited clearance on and under the mezzanine…sedans and small SUVs only.
It was a nice day for the two hour trip, but a bit cool for sitting outside. We took a pair of seats in front of a large window, had our lunch and watched for seabirds. It was not a good mini-pelagic as we only saw a few Black-legged Kittiwakes offshore.
When we were leaving the ferry we saw dozens of motorcycles waiting to get on the next ferry, which went to Baie Comeau, west of Godbout. We also saw about 20 motorcycles getting off at Godbout while waiting to get on. We wondered if there was some kind of rally on the Nord-Cote. There was…in Chute-aux-Outardes just south of Baie Comeau.
Once off the ferry, we headed south along the Matane River until the road went Southwest and the river went Southeast. The water level was pretty low and we saw lots of fly fishing along the river. It is a “Salmon River”, but we heard that there weren’t many salmon. We stopped at the village of Lac-au-Salmon, which is along a narrow lake about an hour from Matane. It had a small rustic municipal campground in the town park along the lake.
It is a bit more rustic than we expected, mostly unserviced grass sites with about a dozen serviced sites near the lake. We took a seviced site because they were graveled and flat and we’re a little nervous about Speedy on grass after the last couple of trips where we got stuck on wet grass…and possible rain was in the forecast. The campground was was very simple, with no showers and only portaloos. It was also quite empty, two fifth-wheels, two travel trailers and us with no one in the grassed sites. This may change next weekend as they were setting up for a Guitar festival then. It looked like a pretty big deal.
We left next morning and headed for New Brunswick and Kouchibouguac National Park (I can’t pronounce it either) on the Northumberland Strait. With a stop in Bathurst for coffee and groceries, we arrived at the park in time for a late lunch. We are ensconced in a nice unserviced wooded site for two nights, with a third night in a serviced site with a water view.
Yesterday, we just walked around the campground and out to the waterfront.
After a good night’s sleep we woke to gray skies and wind, but went off to the Salt Marsh trail for some morning birding. Because of the wind, the expected marsh-dwelling sparrows were nowhere to be seen, but we did get a kingfisher and a good view of an Ovenbird and an excellent close-up look at Golden-crowned Kinglet who hoped onto a branch the was only a couple of feet away…too close for binoculars.
As it was gray and threatening rain, we decided it was a good day to do laundry and they have a laundry building just outside the campground. We parked over by it and hauled our laundry in to find a pair of park cleaners detailing all of the machines. The pace was spotless and the the washers and dryers were ony $2 a load. After finishing up, we drove over to a picnic area on the water called La Source for lunch.
The park has two sections, a south section where the big campground is as well as a the facilities and visitor center and a north section on the other side of thel Kouchibouguac River with a small campground and a harbor called Loggiecroft, a Fisherman’s Refuge. We decided to drive over an see what the harbor (or is that “harbour”.) to look around. It was very quiet, with a handfull of small fishing boats and a single sailboat tied up to the wharf. There was also a large array of slips, but they were still empty. It is early season here.
We just parked at the end looking out toward the barrier islands outside the hatbor. A surprising Merlin flew by being harassed by a swallow, so we decided to do about a half hour of stationary birding. In addition to the Merlin, the highlights were a series of Great Blue Herons flying out from behind the woods beside us and out towards the islands and an Osprey hunting overhead.
It was back to the campsite for showers and a bit of relaxing in our new camp chairs with crackers and the salmon mousse from the smokhouse in Aguanish. As we sat there listening to the Robins singing all around us, there were growing rumbles of thunder. We had intended to cook and eat outside but as the sky grew darker, we abandoned that thought, packed up the chairs and retired to the cozy confines of Speedy just before the skies opened in a gully-washing downpour. We are having a quiet dinner inside instead.
We will be here one more day before going onward towards our ancestral island of PEI for a few days.
More later.
No comments:
Post a Comment