Matane, Gaspésie ~ A New Enchantment! (6th day)

In the large parking lot at the ferry terminal, it was time to wash the truck camper windows, lower the jacks on the camper and reposition the camper on the truck. All of the bouncing around on the North Shore gravel road had shifted the camper in the truck box. Nothing wrong, but I just like to have the truck and camper looking

Doris' Garden !

square and right. The mission for today was to play tourist and explore the town on Matane. The center of town has the Matane River which is a major Salmon spawning ground. The salmon were coming in, but we did didn’t actually see the run. The fish ladder and the crystal clear water kept us looking for a while. A note here; on the radio, we heard that a 36 pound salmon was caught on the North Shore at the mouth of one of the many rivers.
It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet and we moved on to our next tourist attraction. “Les Jardins de Doris” (Doris’ Gardens). From the road, we could see that there was a multitude of flowering plants. Helen wanted to stop, actually, because Doris is her sister’s name also. We were not disappointed with the stop. The garden had peaceful

Beautiful Drive!

music playing in outside speakers. Talking to Doris herself, we discovered that some of the work here is done by kids that are in trouble of one form or another. She has helped over 700 of them. She said that sometimes this place is their last chance before prison. In any event the grounds were perfectly cared for.
Time to move east on route 132. The Gaspésie is noted by its scenic shore line drives and the little townships that are actuated by a towering church steeple at their center. The photographic opportunities are everywhere. The St Lawrence  Seaway is now wide enough that the distant shores are no longer visible. The paved road winds up and down the rocky cliffs between  towns. We stopped many times to grab that hopefully perfect shot.

View from our Campsite ~ Indian Head!!

The game plan was to drive all the way to the town of Gaspe some 200 miles from Matane. We did that, but we were a little disappointed that we couldn’t dry camp anywhere in town. Some towns have regulations on this. It’s usually towns that have a few campgrounds in the area. To top that off, it is some sort of holiday time and many Canadians are off for the next two weeks and many campgrounds are full. We spotted a couple of RV’s at McDonalds and talked to them about a place to stay for the night. They were headed for a campground in Perce “Tete d’Indien” (Indian Head), it was on our direction of travel and we followed. The Indian Head campground was just what we were looking for!
That is what we saw and did!