Road Trip - Mont Tremblant to Mauricie

Last night after we went to bed in the somewhat-creepy empty campsite, I lay there wide-awake listening to all the sounds of the forest. There’s lots of living things running around out there, which when combined with the constant dripping of rain filtering down through the canopy made for quite a noisy night. I was a little anxious of being visited by bears even though we’d gone to great effort to keep our campsite clean of anything that would attract them, like not dropping any food or tipping out any water from cleaning the dishes. Thankfully I never heard any bears, and just listened to the haunting cries of a Loon (an iconic Canadian duck, which appears on and gives its name to their $1 coin - the Loonie) echo over the nearby Lac Provost.

By the morning it had stopped raining, but everything was still damp and cold. We had a shower in the surprisingly nice campground facilities, and ate granola with yogurt and wild blueberries for breakfast. We decided that we’d leave the tent up for a while to see if it would dry out when the sun came out, so looked through the park pamphlet for some local hikes to do.

We found a nearby walk that climbed a mountain called L’Envol, so we packed a backpack with water, snacks, and raincoats and headed off. We were still on the lookout for bears, so we talked loudly to each other to make sure that they’d be able to hear us coming. For the most part, black bears don’t like people, so they will just run away if they hear you coming. You only have a problem if you come around a corner and surprise one, or somehow get between a mama and her cubs. Luckily we didn’t see or hear any, even though we saw lots of signs of their presence like chewed up tree stumps.

The hike was about 2km to the top which took a little over an hour, and the view from the top was beautiful! It looked out over Lac Provost, the lake that our campsite was next to. On the way back down we interrupted a squirrel who was sitting on top of a tree stump gnawing at a pinecone. He chattered angrily at us for a few seconds, before darting off across the track and up a nearby tree.

We noticed that the ground around the stump was covered in discarded bits of pinecones, and as we walked down the rest of the way we saw lots more stumps covered in pinecone husks. Maybe sitting up there gives the squirrels a good lookout point, so they feel safe while they’re eating?

Back at the campsite our tent had dried out nicely, so we packed it up and headed further into the park to see a waterfall called Chutes-aux-Rats. It feeds into Lac aux Rats, which is where I guess it got its name, but I’m not sure what the significance of the rats is. We sat next to the waterfall and ate some marmite and chip sandwiches, which I haven’t had in years.

After this scenic stop we drove on to our next campground, Mistagance, in a National Park 3hrs away called Parc national de la Mauricie. We got to the park entrance an hour after they closed, which isn’t a problem today as we can just drive on in, but means we need to come back and register before 11am tomorrow morning.

Mistagance is huge, and very beautiful! We drove around the winding camping loops slowly, until we came to our site near the end. The forest here is different from the last place, and there’s less low brush to provide separation and privacy between the campsites. They have worked around this here by making all the sites huge, with big patches of forested land between them.

We passed several oTENTik camp sites, which are a log frame enveloped in a thick canvas tent. They have power, gas cooktops outside, and a little fridge inside, along with bunk beds. They’re raised off the ground on short stilts, and I could imagine them being quite nice to stay in even in winter when everything’s covered in snow and the ground is frozen. It’s National Park glamping! They also had some of these of a different design at Mont Tremblant.

We’re now sitting in the dark around our cozy campfire, Katie’s reading her Kindle and I’m writing blog posts. There were lots of mosquitoes earlier, but the night, fire, and a mosquito coil seem to have driven them off.