Baie-Sainte-Catherine to Les Éboulements, QC
Traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee
95 km
Passing thunderstorms, 17 ºC
Whirlwind of a day. Started out being chased away from our campsite by blackflies. Despite doing our best to hide from them by not showering in…forever, feels like.
In Saint-Siméon, some city workers were hard at work planting flowers throughout the town.
Then it rained. Then it poured. Water cascaded down the asphalt of the steep coastal hills, pouring off the side-troughs, misting up behind the roaring vehicles. By the end of the morning storm, my rain gear clung to my body and Asad had taken off his glasses in order to see.
In La Malbaie we decided to take Highway 362, Route du Fleuve—the scenic and extremely hilly old highway that hugs the coastline between La Malbaie and Baie-Saint-Paul. I stopped to interview a potter who single-handedly uses ten tons (tonnes?) of clay a year, then we pushed on to Les Éboulements.
We stopped at an halte municipale, a local park, and met another traveller, Serge, who was watching the valley from his car. He showed us the nearby skate-changing building and while he was speaking pretty quick French, Asad and I both thought we’d clearly understood that he was planning on sleeping there overnight. That’s cool, we figured. Safety in numbers.
Then just after the sun went down, he relatively abruptly bid us farewell and drove off.
“Huh,” said Asad, “I thought he said he was staying here.”
I watched his car pull onto the street. “Me too.”
I imagined to myself that Serge had gotten a tip-off that we were about to be discovered while Asad chuckled. “I feel a lot less certain now.”
So anyway, we spent the twilight listening to cars going by just in case. Bit of a trade-off of anxiety in exchange for a roof over our heads, but the ongoing rain and dropping temperature I think has made it worth it.
