Quebec City to Ottawa

July 6 – hot and sunny, ~1600km from home

Got up early and had a leisurely breakfast before hitting the road at 9am. We got out of Quebec City without incident, still crazy drivers though (where are they going at 140km/hr on a Sunday morning?). Stayed on the north shore of the St. Lawrence and bypassed Montreal in order to cut north through farm country and into the hills and lakes of the Laurentians – lots of rural farming communities until the fields turned to hills and the farms turned to lakeside cottages. In the afternoon we arrived in Parc National du Mont Tremblant, the largest and oldest Provincial Park in Quebec. We set up camp at a walk-in site on Lac Munroe and went for a hike after supper. We hiked to a look-off near our campsite, which gave us beautiful views of green mountains, clear lakes, deep valleys and blue sky – at ~130km from Montreal, you can see why this park is so popular. When we arrived back at our campsite we had enough time to go for a swim in the perfectly still lake before falling into bed, hoping to hear the howls of wolves. Alas, we heard only children and loons.








July 7 – hot and sunny, ~1800km from home

We got up early this morning to explore some hiking trails in the park. We went on two short hikes along the Riviere-du-Diable, both of which offered impressive views of waterfalls and rapids. We saw a momma black bear with her 2 cubs, 2 deer and a garter snake, a benefit of being on the road early. We only had a chance to explore a small area of the park, which is huge and broken into 3 sectors, with lots of remote hiking and canoeing routes. We were impressed by the park and excited about new plants and animals, mainly the abundance of cedar trees in the forest, massive non-diseased beech trees, the potential for new frogs and snakes, not to mention wolves!

We left the park mid-morning and found our way to the Village of Mont Tremblant, where we had lunch at a café and used their wireless internet. Brie and almond sandwich – yum. We didn’t have too much time to explore Mont Temblant because we had to go south to Ottawa for a car appointment in the late afternoon.

We left the mountains, hit farm country again and successfully navigated Gatineau and downtown Ottawa during the start of rush hour (thanks Google Maps!). Found a place to camp, Camp Hither Hills, about 10km south of the city. We had a relaxing evening and a shower, called home and went to bed.