Gaspé | 650thumper

We continue our tour of the east coast through the iconic Gaspésie region.

When I first started teaching, I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to adults at a French college. For one mid-term oral exam, to evaluate my students’ use of the past tense, I asked them to tell me about a previous holiday they had taken. Almost all of them talked about Gaspé. It was even more popular than Disney World, a distant second favourite, so I figured it must be good.

Gaspé. The name to an anglophone suggests breath-taking, and it is, but in fact, according to one account, the name comes from the Mi’kmaq word Gespeg, meaning Land’s End. That would make sense since the region is the tip of the southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I had toured it decades ago in a car but never on a motorcycle, and Marilyn had never been there at all, so instead of bombing along the Trans Can to Newfoundland, we decided to take a few extra days to get there by following the coast around the peninsula and making a quick loop of PEI before heading to Sydney and the ferry terminal.

The challenge, as always in Canada, were the distances we had to cover and finding the right balance between covering distance and enjoying the places we were riding through. We wanted to spend as much time as possible in Newfoundland since neither of us had been there before, yet Marilyn had less than three weeks vacation. We allotted ourselves five days to get to Baddeck, Nova Scotia, with our ferry crossing reserved for noon on July 6^th. In the end, this was a challenging schedule of approximately 500 kilometres a day with camping and cooking in the daily mix.

Our planned ride from Reford Gardens to Petit-Gaspé Campground in Forillon National Park was only four hours long, but my love of pastries and coffee, not to mention Marilyn’s love of flowers, already had us off schedule. We indulged ourselves with a snack at the Gardens’ café and left early afternoon; our schedule was so tight that it really didn’t allow for even these kinds of delays. The price was that looming sense of urgency throughout the afternoon as we continued east along the 132.

The 132 is like this for miles and miles. Sorry about the bug deflector.

Despite that, the coastal ride was everything we were hoping it would be. The 132 hugs the shoreline for hundreds of kilometres along the peninsula. After Matane, it gets spectacular, with mountains on the other side of the road rising sharply up, especially around Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, where in my previous visit I’d watched hang-gliders leap from the towering cliffs out over the gulf. The best riding in the region is when the 132 drifts inland and rises through a mountain range, with twists and turns, constant changes in elevation, and hairpin turns that reminded me of the some of the mountain ranges in The Rocky Mountains we’d ridden out west. Yes, it was that good. There are parts where the guard rail is small and the drop-off great, and when we pulled into a gas station in Grand-Vallée and I turned off the bike, Marilyn said “That was thrilling!” There’s nothing like the proximity of death to bring a woman closer.

Route 132 gets quite hilly and twisty when it strays inland from the coast.

More hills and thrills on the 132. Messed up that right-hander. Keep in mind I’m fully loaded and with a pillion so wasn’t pushing it. Love the sound of that Triumph triple!

Because we were behind schedule, we decided to grab dinner on the road instead of cook it at camp. A hamburger and chicken burger with fries and salad from essentially a chip truck set us back $45 and had me remembering the inflated prices of the region from the last time I visited. Yes, the tourist season is short, and the locals reap what they can when the going’s good. We’d also been warned that sometimes the “local seafood” comes out of a box.

We tried to put that price tag behind us and chalked it up to the cost of travel. It meant that when we arrived at the campground, there was time after setting up camp to go for an evening stroll out to the ocean and catch the sunset.

We walked down with our morning coffees too.

Our second night of camping was a lot better than our first! We love National Parks and had purchased Discovery Passes for the trip. National parks are always immaculately maintained with clean facilities and hot showers! The Petit-Gaspé’s park seemed to have a brand new building with a campers’ lounge including a hot stove. Even though it was July, they had it lit, which was nice because we could lay out some clothing to dry.

A sneak peak into the women’s washroom. Clean and modern washrooms at Canadian National Parks.

The next day took us through into Percé and past the famous pierced rock. Unfortunately, there was so much fog we couldn’t get a good look at it. The fog, however, made for some dramatic photos from the lookout at Cap Mont Joli. (See banner photo above.)

While waiting to see if the fog would lift, we killed time with one of my favourite pastimes.

We couldn’t afford to stay long in Percé. After picking up my pannier sticker, we continued on. The coastline now heading back west is sandy beaches with a smattering of homes along the road. Marilyn was surprised that the area is so populated, but geography determines a lot, and here fishing boats can safely land compared to the rocky shore of the gulf coastline. Instead of the adrenaline of the twisty, undulating road earlier, I was happy to cruise the Baie-de-Chaleurs, past the small fishing villages of Grand-Rivière, Chandler, Port-Daniel, Paspébiac, and Bonaventure. By the time we reached New Carlisle and New Richmond, the place-names indicated we were approaching New Brunswick.

Heading west along the Baie-de-Chaleurs. Now sandy beaches instead of rocky coastline.

When you ride these popular routes, you often bump into the same people repeatedly as they ride the same route. We passed three women on Harleys parked at the side of the road, and then they must have passed us at some point, and you do this leap-frogging for sometimes several days. In this case, we finally met them at a Tim Horton’s somewhere in New Brunswick. They are members of Motor Maids and were headed to Cape Breton to ride The Cabot Trail before heading to Massachusetts for the club’s annual convention. By the time we bumped into them again, days later, at the Nova Scotia Tourist Info Centre, they were four, and we saw them again on The Sunrise Trail. The last time we saw them was in Cape Breton. This time we were parked, figuring out what we would do for dinner, when we saw them cruise past, heading for their hotel in Baddeck, living the dream.

We crossed the bridge into New Brunswick at Cambellton and picked up Highway 11 which took us to Highway 8, then turned right, and headed straight south, inland on an open multi-lane highway, as fast as we dared, keeping our eyes out for cops and moose. (Thankfully, much of the highway through the drive-through province is fenced.) We knew this would be a long day. We didn’t have a reservation anywhere for this night but thought we’d push on as close to the PEI bridge as humanly possible before stopping. It was hot, and we’d been on the road since early morning. Finally in Miramichi, NB, as we crossed the river, Marilyn said enough was enough, and I know better than to go against the wishes of my better half.

We stopped at the tourist info in Miramichi to ask about accommodations and restaurants. I noticed that it has both Scottish and Irish Festivals on separate weekends in August and calls itself The Irish Capital of Canada. It was clear that we were no longer in Quebec.

Marilyn and I begin our east coast tour on Canada Day, 2023.

Have you ever noticed how, just before setting off on a major holiday, strange things start happening to obstruct you? Things start breaking or go missing, or the dog gets sick, or you get audited, or the secretary for the specialist you’ve been trying to see for months phones to offer you an appointment next week. Well, according to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, that’s your unconscious saying “Not so fast! Where do you think you’re going? Get back here, young man!” (or woman, as the case may be).

Jung’s theory is that the unconscious likes the status quo. It doesn’t like change, negative or positive. You’ve survived life so far, it deduces, so more of the same must be good, safe. This applies to all aspects of life, including planned and unplanned positive change, like going on a major holiday or experiencing a leap of personal growth. It’s as if you have to push through the obstacles the psyche in all its guile throws up in front of you before you can reap the rewards of progress.

We’d been planning this trip for close to two years. The original plan was to go summer of 2022, but with the addition of a new dog to our family, we postponed a year to allow him to settle (Obstacle #1). I’d been thinking about the trip through the dark months of the previous winter and had been planning the route, modifying the bike, and boosting my fitness to be fully prepared. Now with less than a week before departure day, all hell was breaking loose, right on time and as expected.

For one, a family member had a major medical event that left us wondering if we could go at all (Obstacle #2). Then I received a call from the car dealership: the vehicle we were expecting to take delivery of in August arrived early. Could we come complete the paperwork and pick it up before July 1? (Obstacle #3) The day prior to our leaving, when I was supposed to be full-on packing, CTV News phoned asking for an interview about an op-ed article I’d published (Obstacle #4). In the meantime, an article for my paying gig, northernontario.travel, about a club ride I did to Prince Edward County was due. (Obstacle #5) That ride was our shakedown ride during which I discovered that we were significantly under SAG, so I had to get the rear shock off and to Stadium Suspensions in Beloeil to be re-sprung (Obstacle #6). I also changed the oil, coolant, brake fluid, and rear brake pads, and tweaked a bunch of little things. I was busy.

Finally, however, on Saturday, July 1st, we were packed and ready to roll. All adversity had been overcome. The departure date, Canada Day, was symbolic and the same as it was in 2021 when I set off to discover western Canada. This eastern tour of the Maritimes and Newfoundland would be the companion trip to that one. We said good-bye to our furry friend, climbed on the bike, noted the odometer reading, and pulled away from the house.

The first task when living in Montreal is always to get out of the city. This is not always easy, but leaving after the morning rush hour on a national holiday meant a relatively quick exit. We crossed over the Champlain Bridge to the south shore and continued on Highway 20, the Trans Canada Highway, until east of Quebec City before dropping onto Route 132, the highway that would take us right the way around the Gaspé Peninsula.

First glimpse of la mer

Highway 132 is an incredible road. It’s the longest highway in Quebec, stretching from New York State in the west to the New Brunswick border in the east, and it’s one of Quebec’s oldest highways, passing through many historic towns and villages that date back to the 17th Century or earlier, when Europeans began to arrive. It’s also arguably Quebec’s most scenic highway, hugging for long sections the shoreline of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on one side with mountains rising sharply up on the other.

When I first came to Quebec as a student on an immersion program, I lived in La Pocatière, in the Kamouraska region. No wonder I fell in love with Quebec and decided to move here. Kamouraska is one of the province’s major tourist regions. The Gulf of Saint Lawrence has opened up enough for inns (or gites, as they’re known here) to advertise “sur la mer” (on the sea), which is a bit self-aggrandizing because it’s still the river but, okay, brackish with a small tide. But the river starts to smell like the sea and look like the sea and you can imagine it being the sea, even swim in it, if you want. We decided instead to get some lunch at one of our favourite spots. The lobster bisque is worth all 400 kilometres and the $17.

When Marilyn and I toured out west, the compromise was that we did no camping; she would ride pillion as long as there was a bed waiting for her at the end of the day. Fortunately, we had friends and family across Alberta and British Columbia that welcomed us into their homes, and we took a hotel room when needed. But the remoteness of some of the regions of this trip would require some camping. How do you experience Gros Morne National Park without camping?

With that in mind, I planned strategically. Our destination for Night 1 was close to Reford Gardens – Jardins de Métis, where we would spend the next morning before continuing along the 132. The Reford Gardens is another famous garden like Butchart Gardens we visited in Victoria. Similarly, it was a labour of love by one woman, in this case Elsie Reford. By enlisting the help of local farmers and fishing guides, she was able to turn a spruce forest into a lavish garden which included the very rare Tibetan Blue Poppies. If you have to ask your wife to do anything really unpleasant, like camp in the rain, just remember the diplomatic power of flowers.

The first night was the toughest. To ensure we would have time to see the gardens, I reserved a site at Parc Régional de la rivière Mitis [sic. that’s not a typo; I don’t know why there are two spellings], barely a stone’s throw from the gardens’ entrance. I saw when making the reservation that these are walk-in sites, but only about 230 meters from the parking lot, so how bad could it be, right? Well, the sites are on a trail network and the trail was muddy and hilly. When we arrived, it started to rain, and it kept raining, all night and through breakfast the next morning. Marilyn, who is a light sleeper, heard the neighbouring campers’ music and conversation, the Canada Day fireworks at 10, the neighbouring campers’ sex, the heavy rain and thunder and, through it all, my light snoring. She got about one hour of sleep. Oh yeah, and then there were the bugs.

As if to punctuate the state of affairs, the next morning, while I was preparing the coffee, animal excrement of some kind slid out of the tree above and landed with a splat! on the water bladder. It was going to be that kind of a day.

But after a porridge breakfast and a top-up of coffee, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Yes, the absence of pain is pleasure, and the sun that day was all the more enjoyable, especially while at the gardens.

It was all uphill from here. We had survived the worst of it with our marriage intact. After a quick snack at the cafe in the gardens, we were back on the bike and headed for Forillon National Park on the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula.

We are bound for Newfoundland. If you want to follow along, click Follow.