Summary
We’re moving from La Malbaie to Saguenay, the city at the top of the Saguenay Fjord. The term fjord here is a bit deceptive if you’ve seen the ones in Norway or New Zealand. It is beautiful but more like a really wide river with tallish rolling hills along the banks. Anyway, shortly after leaving La Malbaie we stopped at Laterie Charlevoix, described on line as having “been making cheese since 1948. Designated an Économusée (cheese museum) in 1998, an interpretation center, antique equipment, and tastings are available.” In reality there’s only an on-site shop offering a wide selection of regional products. We were able to buy and consume a nice picnic lunch there. Afterwards we visited La Ferme Basque de Charlevoix “dedicated to offering top-quality farm products which result from the processing of artisanally raised and fed ducks, while highlighting animal welfare and preserving the authenticity of Basque traditions. (In reality just a bunch of ducks.) We then drove another part of the Route des Montagnes to Saguenay.
Details
Today’s yet another ‘relocation day’. It seems we’re staying at each place we visit for two night, and this place follows that rule. We’re driving from La Malbaie to Saguenay. It’s a bit of a drive and we’re making it longer by stopping here and there along the way. This area (Montreal, Quebec, etc.) are very much influenced by the Saint Lawrence Seaway/River.
Saguenay is a city way up the Saguenay river, and the river runs down and meets up to the Saint Lawrence. These were important place back in the day, when logging and fur trapping were such big industries. Now recreation and tourism are big and these place are now dotted with national parks, lots of little lakes, and natural beauty everywhere.
We get away from the Fairmont Hotel and Casino. We won’t be staying in such a posh place as this for a while. We don’t do breakfast at the hotel but rather try to subsist on coffee in the room and whatever snacks we have. We’ve eaten plenty of late.
It’s a pretty drive and before long we’re in the town of Baie-Saint-Paul. I’m sure it was important for something at some point but now it’s an artist community with restaurants and bars, shops and art galleries. On this holiday week the joint is jumping. So many couples and families wandering up and down the quaint blocks of shops that really aren’t all that special. It’s probably just that they’re different from what’s back home.
We do feel compelled to stop into a sporting good store where Gregg buys a fancy small daypack and Karen buys a good looking gimme-cap. It’s tricky to find a cap that fits her dainty head well.
Pushing on, we stop at a cheese store. It’s also busy-busy with tourists. We were led to believe that they offer samples/tastings and demonstrations of how cheese and other dairy products are made. Nope. They think otherwise. You want to taste the cheese, buy it and take it home. Factory tours? No, we stopped doing that back when Covid hit and never felt it necessary to start that back up.
Well, we’ll show them! We bought bread and cheese, sausage and chips, beverages and went outside and had a lovely lunch on one of their picnic tables under one of their shade trees. Everything was quite tasty and we laughed every time we took another cheese curd and heard it go squeak-squeak-squeak as you chew it.
At our next stop we look in on ducks in the various stages on their way to becoming Foie Gras. We see young ducks, and older ducks, and the big foie gras in the packages in their store refrigerator. There were two young girls there managing the store. We tried between our French and their English to understand the differences between all their different products. They must have thought we were very silly Americans.
On the rest of the drive to Saguenay we’re driving through rolling forests with gorgeously exquisite lakes dotted here and there. Most of the lakes were smallish and don’t have any houses or man-made structures on them at all, just nature. The lakes reflect the deep blue of the sky. It really is pretty. And it really is a long drive. Should I have filled the gas take before we left today? Yes I should have. Thankfully we had enough gas to get us back to civilization.
As we pulled into Saguenay we couldn’t help but think how much the city reminded us of the more commercial parts of Austin or any other city. Our hotel turned out to be in the middle of town, next to a mall and across the street from another strip mall with a huge grocery. We take advantage of all of them but scratch our heads as to how people can rave about how beautiful Saguenay is.
Dinner is good, at the hotel and we’re happy to have gotten two loads of laundry done. Tomorrow we’ll head back out and see more of the areas natural beauty (and leave the business/commercial area behind for a while).
Photos
