2026 – Canada

We took a whale watching excursion on the Saint Lawrence River with a hundred of our best friends in pea soup fog. It was eerily beautiful but not conducive to spotting sea-life more than a few dozen meters away. It never did burn off in the course of the 3 hour cruise. Despite that, we…

One of those travel days where things don’t go quite right. We visited the other two section of the Saguenay Fjord National Park on the way to our next overnight location, the town of Tadoussac where the fjord meets the Saint Lawrence River. The Baie-Sainte-Marguerite (north side of the fjord) is especially known for beluga…

We spent the day in one of the three sectors that make up Saguenay Fjord National Park, the Baie-Éternité sector. We did a nice wooded hike at Cap Éternité then went to L’Anse-de-Saint-Jean for an al fresco lunch overlooking the fjord. Later we did a little exploring of the town and beach and viewed the…

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…

Awoke and rejoiced because the sun was out in full force! We drove to a restaurant on the water for a slooooooow breakfast (they were severely understaffed). Our planned scenic boat ride on the Malbaie River had been cancelled so we took a beautiful drive to the Parc national des Hautes-Gorges-de-la-Rivière-Malbaie and hiked part of…

We flew from Ottawa to Québec City, immediately got rental car, and headed to the Charlevoix region to the north of Quebec. It rained all day. Stopped for an unintentionally long lunch at La Cage Sports Bar then headed to La Malbaie and the beautiful Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu. After a cocktail in the very…

Walked to nearby restaurant, The King Eddy, for breakfast then took an uber to the Central Experimental Farm. “The…farm is a research centre and…a national historic site where scientists study agriculture and visitors can enjoy gardens, greenhouses and museums.” We enjoyed the extensive gardens and the large animal barn then the kitchen museum and a…

Flew from Calgary to Ottawa, losing two hours due to time zone changes. Checked in to our hotel in a very fun, bustling area around the Byward Market. We had a very marginal dinner at the rooftop restaurant at our hotel then set off exploring our surrounding area. Very shortly we heard from Austin friends…

Today we took a “sightseeing transfer” by bus from Banff to Calgary. The first sightseeing stop was for an eight minute ride up Sulfur Mountain in a gondola. The views over Bow Valley were smoky but still pretty awesome. We walked the boardwalk from the top of Sulfur Peak to Sanson Peak (~350 stairs) and…

Pretty 1/2 mile walk into town over the Bow River. “Downtown” Banff is just about 3 blocks long and two blocks wide so pretty easy to explore. There were tons of people out, many, we discovered, were Jehovah’s Witnesses visiting from their international convention in Calgary. Had a nice lunch on the terrace of at…