By the time we made it to the Laurentides wildlife area we had left all the commuter traffic behind, and we took the turning into Jacques Cartier park as darkness fell, still in wet fog. We picked up the instructions for registering for a camp site, but those things are complicated even in English and impossible in French. Then a lady ranger drove up and told us the office was closed, and we could sort out payment in the morning. We noted that Quebec names all of its provincial parks as "national" parks even though they have nothing to do with Parks Canada.

Wednesday September 21st

I found the ranger station in the morning and paid for the campsite, even more expensive than I'd expected with all the taxes added. It had electricity and showers, but the price would have been high even for a commercial campsite. However, it was quickly apparent that this was a really beautiful place with great, green mountains reflected in the Jacques Cartier river. There were a few patches of trees that had gone red and gold, and it was apparent that this area would be gloriously colourful in a week or two.

We drove into the park on a narrow gravel road, looking for a walk to take. We picked the Le Perdreau trail as it was "easy" and went to the "mysterious" Lake Burvard. We hiked up the mountain through a maple forest to the lake. It was certainly mysterious. It was a lake without water, just a flat green mass of long grass! The trail back was slippery with mud, and hard going across the rocks.

It was late in the day and we decided to stay another night. I took off to hike another trail, the Les Loups, just as far as the first lookout, as it was getting dark. This was the day of the Equinox and from now on we'd have more night than day. As I came up the last piece of trail I had a nose-to-nose confrontation with a squirrel, who was screaming at me. I tried to back up to take his picture as I had a telephoto lens on, but he rushed me and jumped onto my boot, hanging onto my knee. Again I backed off and pointed the camera and he rushed to my feet again. Perhaps the message was "no cookie, no picture", in which case we were both disappointed!

Back at the campsite, I managed to get a fire going despite some spotty rain, and cooked some bratwurst. Sandie was still on a low cholesterol diet, so she cooked herself some fish inside. As usual, we had no television signal where we were and Sandie had a Harry Potter evening from a DVD.