June 10, Gaspé

The hotel we stayed at was a "Super 8". Prices were good, but the breakfast that was included was far from "super". Cereals, artificial orange juice, some muffins: all self-served onto paper plates and bowls. I guess it served the needs, but it had no class, and was environmentally bad as well. However, they did give us a good rate, and they were very nice to us.

We had our breakfast at 8:00 Atlantic time, went for a needed coffee at a local coffee shop, and took off all together to get past the bridge (where the traffic was bad and there was construction, and past Pointe-à-la-Croix just to get out of the suburban roads. We started on Highway 132, a fairly busy road with some trucks, and stayed on that for much of the day, with some significant side-trips.

One of the trips we decided to take, and I'm glad we did, was to the Parc National de Miguasha. This is actually a UNESCO historical site, recognized for the quality of the fossil record found there. It is a record of the Devonian Period of the Earth's development, a time when fish were predominant, and some fishes were developing four limbs, just prior to going onto land. This was about 400 million years ago. We spent about an hour there looking around at the exhibits. And some of them were quite incredible: you could see the stomach contents in one; you could see the arteries in another; a few were actually three-dimensional! Needless to say, I was mightily impressed.

From there, on along the road, with a nice side-trip along a cinder trail which led down and across a river via a suspension bridge, then past a few idyllic towns and wonderful houses (of course, it all

looks better in the sunlight). We met Bruce for lunch (his last name is Jameson) at the town of Saint-

Omer (just past Nouvelle), down by the water. We passed some people on horses, with one of them in the water with her horse. Then on through the tourist town of Carleton-sur-Mer to the Gîte he had found near Maria. This is an old (mid-nineteenth century) farmhouse lived in by a descendant of the builder, named Sid, and his wife Barbara), and lovingly maintained. They are back enough from the highway to be pleasant, and have a lot of land which they tend to. Lilacs are at their peak (about a month after Dundas), but the apple trees are finished blooming. THey have their own garden with strawberries, rhubarb, onions, garlic and beans all coming up. They were very welcoming to us, and we enjoyed our stay there. Turns out there are a lot of Anglophones in this area—some of them UE Loyalists.

Of course, one of the jobs that Bruce had was to have cold beer ready. He had done this, found a micro-brasserie down the road and bought a jug of beer (about 3 litres) which we all enjoyed sitting

out on the lawn in the bright sun. Bruce had also found a restaurant down the road to which we went for passable sea-food, but a pleasant evening.

We had biked about 73 km that day (for some reason, my cyclometer missed the first 27 km.), with enough variations to be interesting. We were tired, and fell asleep with the windows open and the fresh air helping us to dream.