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WATERFALLS OF MINGANIE
And so here I am, wide-awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at something rather silly such as 06:00 in the morning. At least it gave me plenty of time and opportunity to crack on with the notes and the photos, once the coffee had brewed of course.
You have to admire the view along the coastline too. It really was quite nice to wake up to that.
And what a good plan it was to take the time out the other day to repair the bed, because this was another one of the best nights' sleeps that I have ever had. I didn't feel a thing all night.
I'm actually at the Riviere au Bouleau by the way, and the view along the coast in the other direction, towards Sept-Iles, was quite nice too. Especially with the early-morning sun being out like this.
In fact, I'm quite pleased that I pressed on as I did and found this little spot to spend the night. Anything that I missed yesterday evening in the gloom, I can photograph on the way back ... "famous last words" - ed ... because I'll be returning this way.
Just to add something to the interest of the route here, the Riviere au Bouleau here marks yet another frontier. East of here, the direction in which we will be travelling, we shall be in a region that is known as the Minganie.
The Minganie is apparently famous as being the ideal region for the tourisme d'adventure and I'm sure that you don't need me to translate that for you.
And, believe me, we'll be having more than our fair share of adventures along here.
Your attention was probably drawn in the first photo, just as mine was, to the cross set in the ground just in front of the Dodge.
There are plenty of these wayside crosses all along the route and I don't think that they are calvaires, wayside praying points for travellers along the road as you would find in France. They seem to be more connected to the idea of a death, although I don't expect (mind you - I could be wrong of course) that there's a corpse underneath.
It's more likely that they are commemorating the place where someone might have lost his life at some time or other. This cross has the word "Menutan" written on it and it's a very poignant site. There's even an apple been placed upon it.
Not even a mile away from where I spent the night is the riviere du Sault Plat - the "River of the Flat Leap" and, apart from the Niagara Falls of course , this has to be one of the most impressive waterfalls that I have ever seen.
If this waterfall had been anywhere in or around what is laughingly called "civilisation", people would be flocking for miles around to see it. There would be car parks and tourist attractions and street entertainers and everything.
Right here though, there wasn't even a signpost.
What there was though were thousands of black birds of some type or other riding the waves just off the shore and making one hell of a racket that you could hear over the roar of the waterfall.
At least they were enjoying the spectacle.
It's my opinion that places to spend the night are just like London buses. You don't see one for ages and then a couple turn up all at once.
That was certainly true here because not long after the riviere du Sault Plat and its magnificent waterfall I came across one of these haltes touristiques at the side of the road.
This place even had "the usual facilities" - except of course that they were all locked up as you might expect at this time of year.
Nevertheless, you probably noticed on the sign in the previous photo that there was a cascade, or "waterfall" in the immediate vicinity. If it's a waterfall that merits its own halte touristique and sign, it must be something spectacular when you compare it to the facilities that were on offer at the riviere du Sault Plat.
And indeed it was spectacular too. This is only just a small part of it. Waiting for you lower down the slope there's a lot more than just this.
And so floundering my way around, waist-deep in the snow (you can see why the site isn't officially open to visitors until June) I pressed on down the path. Where there's a will, there's a family, so they say.
And I don't mean "down" in the figurative sense, I do mean "down" in the literal sense because despite the peu accidenté - "a little steep" - on the notice at the halte touristique, if you want my opinion, it's beaucoup accidenté, especially when you can't see the path for all of the snow.
Where I am by the way is at the riviere Manitou and this is the Chute de Manitou - a chute being a waterfall that is much more spectacular than a cascade.
And they are quite right in this instance for the farther down the path that I went (and I had not forgotten that I was expected to climb back up here afterwards, something that I was not looking forward to) the more spectacular the waterfall became.
The path to the bottom is about 620 metres, so they say, and in this deep snow it must have taken me something like 620 minutes to do it, I reckon.
The drop is 35 metres in total (to give you some idea, the drop at the Niagara Falls is just a little short of 60 metres) and it was well-worth all of the effort to make my way down to the bottom.
But someone unfirtunately didn't make it all the way down to the bottom. You will have noticed the cross just on the shoreline at the foot of the falls, presumably commemorating someone who came to grief along here.
So having made all of the effort to clamber down to the bottom of the chute along this exciting pathway, I need to put in four times as much in order to make my way back to the top.
And so completely out of breath, I stagger back to the car, thinking that despite the magnificent views that I had, on the way back as well as on the way down, maybe I should have left this adventure for the return journey when, in theory, there will be less snow.
But I've done it now and that's probably just as well, because it might not be like this in the near future. Rumour has it that Quebec Hydro's site engineers have been carrying out a feasibility study re siting a water turbine at the foot of the chute.
So back on the road with a mug of coffee, which I richly deserve of course, I encounter a turning for Riviere de la Chaloupe.
I set off to go down there because the road looked quite exciting, but after a while I began to think that maybe I don't really need to go all the way right down to the end.
It had begun to deteriorate quite badly and with thick drifts of snow still lying about and me in a family-type road-going hire vehicle, I can usually manage to find myself in quite enough trouble on my own without going out especially to look for it.
Had it been a reasonably-dry early September, I would have been down there like a shot. But I really am going to have to find myself a decent second-hand Ford Ranger 4x4 and keep it in Quebec.
Still, I did manage to have a decent view of what I reckon might have been Riviere de la Chaloupe. At the top of a nearby brow I happened to glance in one of the rear-view mirrors and saw this scene.
Yes, I think that that might be it, out there on that point on the water's edge. And if so, you can see why, with it looking so good from up here, it tempted me to go down there for a visit.
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