After spending yesterday up in the mountains, we decided to spend today along the coast - of the St. Lawrence River, that is. On our drive east from Quebec to Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, we passed a number of interesting sights. We decided to go back and explore further.
Our first stop was a little Visitor's Center for Capucins. It wasn't open yet for the season, but no full-time RVer can resist a giant chair!
From a viewing platform, we could look east toward a wind farm in Cap Chat. More on that later.
Dave thought this turbine blade would make a nice souvenir. However, Dusty refused to carry it back to the rig, so we had to leave it behind.
On our way to the Bay of Capucins, we stopped to admire some of the old cabins still standing on the banks of the Saint Lawerence.
In order to get a closer look at the bay, we pulled into Camping de la Baie-des-Capucins. We left the Jeep in a bay front camp site and began exploring. The Bay of Capucins is the only salt marsh located in the northern portion of the Gaspe Peninsula. Kathy heads out to do a little rock hopping.
Poking about in the tide pools, we discovered little fishes, snails and mussels.
By the way, there was no shortage of rocks! Unfortunately, it, too, was too big to take home with us!
After exploring the rocky beach, we continued with our adventures. Next stop, the wind farm known as Eole Cap-Chat. Named after Eole, the Greek God of wind! The wind farm here contains 133 wind generators. Each one of these is a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT), but there is also one called Éole, which is the world's tallest vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) at 110 meters. It is capable of producing 4 MW of power. Everything that there is to know about wind power at Cap-Chat may be learned at the interpretive center at the wind farm, which -- unfortunately -- doesn't open until Saturday! Well, at least we got a cool photo of Eole! She dwarfs the other turbines.
Next we drove over to Cap-Chat. There are two theories about the origin of the town's name, which means, "Cape Cat." One simply holds that the headland called Cap-Chat bore a likeness to a cat ("chat" in French). The other theory is a bit more fanciful. According to a local legend, a cat walking along the shore killed and ate various animals, whereupon a "fairy" accused him of having eaten her offspring. For his punishment, the cat was turned into stone forever. Here he sits watching over the shore. We like the fanciful story better, but there's no arguing that the rock is very unique and can be seen as the figure of a cat:
Next to the cat rock is the Cap Chat Lighthouse. The current lighthouse, a thirty-one-foot square tower, built of reinforced concrete and topped with a circular red lantern, was completed in 1909. The tower’s cliff-top position places its light 133 feet above the sea. A revolving third-order Fresnel lens produced a white flash every three seconds and could be seen up to seventeen miles. The Fresnel lens was deactivated in 2007, but a modern emergency light is privately maintained on the tower by le Parc Récréotouristique du rocher Cap Chat. A one-and-a-half-story keeper's house was originally attached to the tower by a passageway. The keepers house is now a bed and breakfast and can be rented out during the summer season.
Now for a little bit of history.
During World War II, Cap Chat was a staging area for German U-boats hoping to intercept coal convoys from Cape Breton. The stratification of fresh and salt water in the estuary made detection of the German subs difficult with early sonar. During this time, German U-boats sank several merchant ships and four Canadian warships. There were several near-shore actions involving the drop of German spies, or the attempted pick up of escaping prisoners of war. Despite the 23 ships lost, this battle marked a strategic victory for Canadian forces as ultimately they managed to disrupt U-boat activity, protect Canadian and Allied convoys, and intercept all attempted shore operations. This marked the first time that a foreign power had inflicted casualties in Canadian inland waters since the US incursions in the War of 1812.
We don't think this is an 1812 warship:
After checking out the lighthouse, we decided to follow a trail down to the beach and see if we could take some lighthouse photos from below on the beach. Here Dave surveys the way down.
After climbing down stairs too numerous to count, we began our trek along the rocky beach. Piles of drift wood offer shelter from the wind.
Cute little cottages are tucked away in the back of the cove.
After a bit of scrambling, we found our quarry.
Kathy's got the light in the palm of her hand.
After a few hours of hiking, climbing, splish-splashing, scampering, rock hopping and scree sliding, it was time for lunch. On the way back to Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, we stopped at Valmont Plein Air. We enjoyed local craft brews and lobster paninis (!). The lobster paninis were as scrumptious as you might imagine.
This was the view out the window as we sat at our table. A person could get used to this. The mountains in the background are part of the Chic-Choc Range, which runs through Gaspésie National Park.
After lunch, we returned to camp to rest up for our hike tomorrow. We are looking forward to returning to the Gaspésie National Park for our first hike on the International Appalachian Trail!
Stay tuned.
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