ROAD TRIP continued! From Sainte Anne de Beaupré, we drove further north between the Laurentian Mountains and the St. Lawrence River through Charlevoix, known as the first vacation spot in Canada. Holiday-goers have been making a splash in the region since 1760. President William Howard Taft even had a summer home there in his day.
It’s a ruggedly beautiful area. FUN FACT: the landscape is the product of a meteorite that crashed into the area and left a 40-mile-wide crater. Happily, things have calmed down and filled in over the past 350 million years. Charlevoix today is green and fertile, with farming and fishing villages and pastures dotted with cows, sheep, goats, alpacas and ponies.
All of those milk-producing creatures make for delicious dairy products in the region. Along the “Flavor Trail,” we saw cheese stores and “cheese bars” and ice cream parlors all along the way, selling dairy products from the region. We stopped for some local frozen custard dipped in the richest, most scrumptious, locally-made dark chocolate ever imagined. DELISH!
At Baie Sainte-Catherine we reached a fjord created by the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Saguenay rivers. To cross it, we caught the ferry that runs every half-hour or so, 24/7, that has been crossing the fjord since 1927. We drove our car up onto the vessel, parked, and climbed up to the deck to see the beautiful views as we headed to the other side.
Just as storms were about to begin, we reached the little town of Tadoussac, where we spent the night. More about that in our next post!
Wandering Star 