9/21–Saguenay

After two days of dreary, wet sailing, we enter into the Saguenay river and sail up through the Fjord in glorious sunshine.  It is a beautiful sail in, and quite lovely to be able to enjoy it in the daylight, since our port call doesn’t begin until noon.

We were a little challenged with this port. We thought we were actually docking in the town of Saguenay, which is further up the fjord.  We had researched all sorts of things to do from there, only to find out yesterday that we were in fact docking in La Baie, which is where we docked when we cruised here with Gaby and Sigis.  Surprise!  Oh well, it only adds driving time.  So, that sort of changed our minds a bit about where we wanted to go.  We made a last minute decision to ditch the plans we’d mapped out, and head north to Lac St. Jean and an old mining ghost town near there.

We arrive a little bit late, but not significantly, and are greeted by that wonderful La Baie port welcome – same as before!  The actors from La Fabuleuse show, all decked out in their costumes singing and dancing, along with blueberry pie samples, juice and of course the “moderator” welcoming us to La Baie, and specifically captain Jose for his inaugural visit.  It is definitely the best welcome – anywhere!

We queue up to disembark and then make our way quickly up the dock. I got stuck dosie-doeing with one of the actors, but Ed soldiered on!  We were handed two frozen maple things on a stick –which we later figured out were frozen maple syrup dollops – and kept up our march into the terminal to get our car. We wanted to be first, since we had a limited time to explore and were driving pretty far up into the Canadian countryside.

As it turns out, we were the only people who had a reservation!  That’s pretty interesting!  While Ed did the paperwork, I talked to the tourist folks and collected all the maps and paraphernalia, then we went out to the car, which had been severely damaged a few weeks previous by a hail storm.  You should have seen this thing, it was pock marked like crazy. 

We hit the road and drive – straight.  Seriously, straight down one road for like 110 KM with only 3 turns.  Amazing drive. The road ran through countryside through towns, and into farmland where you could see forever.  The sky was so blue, and the fields so gorgeous. There was always something at which to marvel.

After about an hour, we finally made it to the lake.  And what a lake! It is massive. You can’t see the other side at all – you’d think you were looking at the Atlantic ocean.  There is a scenic pull out, but because we are strapped for time, we want to get to the ghost town first, so we figure we will circle back and snap some shots on the way back.

We make our third turn into the driveway of Val Jalbert Historical Village, the site of the mining ghost town.