La Verendrye wildlife preserve - Outaouais region of Quebec, fall '06

A typical, transcendental moment, paddling a lightweight Kevlar canoe (that's me on stern). We're somewhere on Circuit 10 (24 km), probably around Baie Menard on Lac Jean-Pere. This is about a five-hour drive northwest of Montreal. Well past the Laurentians, on a road that leads to an Indian reservation and on to Val d'Or.

You can go days without seeing or hearing anybody here. The water is warm as a heated pool by early August and wonderful right up through the first week of September.

This day was cloudy, but that is not always the case. Anyway, clouds are O.K. as you tend to burn when you spend hours on the lake: rain is something you want to avoid, but mostly for the down time in camp, when you just want to sit around a fire. (Drought is also bad, as they may ban open fires).

While La Verendrye is not considered to be as wonderful or diverse as Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario (which is brimming with overjoyed Europeans who can hardly believe the extensiveness of the wilderness there -- I've been within feet of moose, deer have run across my path, etc.), the Quebec park is somewhat quieter, and that's a good thing. We watched a bald eagle feeding on a rock beach; we kept a respectful distance, but he flew over us at a very low altitude to express his dissatisfaction, and perched on a nearby tree until we left. It was a breathtaking moment -- bald eagles are incredibly huge!

http://www.sepaq.com/rf/lvy/en/

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• la verendrye
• wilderness camping
• quebec camping
• canada camping
• canoe camping
• bald eagle
• kevlar

[countingmx]

@welderMTL Groan.... nice one. Very incisive.

[welderMTL]

transcendental is that a tooth condition