What time is it? Shane asked. It's f****** 4:00 a.m.
why is it so bright? I exclaimed.
That was our start to the day. Well at least Shane's. I went back to sleep but he got up and organized the car and started breakfast for us. He is such a sweetheart. (Can you tell he helped by writing this post for me?) When Kat and I got up a little closer to 7:00 it was easy to finish breakfast and get on the road.
We took off with a destination of Mont Albert in parc Gaspésie for our hardest & longest hike. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful hikes in the province so we were quite eager. We were actually supposed to do two hikes today, a short 2.5 km hike and the big one of 17.3 km.
We decided to do the short hike first - Chute Saint Anne and luckily for us it connected to the big hike - Mont Albert to have a complete a loop. The apparent downside at the time was that we had to do the Mount Albert trail clockwise while everyone does the trail counterclockwise. Believe me however, it worked out greatly to our advantage.
Admittedly, going up was quite difficult. There were huge boulders, the rain had fallen the day before so everything was wet and slippery and the ascent was fairly steep. What we soon realized however was that we had the advantage of walking toward the views instead of having them at our back and trust me and these views were worth seeing. It was absolutely amazing. Waterfalls were everywhere. We even had to do a river crossing.
There were scores of dragonflies and even more butterflies. It was truly an incredible experience to hike alongside the water while approaching waterfalls feeding this stream that we were passing. As we progress through the hike, it was amazing to see how the landscape changed. From well manicured trails to boulders, to Tundra to Forest. It truly was an incredible experience. We had a picnic at the top and enjoyed resting with an amazing view. It really reminded me of Gros Morne in Newfoundland. And I couldn’t get over how beautiful it was, the reviews were right.
I can't go on without mentioning this ascent again though. It was crazy and we were definitely feeling it. As a beautiful as it was, we were glad to get off the mountain.
On our way back to the campsite (we’re here 3 nights), we stopped at a micro brewery for some local beers and then made dinner.
We watched a little bit of the sunset and made plans to enjoy the beach the next night at sunset.
Then we had another bonfire and as we sat and watched the flames we reminisced on what might have just been a perfect day.