Pictures -- International Appalachian Trail
On the way to Montreal (where I would get on a bus bound for the town of Gaspe, Quebec) we stopped at the Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory in Burlington, VT, something I have always wanted to do. Half-hour tours of the facility start every 15 minutes; the tour itself is okay but the ending makes it all worthwhile: free ice cream from right off the conveyor belt. This was actually the last time I had Ben & Jerry's until I made it back into Maine -- the Canadians I talked to had never heard of the stuff, and grocery stores only carried Nestle and (maybe) Hagen-Daaz (sp) products.
This is Cape Gaspe, from where I started my hike to the Pacific. The Cape is at the very tip of Gaspe Peninsula within Forillon National Park.
The Cape from a firetower further inland. It is an amazing sight. But you have to wonder for how longer the Cape will remain: it formed on the ocean bottom as sedimentary rock and was lifted above water by geological forces, and now it is slowly being reclaimed by the ocean.
This is a porquipine; it was about the size of a men's basketball -- huge, and actually very cute (from a distance).
An ocean view from the Zephir refuge on the northern coast of the Gaspe Peninsula. It was a shame I spent that night alone: the refuge is in too beautiful of a setting to be otherwise empty on most nights.
The fishing village of Grande Valle. This was actually a big town compared to some others I hiked through. The characteristics that I found most interesting about these villages were that everyone has an ocean view (and pays nothing extra for it) and that the church dominates the skyline, always by a story or two.
This is the beautiful Riviere-la-Madeleine, or at least where it flows gracefully into the Atlantic.
I saw lots of these cute guys (and gals, too, I suppose, though it's hard to imagine a female could be so ugly) along the trail.
The life of a bull moose must made pretty difficult because of his rack: (1) This rack, which I found along the shoreline, is relatively small and it still weighed about 15 pounds (I think it's made of calcium). (2) The locals talked about seeing and hunting moose with 4-foot "spreads" -- next time you go bushwhacking try strapping a 4-foot long 2"x4" to your forehead. And (3) it seemed like every person had a big mount in their living room.
I guess they do speak some English in Quebec.
Some incredibly metamorphasized rock along Hwy 132, a popular route with touring bicyclists for obvious reasons.
This sunset from the top of Mont-St.-Pierre would have been incredible had it not been for those rain clouds on the left side of the picture -- they kept moving to the right and ruined the view, leaving me with this picture instead.