camping slide show; or, three and a bitch

T wrote in french to book one of our campgrounds: "nous sommes trois avec une chienne." when he ran it through google translate to check it, it returned "we are three and a bitch..." which of course became the calling card of the vacation.

7 delightful days on the north shore of the st. lawrence. many marshmallows met sticky ends, many whales were seen, many pictures of the dog were taken, much fun was made of the fact that i could not, for the life of me, remember the word for zodiac (as in, fast greenpeace style boat in which one takes one's life in one's hands). in fact, the only word that came to mind was "gazebo," so of course my darling travel companions had to yell "gazebo" every single time we passed a boat. they think they're funny.





anyway, the trip was great. we camped at île aux coudres, in the middle of the river. it poured with rain and twenty minutes later the road was covered in a blanket of yellow snails. lucy enjoyed a supper of escargot and then lay down in the mud - truly a dog's dream vacation.





we then went north to tadoussac where you can see whales from the beach. they come in to shore because of some weird freak geology that has carved out a deep canyon along the shore full of plankton and other delicious whale treats. several hump shaped rocks were pointed out and accompanied with the cry "look, a whale!" but we did see a couple ... i think. although it is possible that they were just particularly animated boulders. otherwise we walked on rocks and i managed to get a nice lobster burn. lucy's vacation got even better when she found the biggest bone she had ever seen. the fact that it was part of a whale skeleton on display at the museum didn't seem to bother her. and the guards were too busy laughing to do anything about it. seriously... dog heaven.



the only bad part was that she had to sit outside while we ate lunch.





we finally ended up at an amazing campsite in bergeronne, where we could just sit and watch the whales go by. this time we really could see them blowing water out of their spouts and generally ignoring all the dumb humans waving and pointing.



it was stunningly beautiful, although our diet of marshmellows seemed to attract all the mosquitos. we cunningly didn't shower for a few days in hopes that they would mistake us for walking trees, but alas, it was not to be. my sunburn (now cadmium) was polkadotted pink as well. i was truly attractive on those last couple of days.

on the last day i was convinced to go out on a gazebo... uh, i mean zodiac. i was against it, having been on a whale watching boat in newfoundland that actually hit a whale. it was horrible and traumatizing, and whales are fricking BIG! some day that whale (which wasn't injured by the way) is going to exact its revenge, and being in a rubber dinghy in the middle of the bloody-huge-river-that-eventually-flows-into-the-sea surrounded by his relatives and friends did not sound appealing. nevertheless i was convinced/dragged, and of course it was a blast. i'll be a rainbow warrior in no time flat. i particularly enjoyed having to dress like a space explorer and making lame neil armstrong jokes (they were really lame and do not bear repeating here).



then it was time to go. boo hoo. we went back via quebec city, one of my favourite places.



lucy impressed tourists with her acrobatic drinking skills. some even took pictures. obviously i should have handed around a hat.



and that was that. now i'm home and have stacks of work to do. i wish i was a whale. i would eat plankton and avoid tourists and all would be well.