Day Five - Perce, Quebec to Rimouski, Quebec (286 miles)
We continued on toward the city of Gaspe on Rt. 132. The town of Gaspe is the regions only deep water port. The British Navy had intended to use this port as their home during WWII had the Germans invaded England. The port is easy to defend due to the narrow entrance into the port. The town looked to be rather large, but we did not go through it, Rt. 132 goes to the south of the town. As we were approaching the Forillon National Park the roads were becoming increasingly twisty. Once in the park region, we stopped at the old military base. This base consisted of a couple of 40mm (?) guns that protected the Gaspe harbor at its narrowest point. During the WWII there was some action out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A German U-boat sank some freighters. After our stop in the park we found some open road conditions, and took advantage. The road was becoming less winding, and a little more wide open. We stopped at Grand Vallee for a lobster club sandwich, it was very good. As we continued on the road dropped down closer to the sea. There were road signs warning of waves crashing onto the road. This did not happen to us, but we could see it was probably not too uncommon. The really neat apart about this region was every 10 miles or so you passed through a small little town. Each town had its own characteristics, but each town had its own huge Catholic church. Some of these seemingly little towns had huge cathedrals, it was really neat. When we got into Rimouski we decided to call it a night. We found a small motel and checked in. After we got unpacked we took a hike back behind the place and found the neatest city (?) park. We hiked some trails and wound up overlooking this immense inlet at low tide. It looked as though one could walk into to town from there, but I imagine it was too muddy to walk.
