Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Waterfalls, and a view, and another great overnight spot!

Friday, September 13, 2024

Waterfalls, and a view, and another great overnight spot!

We got up at 6:00am, and went for a hike!

We had been parked overnight at the back entrance trailhead for the Mount Carleton hike above the town of Carleton Sur Mer. That's a fairly long hike, and I had some computer work to do yesterday morning, but we figured we had time for the shorter hike to Grand Sault Falls.

First photo of the day, taken at 6:26am!

Ruth, on the trail.

It was only 4.4 kms (2.8 miles) round trip to the falls, but getting there was uphill, and a good morning workout. Also, lots of exposed rocks and roots on the trail, so you had to be really careful of your footing.

There were a couple of short boardwalk sections.

And we made it to the falls at 7:00am just as the sun was coming through the trees to warm things up.

Pretty waterfalls.

Back at the van, we drove the short distance into Maria and found a nice little park and sat and did some computer work for the morning. Around noon hour, we moved to another trailhead where we had lunch, and then set off on another hike... this time to a lookout over the town of Maria. This hike was a little longer, at 6.6 kms (4.1 miles) round trip, with a 303 meter (1,000') elevation gain.

Setting out at 1:20pm, we didn't get very far before we came to an obstacle. We had to cross a stream, but I guess it's the end of the hiking season and they have already removed the temporary bridge to prevent it from being damaged in the spring. We looked for an alternative route, but ended up taking off our boots and socks to get across the water.

A nice steady climb, and we got some good exercise.

Made it to the top at 2:30pm

Beautiful day!

We had been the only ones on the trail.

And back at Igor at 3:20pm.

We are headed for Gaspesie National Park to do a long day hike, but it's expensive ($45 CAD, $35 USD) to camp there, plus we have to pay day use fees on top of that to do the hike we want to do. So I found a forest service road close to the park boundary where we could spend the night for free.