that time i almost fell into a river

Christina, Jules, and I left Campbellton, New Brunswick, after having breakfast at our B&B (Dans Les Draps de Morphée) and taking a quick tour of the town’s sights. I should add that Nicole, our host, was very accommodating and pleasant, and the house was great. Being able to add a foldout bed to our room was a big help in keeping this trip on budget and being able to stay somewhere convenient. And I should add that by “town’s sights,” I mean sculptures of salmon. More than one salmon-themed sculpture.

First, I should mention that we were staying a block down the street from the Campbellton Curling Club. The girls and I have a longstanding joke (only it’s not a complete joke) that we’re someday going to go to the Olympics for curling.

The weather wasn’t so great, but we enjoyed the view of Campbellton’s leaping salmon fountain…

…and the stylish fisherman catching a salmon.

The salmon industry has long been crucial to the city of Campbellton, and they even hold a festival for the salmon every summer. Sadly, we just missed it in 2012. The girls and I are quite fond of salmon and would have loved to celebrate it. After our quick driving tour of the waterfront and its fish statues, we were back on the road for another long day in the car. There’s a quicker way to get to Québec City, but in order to complete our circle tour of the Gaspé, we drove north, back to Matane, our starting point for the Gaspésie portion of the trip.

Not too far into our day’s journey, we stopped at a particularly pretty spot where Route 132 crossed a rive, probably the Matapédia, since Route 132 follows it and crosses it a few times.

Pretty enough for a self-po moment!

We stopped at a rest area (I think?) that had a fantastic surprise, just a little while later. Routhierville, QC, boasts a covered bridge spanning the Matapédia River! Serious photo op. I learned later that Québec has quite a lot of covered bridges and that they’re often called “ponts rouges (red bridges)” because of their usual colour, but at the time, the covered bridge was an unplanned bonus.

We took some photos leaning through some trees, and we naturally wanted better angles. Jules had the brilliant idea of walking down the road towards the bridge, as she figured there must be some access point to it, right? I, on the other hand, was desperate for a shot of the majestic red bridge spanning the river, so I started creeping down the steep riverbank. In flip-flops. Holding my camera.

Christina stayed with me, probably because she knew that I was likely to injure myself. It’s a good thing she did, because when I lost my footing and shot down towards the river, I was able to grab onto some plants to keep myself from falling in, but I never would have made it back up that incline with my camera in tact, if she hadn’t been there to take my camera. And since I never would have relinquished the camera, I know that I was just a flimsy branch-footing away from shooting all the way into the river and floating downstream. Which would have totally ruined my camera. Also I don’t know how deep that river is.

But at least I got the shot, right?

Once I was hoisted back to steady ground, C and I found Jules at the entrance to the bridge and we took some more photos there.

And once I recovered from the near-camera-death experience, I skipped back to the car.

One of the other reasons why we’d chosen to take Route 132 north before heading back west for Québec was to go back to Sainte-Flavie (just west of Matane) in daylight. It had been late when we’d arrived in Matane a few days earlier, and we had missed seeing the “Grand Rassemblent,” an installation of slightly creepy wooden sculptures emerging from the St. Lawrence.

And we really did not want to miss this!!

The sculptures are by Marcel Gagnon, and they are outside of the Centre d’Art Marcel Gagnon, where various members of Marcel’s family do various artistic things. There’s also a restaurant and an inn. We browsed in the shop for a bit, but we were mostly there for the “Grand Rassemblent.”

Really cool, slightly creepy, and totally worth backtracking! The overcast weather was actually the perfect backdrop for these photos. Normally I prefer a blue sky with puffy white clouds, but I think that would have looked a little out of place here!

We still had a few hours to go en route to Lévis, across the river from Québec City, and with another stop planned, we had to get back in the car and keep on moving if we wanted to make it to Lévis in time for St-Hubert and ice cream. Which, obviously, we did.