Road trips sometimes include portions on water.  That’s the way this post begins.  First, let’s boat up the Saguenay.  On the north side, we pass Hotel Tadoussac and to its right, the 1747 chapel, Canada’s oldest wooden church.

Around the point is the Tadoussac ferry rack.  I could do more boat posts from this trip….

Transiting the river takes only about 10 minutes;  the companion ferry below is on the south side of the river.

Steep banks sink deep into the fjord on both sides, here south and

 

here north.  Seals sun themselves not far from where the elusive belugas swim and feed.

Clearly this seal is digesting.

This trip has been a recon for my next trip upriver here, scheduled for a few months from now.   About halfway on my 120-mile road trip, the cliffs draw back, exposing wide flats at low tide.

At high tide, about 15′ of water covers all the flats above and below.

Saguenay’s waterfront park has fountains bathing a plethora of sea mammal facsimiles.

Surprisingly, just north of that park, a gigantic aluminum smelting complex operates,

located there in part because of proximity to hydropower.

Just north of the complex, Lac St Jean fills an impact crater, one of several in Quebec.

Surrounding the lake are lake farms producing canola beans, corn, blueberries, and more.  I passed several blueberry fields before I realized what they were.  I took no photos partly because they look like golf courses several years overgrown.

The turnaround point on the north side of the lake was at Dolbeau-Mistassini, where a blueberry festival highlights summer.  The Mistassini River, flowing over this rapids, is one of many rivers feeding into Lac St Jean and the Saguenay River.

At this point about 120 miles from the Saint Lawrence, I turn from the upper east side of the lake, and turn back south along the west side, and then the heavens open and rain pours over the return to Tadoussac.

All photos and observations by Will Van Dorp, who suggests you study a satellite view of a google map of Saguenay, QC.