Day 1 - An exciting trip to Lac du Temiscouata!!

We left earlier than anticipated. The drive was easier than I thought, and the time was passing quicker than I expected. We were on the last stretch of our trip to the camping L'anse a William. The GPS pointed us to a right turn on a dirt road, which I wasn't sure about, but followed anyways. The dirt road was okay-ish the first couple of meters but then it turned into a nightmare! Huge mud tracks of the VTT and Jeep vehicles were everywhere and I soon understood that we needed to go back! We had no phone signal, we were in the middle of nowhere, and I was panicking that if we broke the car – there was no way to call for help…

We finally got back on the main road and eventually made it to the camping. There, they told us that we weren't the only ones that took the wrong turn. Well, that was a relief… LOL…

We got to our camp spot and I had just finished the final setup of the tent when it started pouring rain on us! Hard-core rain...! Gabi was in the tent when she told me that there was water everywhere inside. I went to check and I wasn't expecting what I found! There were huge puddles of water everywhere on the tent floor!!! All our stuff was wet or getting wet. There was NO WAY we could sleep in these conditions, and so I had to make a difficult choice: either pack everything and go to a hotel 1.5hrs away, or find another tent...

We packed everything dry back into the car and placed the wet clothes and sleeping bag on top of the cooler and the rest of the luggage. Then we drove to the service centre and told them about our "adventure".They were kind enough to find a solution which saved us from spending the night, actually 2 nights, in a wet tent. They offered us to stay in the nearby hostel which was a walking distance from the service centre. Easy to say I was relieved.

We got to the car and packed a few items that we could carry with us and walked to the hostel which we found to be located just in front of the lake Temiscouata. There was a private beach and the view was spectacular!

We settled down and made a second trip to the car and back - bringing our sleeping bags and our food.

Later in the evening, we walked down the little path to the beach and installed ourselves on a bench facing the lake - there were fireworks planned that evening to celebrate St-Jean Baptiste (Quebec's National holiday). After the fireworks, we went back to the hostel and settled for the evening.