Located two hours away from Quebec City, The parc national du bic is one of our favorite place. It's perfectly located for us half way between Quebec City and Sainte-Anne-des-monts where we are supposed to spend the night. Bic is one of the park from sepaq, the organization responsible for the parks in Quebec so there is a small entrance fee but it's definitely worth it. The park has multiple hikes available and it's possible to camp there as well. It's located on the riverside of St Lawrence river. We decide to go for the loop starting at la ferme-rioux. It's an amazing hike only available at low tide as you have to walk down the cliff on a couple of occasions. If you are lucky, you can spot lots of wildlife like white-tailed deer, fox, seal, birds of prey and common elder. We were definitely lucky with the weather but a little bit too early in the season. We still managed to see the white-tailed deer and the common elder.Parc national du BicAfter 3-4 hours hiking, it's time to drive to Sainte Anne des monts. The coastal road is nice and not very busy, we do a couple of stops to buy some groceries and to enjoy the sunset but it's getting chilly so we decide to shorten the break. We spend the night in an Airbnb before heading to our next national park, The parc national de la Gaspésie. It's located in the middle of the gaspe peninsula about 30 min away from Sainte Anne des monts. Once again, we are too early and some of the hikes are still closed such as Mont Albert. The visitor center attendant directs us to another hike, Mont Olivine. The trail follows the river up to the Diablo waterfall. It then keeps going up till the summit with a small side trail to a lake where we have our lunch break. The remaining part of the track to the summit is still full of snow and it's a little bit dangerous as it's either icy or you just go 30cm within the snow... No wildlife but a couple of curious birds visiting us during the hike. However, we are much more lucky when we start driving after the hike when we spot a fox from the visitor center parking lot and a few moose on our way to Gaspé and Forillon national park.Following the GPS blindly, we end up going to Gaspé through Murdochville, which is supposed to be the fastest/shortest road. It's a graveled road and the fuel tank is getting low. Luckily, the graveled road stop when we arrive in Murdochville after one hour of driving and we are able to fill up the tank and finish our trip to Gaspé.There is a national parc next to Gaspé called Forillon national park. It's a beautiful spot at the end of the peninsula. Our plan is to do two of the available hikes, the tower walk on top of Mont St. Alban and Cape Gaspé.The tower walk offers amazing views of the park itself. You can also spot a lot of birds nesting on the cliffs.Cape Gaspé is trail along the southern coast of the park. The road is closed at an early stage so we have to walk 6 more kilometers... An extra effort we would really like to avoid.. However, we are quickly rewarded with a few wildlife encoutners. There are 3 whales swimming in the bay. We can hear them from the trail and see them as well (works pretty well with the binoculars). We are also able to see porcupines multiple time during the walk! However, no bear even though a sign is confirming there are in the area.. The end of the trail brings us to a nice lighthouse. An exhausting but beautiful walk with wildlife encounters to make us forget about the pain in our feet.We drive home, exhausted, after those two wonderful trails. Early bed time since we have a long drive the next day!Waking up on the 30th of May, it's Petra's birthday ! We quickly pack everything in the car and go for breakfast. The main requirement is Pancakes ! Petra is dreaming about them since we had those home made pancakes in Toronto prepared by Frank.We then slowly drive down the east coast of the peninsula. We have a break at Percé rock for about an hour.We then keep driving south and have a couple more stops. One in Ferme bourdages, a strawberry farm where we do some strawberry/rhubarb wine tasting and a second one in Le Naufrageur, a local brewerie where we do some beer tasting as well! It's the end of the day, we arrive at our next Airbnb in Campbellton...
