Forillon National Park / Sentier des Chutes
Day 4 in Forillon National Park | Hiking to Sentier des Chutes | Driving the North Shore of the Gaspe Peninsula | July 2024
This morning, we packed up our van and prepared to leave our campsite in Forillon National Park to continue on with our road trip. We had enjoyed having a reserved spot for the weekend, being able to enjoy hiking and exploring the park without thinking about where we would sleep each night. It was also less expensive than most US national parks — it cost $90US for 4 nights, while US parks are usually $30/night. After topping off our water and dumping gray water, we made our way out of the park — but not before going for one more short hike!
Between the Cap Gaspe and Cap Bon-Ami districts of the park, off of QC-132 is the trailhead for Sentier de Chutes. This is a 1 km trail that takes you to a tall waterfall, falling over mossy rocks. It looked like they were doing some trail reconstruction so the original trail was closed, or maybe it was meant to be a loop and the second half was closed? Either way, the trail we were able to walk was in good condition and made a couple switchbacks down a slope before going over a boardwalk to the falls. We spent a little time here alone until more people arrived, then made our way back to the van.
And that concludes our time in Forillon National Park. Since we’ve been comparing a lot of this trip to our road trip around NB/NS/PEI back in 2016, there were parts of this park that made us reflect on our time visiting Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We spent about the same amount of time in each of these parks, and noted the main differences being that Cape Breton Island is (obviously) much bigger. So, even though we also spent 4 days there, we were really only able to hit the highlights and left so much of the park unexplored. In comparison, we feel like we covered a lot of ground in Forillon — though there is still a large area we haven’t seen, again more inland, but if we ever through hike the SIA/IAT then we would walk right through that area. They both have incredible mountain and coastal views and plenty of trails to enjoy them. I think the 4 nights we had in Forillon were enough to fully experience the park, and staying in the same campsite was fine because we could easily drive around the park and to a nearby town. In comparison, it takes a lot longer to get around Cape Breton National Park, and there are still trails there that we weren’t able to hike during our time there. I don’t know, maybe I’m just looking for a reason to return there and experience it in a van though!
After leaving Forillon, we started our drive around the North side of the Gaspe peninsula. Compared to the South side, there were less towns and it seemed like the mountains ran right up to the coast, and the road was much more hilly. The views were beautiful, and so we made several stops at roadside parks. We attempted a few hikes, but none of them panned out to be what we were hoping for, so instead we let Charlotte take us on little walks at our roadside stops.
There are certain rest stops where you can stay overnight along the road which we found using the iOverlander app. We ended up staying at Parc de la Paix near the village of Riviere-a-Claude, which had a couple of sheltered picnic tables, a clean bathroom with running water, and a small war memorial. It was next to the road, so not the quietest spot, but the views made it worth it. Once again, we watched the sea hoping to see whales or seals (or anything really) but nothing showed up for us tonight. Oh well, Curtis found some cool shells while beach combing and we watched a beautiful sunset.
