Trivia On The Trail

It was a chilly morning, but that's to be expected when you're out camping in the middle of September. Braving the cold is just a testament to our love for the great outdoors. It's a small price to pay for the opportunity to be in the middle of a beautiful forest on a gorgeous day. 

We walked down to the car and got our food.  I grabbed the Pure Flame camp stove that Heather had given me as a birthday present this year. We were about to try it out for the very first time. 

This neat little gadget is more than a camp stove. It is also a charger. And get this.... you provide energy to the charger by burning sticks in the camp stove!  Then after the fire is  out you can plug in your devices that need charging and charge them up! 

I would have liked to have taken it with me on my backpacking trip this year, but I was thinking that it weighs a little bit too much for backpacking.  What I didn't know at the time was that you don't have to take the charger (the heavy part) with you when you are backpacking. You can use it by itself as just a regular camp stove and you can even use it with fuel canisters. But today we were just using twigs and sticks. 

We gathered up some twigs and went about getting a fire started and boiling water for breakfast and coffee. 

I was glad that the picnic tables here have a metal plate on one end of them. This was designed just for such occasions as this. The little burning twigs were falling out of it from time to time. I must remember to use it in an area where there is stone or sand when I take it out camping with me if I am going to use sticks to fuel it.

It had no problem holding a pot of water and it folds down nice and small into its own little bag.. Now that I know how it works I will be using it more often. 

We got breakfast eaten and everything cleaned up. Next on our agenda was to go for a morning hike on the Paroi-aux-Faucons trail.  (Translates to "Falcon Wall")

The start of this trail was right at our door step practically. It begins down by the bathroom and parking lot.  So we brought our food back down to the car and began our hike from there. 

There are no dogs allowed on this trail. It didn't surprise me really because there are no dogs allowed in this section of the park at all. Actually there is only one section in the whole park where dogs are allowed. We asked the people at the park office about this and they explained that it is not them who made the rules, it is actually the government of Quebec that makes the laws about where and when dogs are allowed. 

Since May 17, 2019, dogs are allowed in all Québec national parks, except for Anticosti Park and Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Perce Park. The places in the parks where dogs are allowed vary from one national park to another and from one season to another.  Dogs are generally allowed on the summer trails from early May to late October. 

There are trails in this park where dogs are allowed but this wasn't one of them.

The following maps show where the province has allowed dogs to be (in green) n this park and where they can't be (in red). 

The Paroi-aux-Faucons trail, just like the other trails in the park, is incredibly well-maintained, making it a joy to explore. It offers a wide and spacious path, which makes walking along it a breeze.  It is a loop that is just over one kilometer long so, it doesn't take very long to hike it. 

​There are not a whole lot of flowers in this area at this time of year, but you can still find a number of mushrooms. 

An interesting discovery on this trail was a number of laminated trivia questions attached to various trees.  This was fun for us in more than one way. You see, all the questions and answers were in French.  Since neither Heather nor I had any practice with French since high school, it was fun to see how much of the questions we could actually understand before trying to answer them. 

We surprised ourselves with how much French we actually remembered. There were one or two questions that we were a little unsure of what they were asking but we understood most of them. 

The answers to the questions were printed on a slip of laminated paper below the question. You just had to flip it over to get the answer.  There were 10 questions in all. I think we answered 7 or 8 of them correctly. 

The trivia questions added an element of additional fun to this trail. Like I said before... they think of everything at this park! 

The trail starts out straight but then you come to an intersection where the loop begins. You can choose to go right or left.  We chose to go left. 

Now that we were going around the bend, we couldn't see what was up ahead and we didn't know what to expect or what we would see next. 

Needless to say, the trail did not disappoint.  At times it felt like we were Alice In Wonderland when we came across strange and unusual mushrooms growing out of the sides of thee trees. 

Other times there were moments that felt comforting and natural.  It would be as simple as stumbling upon a toad that seemed oddly familiar, almost like an old friend. 

When we got about half way around the trail we came to a sign that leads you up a little side trail to the Paroi aux Faucons look out. 

At the look out there was a picnic table. This would be another very nice spot to have a picnic lunch. Or, to just sit and enjoy the view. 

There were no falcons here today. However, Roxane at the office had said that there had been some sightings this year on this trail.   There was an information board about the peregrine falcon. So, we did get to see pictures and read about them. 

This was a great spot for a scenic view of Lake Temiskaming. 

And the closer to the edge of the cliff that you got, the better the view became. 

And of course from way up high, you can see all the beautiful red leaves that autumn has on display.

A tiny patch of yellow pine needles caught my eye. It was like the tree was saying "I want to dress in fall colours too!" 

Behind the yellow pine needles in the water is a trail of white foam that could be seen on this side of the lake near the shore that ran for miles.  It made me think of a lake monster for some reason.  Just for fun, when I got home I looked it up to see if there were any sightings of lake monsters in this lake. To my surprise, there are! Who knew!

Apparently the monster that lives here is called a "Mugwump" and is known the name "Tessie". Lake Temiskaming  is a deep lake; around 720 feet at it’s deepest point. And it is a long lake. Long and deep enough to hide a sea monster I guess.  

If you are interested in that sort of thing, you can red about people's sightings of Tessie here:
​Tessie The Temiskaming Lake Monster 

But we didn't see any lake monsters. We weren't even thinking about them at the time. 

Instead we were too busy wondering what it was we were seeing on the mountainside on the other side of the lake.  From where we were standing it looked almost like there was some sort of trail winding down the cliff and out to the shore.  We wondered if there was some sort of hiking trail over there that we should try to go see some day in the future. 

However, I took a picture and zoomed in close to see if I could get a better look at it.  We didn't have any binoculars with us so that was the next best thing.  Turn out our mysterious trail is actually just  natural rock formation. 

After awhile we left the look out site and continued our hike down the trail.  By this point we had passed the half way mark and were on our way back to camp now.

We passed by a side trail that had "Do not enter" signs posted at its entrance.  We are curious about this. Is this a new section of trail that they are working on?  Is there something dangerous around that bend? Or are they just trying to rejuvenate the forest along that section of the trail? Questions, questions, questions. But no answers. 

So, we went back to our trivia questions along the trail. At least we knew we would get answers to those. 

Some of the rock formations along the side of the path were draped in hanging Fringed Bindweed plants. They were changing into a peach colour to match the autumn colours of the other plants and trees.

As we rounded a bend we had a couple of Pipits cross our path. They were foraging in the gravel and fallen leaves for any sort of insects that they could make into a meal.  We stopped for a few moments to watch them. They were less timid than some birds but when we decided to get going, they flew off. 

When we got back to camp it was time to pack up our gear and put in the car. We were heading home today. 

However, we wanted to make one last stop before we went. We had seen much of this gorgeous park but we had not seen the main campsites that were located down by the park office. So, once we were all packed up we drove down there to take a look. It was along the way so it wouldn't be much of a bother to do a quick looksie. 

​We pulled into the main campground and parked the car and walked around to the various sites for a bit. 

There were still people camping in this campground and we didn't want to disturb them with our nosiness so we drove past the first few sites and  parked the car in the driveway of one of the sites. The first site we investigated was site number eight. 

This particular site was a decent size. It had your standard picnic table and fire pit. This is an electrical site which you can connect to at a post off to one side of the camp site. 

The fire pits here were different though. The grates on them could swing so that you could either have a grill to cook on or you could have an open fire pit for night time relaxation. 

A little chipmunk was calling this site home as he sat and watched us while eating some sort of berries. 

Number nine was across the road from 8. It had a long drive way before you got up to the site. It was also a bit too close to site number 11 in terms of privacy. 

For the most part it looked much the same as site number 8 though. 

Site number 10 still had a former campers permit on the post. I like the permit holders on the posts better than the Ontario ones. It seems cleaner and there is definitely less chance of sticking your hand in a spider web or a cocoon like you might in the permit holders that are in the Ontario parks. 

Again the layout here at number ten was similar to the previous ones. Nothing wrong with that.  Seemed to be a decent amount of space in this one. Not all the sites were big though. A few that we saw seemed to be a bit small. 

One thing we noticed about this site though, was it was at the bottom of a hill. That means that when it rains this site was bound to get pretty wet. 

Just a little further up the road, in walking distance, we found the path to the bathroom.  It is the only bathroom in this section of the campground. 

The bathroom was built in the same architecture as the main office. It was super sleek looking. This was not  only the bathroom, but the comfort station as well.  

It was equipped with flush toilets and had white subway tile walls for a nice clean look. Of course the clean look was also due to the fact that it was actually clean. 

The showers had the same subway tiles.  Unlike the Ontario Park showers where you step into the shower stall and push a button to turn on the water, the button for these showers was in a cubby on the wall beside the shower.  In Ontario Parks the water usually shuts itself off after a limited time. 

The instructions here are to "Press the button to start the shower"  and then "Press the button again to stop the shower" . They say that 4 minutes should be enough. 

On the outside of the building are the bathroom sinks.  They are big stainless steel sinks that make it look always shiny and new.. There is also a soap dispenser and a mirror. 

And for anyone looking to charge their devices, there is an outdoor electrical outlet that you can use. 

There is even a bicycle rack outside the bathroom. Very convenient!

I still can't get over how clean and tidy this park is. They take pride in their park and it shows. They provide doggie doo doo bags  and a special receptacle to dispose of it. They also provide  recycling bin for bottles and cans. It's just so wonderful to have the opportunity to camp in a clean park. It is the way all parks should be.  

We were done with our investigating of the park and now it was time to go home.  We walked back to where we parked our car and then headed out. 

This was the last camping trip of the season for us and I didn't really want to go. But at the same time I also wanted to rush home and tell the rest of the family just how wonderful this park was.  

Now that we have found this place, we are definitely going to to make many more trips back here.  This park makes me want to explore more Quebec parks. I am already looking forward to camping in new places next year!