Day: September 5, 2019

August 14, 2019

After a long and enjoyable day of driving this is the little town where I settled down for the night.  This is a 3-shot, left-to-right panorama of the St. Lawrence River from a scenic overlook located up on a hill just outside of town:

This is a sign outside a restaurant as I drove in to town.  Think nice thoughts!!

And I’ll follow that up with a church I saw downtown across the street from the pizza joint where I ate dinner:

And finally a waterfall in a park called Parc des Chutes located right in the middle of town.  This is a 3-shot, left-to-right panorama:

This is another picture of the first photo in that sequence, taken from a slightly different angle:

And another picture from the original angle, this time with full sun instead of shade:

The hill gave off an almost golden sheen, very striking in both shade and sun.

 

 

 

August 14, 2019

Here are things I saw various places as I completed my drive west along the northern edge of the Gaspé Peninsula.  I would be spending the night in Rivière-du-Loup before continuing on to Québec City.

This is apparently a work in progress.  It appears that the owners are methodically renovating and painting these little cottages:

This was the lone cargo ship I saw on the St. Lawrence River on Wednesday!  I always thought the St. Lawrence was a very busy shipping channel but perhaps Mr. T’s tariffs have caused international shipping to grind to a halt.

This was a trailer located outside a high-end cheese shop (showing the business end of the cows):

This is the lighthouse at Pointe-au-Père:

And since this property is managed by Parks Canada there are, or course, the red chairs:

And the view from said chairs:

And finally, a submarine located at the same property as the lighthouse:

 

 

August 14, 2019

As I continued driving west along the north coast of the Gaspé Peninsula I saw a sign for the Rimouski-to-Forestville ferry which shuttles passengers and vehicles across the St. Lawrence River.  A short time later I saw the radio/radar mast for a ship surprisingly close to the road.  I stopped the car and walked back to see what it was all about.

I researched the name of the ship online and found a YouTube video of it striking the dock with the rear of the ship, presumably on this side of the river.  It didn’t appear to be significant enough damage to take a boat of this size out of service but you can see where it now sits, quite a ways above and away from the river.  It isn’t in a place conducive to effecting repairs so evidently this is the final resting place.

August 14, 2019

Say what???

That cryptic name and location describes something I saw which is a little out of the ordinary.  As I continued driving west along the northern edge of the Gaspé Peninsula I saw this object off in the distance:

Nothing unusual about the wind turbines in the foreground – it’s the large object in the background which caught my eye as I was driving.  As I drove I started to form thoughts about what I’d say about this object.  I was going to describe it as “new technology” but as it turns out that isn’t true at all.

The object you see above is a VAWT – Vertical Axis Wind Turbine.  It was, and still is, the largest one ever built.  Construction started in 1984 and it was put into service in 1987.  Unfortunately it’s productivity was short-lived.  It was taken out of service in 1993 as problems developed with the “large and expensive bearing” which allowed it to rotate and it remains “parked” in it’s present configuration.  éole (all lower case) is a water company which may have helped develop and fund the project (they have other windmill devices to draw water from the earth).  Eole is also the French word for Aeolus, the mythical Greek “keeper of the wind”.

I stopped and took photos several times the closer I got to this huge wind turbine.

As it turned out I was able to drive right up to the base of it!

This is the base which allowed it to rotate atop the concrete building:

This is the observation platform at the top:

The turbine is 315 feet tall and the sides which used to rotate are 215 feet across.  It appeared to be much taller than that because it was built on a hill higher than the conventional wind turbines which surround it.

There were a few people milling about while I was there and there was a small food truck selling drinks and snacks.  Signs indicated that trips up to the observation deck were available for a small fee but I didn’t see anyone up there and I’m afraid of heights so you couldn’t get me up there at gunpoint.  The sign at the entrance indicated that to get up there you’d need to climb steps.  Uh, no thanks.

This was the view of the side road I had taken to get to the facility entrance.  Hard to tell from the photo but this road slopes steeply downhill towards Route 132 which runs parallel to the coast and which I had been on all morning.