Feeling at home in Quebec

the Gaspé Peninsula, with highlights from the article cited below

We discovered this part of Canada over a decade ago, when my Dad and his wife first spent the summer in a cottage in St. Nicolas, on the St. Lawrence River outside of Quebec City.

We visited them and explored the Gaspé Peninsula that summer.  We loved it.  Where the Appalachian Mountains dip into the sea.

We live in the Southern Appalachians during most of the year, in the mountains of Western North Carolina. As botanists by background, we felt a special affinity for the vegetation and landscapes of this Quebec place.

Our house here in the outskirts of Le Bic is at the beginning of the Gaspé Peninsula, in Bas-St.-Laurent, but right against Parc national du Bic, with the edge of the Appalachians welling up, in cliffs and islands, before they disappear.

This article about traveling the Gaspé came up in a search about something else, maybe ice-canoeing:  my buddy had a great post about that yesterday.

The author wrote about a number of familiar places, including our nearby village of Le Bic, Metis-sur-Mer, and Rimouski, our nearby city -- it's the regional commerce center for the entire area.

It's a good place to be.