What I Did With My Summer Vacation

It was nice to return from our two week vacation to find several responses to my "farewell" blog.

All were appreciated but Nancy's "bonnes vacances" was particularly appropriate given that our time away was in the province of Quebec.

We spent our first days in Montreal with our son Isaac and his wife Rebekah, taking in several jazz festival concerts. Then we left this wonderful city for the extraordinary beauty of the Gaspe peninsula. I hadn't been there since childhood and Ruth had never visited.

It is becoming more of a challenge to convince our mid-50's bodies to spend time living out-of-doors but the two parks we visited , Le Bic (provincial) and Forillon (national) made it worth the effort. As you know from this blog I am keenly aware of the degradation of our planet, but camping in these parks was spiritually uplifting and gave us hope. Although this has been a cold, wet summer in Quebec the rain seemed to arrive when we were driving or sleeping and the daytime gave us opportunity to explore.

We are ocean junkies and try to return to saltwater at least once a year. There is something about the rich, diverse life of the ocean which draws us back again and again. We hauled our kayaks with us and got out on the water several times. We saw whales and seals and birds in abundance.

As the photos above suggest (click for larger images), we also spent a lot of time on beaches, snooping amidst the flotsam and jetsam and clambering over rocks. For us this is always a reminder of the Creator and an opportunity for praise and thanksgiving. Okay, and a little grumbling about sleeping in a tent.