Wednesday 27 September 2023---We are going to have to ferry across the St Lawrence at some point, as we are headed to Tadoussac tomorrow. My first choice was to sail from Matane to Baie-Comeau, but the schedule doesn't work in our favor. The line from Trois-Pistoles to Les Escoumins doesn't fit, either, and the privately-run ferry from Rimouski to Forestville is not operating at all this year. That leaves Rivière-du-Loup to Saint-Siméon. That works for me; we'll stay in Rivière-du-Loup tonight and make the crossing tomorrow. And as long as we're continuing down the south side of the river, we might as well visit Reford Gardens, as Marc and I did in 2015. Here's what I said about it then:

Elsie Meighen Reford (1872-1967) was born to an upwardly mobile family in Perth, Ontario, and was educated in Montreal, Dresden, and Paris. She led a remarkably active life, being an avid outdoorswoman, a philanthropist, and a social and political activist. When she was 53, her doctor suggested that she take up gardening as a less strenuous alternative to fishing and hunting. She set about planting gardens at the estate she had inherited from her uncle. Elsie did nothing by halves. The extraordinary result of her efforts is Reford Gardens, known as Jardins de Métis in French. The gardens were opened to the public in 1962, and designated a National Historic Site in 1992. Marc and I spend a couple of hours strolling through the gardens and investigating the International Garden Festival in an adjacent field. The festival comprises a couple dozen garden/art installations by international landscape artists. Some of these are pretty odd--well, most of them, really--but they're fun to look at and explore.

Our experience today is much the same. After, we head straight along to Rivière-du-Loup. We have time for a pint at Aux Fous Brassant, the brewpub in town.

Auberge de la Pointe sits high on a cliff looking over the river, and our room has a nice little balcony. We choose to dine in the lounge so we can take in the sunset. The main restaurant, down in the reception building, has a top-notch reputation, but the lounge menu is skimpy, and the food nothing too special. Didn't we eat up here last time? I think things have been shuffled around. The sunset is a bit disappointing, too, muted by lingering smoke haze from wildfires in the north woods.