Hiking: Parc National de Plaisance (Le Zizanie des Marais Trail)

With the big July month done with, our hiking resumes. Its still up in the air how frequent and where but we did find that we had never gone to Plaisance National Park which is in between Montreal and Ottawa and is a fairly simple flat hike. Its main attraction this year is the newly re-opened boardwalk after its destruction in 2017 (according to the Sepaq site).

There is a fairly decent amount of trails, not a lot is solely for hiking and walking but most of them are for hiking/walking and cycling. However, there are a few other ones that I have my eye on when we do come back. As for the returning to hiking after over a month away, we decided to take things easier and this one fit our criteria. We ended up parking at the information center which was a 3km hike to the boardwalk and then the boardwalk is a total of about 500m and then walking back so 6.5km as a comeback is pretty decent.

Trail to the Boardwalk

As this is mostly walking around walking and wetlands, there’s a lot of scenes of that. The park also offers an array of water activities and equipment for rental which is something that could interesting for those into that sort of thing. We’ve been thinking about doing a canoeing trail soon but not for this one so above is a random shot as we walked towards the actual hiking trail.

Hiking Trail Portion

The starting of the hiking trail is really nothing too crazy. If anything its in a forest and by water so there’s a ton of bugs as this year is fairly like that anyways. Not an issue usually but we thought this would be an easy hike and didn’t bring out hiking backpack which had our bug spray, it was an oversight on our end because other than the wetlands around us, we also did get thundershowers the night before. Either way, it wasn’t too bad since the trail isn’t too long but just a note for those who want to try this out.

The trail went by a few lookout points. One is more general and the other is for shrubs growing in the wetlands. That wetlands area is pretty nice to look at. It had a lot of water lilies and shrubs.

At the end of the normal walking trail is the boardwalk which the little stretch of trail is called La Zizanie de Marais. Its pretty beautiful especially since its really new also and pretty sturdy. It stretches across a good portion of the marsh land with 3 exits and trails that continue on at each side. One goes further in, the other loops back to the parking lot in the vicinity and back to the trail where we came from. In the center is something of a seating area to rest and enjoy.

There’s a lot of little wetland aquatic plants and flowers surrounding it. The weather was partly cloudy so the sun kept coming in and out which made it really nice and not too hot.

I’ll be sharing more of the close-up shots of flowers on this wetland over at Avenue of Daydreams.

That’s honestly it for this trail. If you want to not walk from the info centre and save the 3km to and 3km from then there is a parking nearby. This trail is really nice especially since its completely newly re-opened. We love doing boardwalks and this one is just impressive.

As a finishing note, I have my eye on a trail that starts at the parking lot near the boardwalk so we should be back to do that at some point. Not sure if its this year since its fairly lengthy but its on our hiking to-do list right now.

Viewpoints of Saguenay Lac Saint Jean

Saguenay Lac Saint Jean is beautiful.  All the highways had various viewpoints to stop and take pictures of the scenery from the water intertwined between all the mountains, etc.   It gives you a chance to stop and admire all the scenery around you, all the beauties Mother Nature has given us, something people like us in the big city miss on a daily basis.

This area is definitely getting very popular as a tourist area for its natural beauties and well some man-made ones as well.  These are a few places that we made stops at: viewpoints, landmarks, beaches……….*daydreams*

One of the first viewpoints we stopped at. It was on the way coming back from L’Anse Saint-Jean to Chicoutimi.  I’m not sure if the town was Roberval.

Across from the museum that we visited (will show in the next blog), we saw this pyramid of yield signs called Pyramide des Ha!Ha!

Its supposed to be an observation site where we can go on the top but it was all fenced, so I just took a picture from the bottom.

We went to visit the landmark (in the picture below) next to this church.  So it was a random picture, but I thought it looked really nice.

This was next to that church and its called the  Petite Maison Blanche (Small White House).  Its known because there was a while when a flash flood (I think) hit the town and there was water rumbling around this house.  Water was flowing through it and it stayed intact for x amount of years.  Right now, the water that flows out of the door, I think is just pumped through. I didn’t have the time to go in to check out the videos or whatnot, but it was quite a sight.  I can imagine how majestic it would be when there was rumbling falls flowing around the house.

That same day we also moved to our next hotel in Alma.  We had some extra time after check-in so we decided to visit another national park, Parc National de la Pointe Taillon.  This place had mostly bike trails instead of hiking ones.  It is very known for the beach along the Lac Saint Jean.

Look at it! Now this is why we went on this trip…Saguenay River was around Chicoutimi and now, Lac Saint-Jean around this area.

The water was chilly but we still had a little walk along the beach

Looking at Lac Saint Jean

Before we knew it, we were already on our way home.  Before we left, we had two more viewpoints.

These are the little snippets along the trip. Not big landmarks, not big goals in our trips but just little things we were able to fit into our schedule. It turned out just as great.  We enjoyed being in the nature a whole lot…filling our lungs with lots of fresh(er) air.

Next post I’ll be taking you all for a trip to the Fjord Museum  😉 Enjoy!