Dam Beaver
On Friday we left Ottawa at lunchtime intending to get to Tremblant in Quebec in a couple of hours. This would have been easy if it wasn’t for the poxy roads in Quebec. The complete lack of road signs meant we suddenly found ourselves literally at the end of the road as it hadn’t been completed yet.
We eventually got to Tremblant and had just enough time to check in before teeing off. The course was in very nice condition and in a very picturesque setting in a forest over looking a lake. Just to prove we were in the wilds we saw a doe and her fawn eating behind the fifth green and on the sixth tee a fox came out of the woods, had a look at us and scampered up the rocks. It took over five hours to play the course and on the last two holes we had to find the ball using a torch!
After the golf we drove back to the village and had dinner with the nice couple from Ottawa who had joined us for the round of golf. After a stroll around the village we went back to the fabulous room that had a 4ft wide fireplace and a Jacuzzi bath.
On Saturday we made use of the free gondola to get to the top of the village and had a look around the shops. The village has been purpose built over the last ten years mainly for ski tourists and has been made to look like an Alpine resort with all the buildings having brightly coloured roofs. For lunch we got pizza and sat by a boating lake. Then we made use of the free tickets we had been given for the main gondola and went to the top of Mont Tremblant. The view was spectacular. Wooded hills for as far as the eye could see in every direction. We did a bit of a trek and walked around the top of the mountain to the observation tower to get 3600 views. We must have liked the view as we spent more than the obligatory 4 minutes that we had at Sugar Loaf mountain!
Back down the mountain, we had a ride on the luge. Not the Winter Olympic kind but ones with wheels. It was good fun and Sarah has asked me not to say that she got over taken by several young children so I won’t mention it. After the exertions of the luge we needed something to eat and remembered we’d seen a creperie. We ordered one each but when they arrived we realised we should have shared one. They were huge! We needn’t have had the pizza for lunch. That didn’t stop us from scoffing them down though.
To work off the crepes we decided to go for a drive and see what else was in the neighbourhood. There is the village of Mont-Tremblant which was the centre for tourists until the resort was built and on the opposite side of the Lake Tremblant from the resort we found some nice restaurants, houses and a quaint waterfall.
Being in the countryside we thought that there would be a chance of seeing a beaver, so when we got back to the resort we had a look around for what we thought we be good beaver territory. As it happens there is a marshy wetland within the grounds of the resort and we quickly spotted a beaver dam, but no beaver. We walked around the wetland to get a better view of the dam from another angle, constantly thinking we’d seen a beaver only to realise it was either a log or a duck. After thinking that we needed to get our eyes tested, I spotted another log only this one was swimming through the water. A beaver! We followed the direction he was swimming in and sat on the bank as he swam right towards us. I kept putting off taking a photo as he we getting closer all the time making the potential picture even better and then…he dived under the surface. Dam! I hadn’t taken a photo. Luckily for us beavers have to come up for air and we could tell where he was going to surface by following the trail of air bubbles. He surfaced not far from us and began swimming in circles just off the bank from where we were sitting. A couple of times he turned away from us and made a big splash using his tail. It took us a while to realise that he was angry with us because we were sitting right near another dam and he was scared to go home because of us.
On Sunday we were driving to reception and saw two deer and another fawn by the roadside. Sarah got some nice photos (see Tremblant). We checked out and drove home to get the flat clean and tidy for our guests, Stephen and Anne, arriving tomorrow.
We eventually got to Tremblant and had just enough time to check in before teeing off. The course was in very nice condition and in a very picturesque setting in a forest over looking a lake. Just to prove we were in the wilds we saw a doe and her fawn eating behind the fifth green and on the sixth tee a fox came out of the woods, had a look at us and scampered up the rocks. It took over five hours to play the course and on the last two holes we had to find the ball using a torch!
After the golf we drove back to the village and had dinner with the nice couple from Ottawa who had joined us for the round of golf. After a stroll around the village we went back to the fabulous room that had a 4ft wide fireplace and a Jacuzzi bath.
On Saturday we made use of the free gondola to get to the top of the village and had a look around the shops. The village has been purpose built over the last ten years mainly for ski tourists and has been made to look like an Alpine resort with all the buildings having brightly coloured roofs. For lunch we got pizza and sat by a boating lake. Then we made use of the free tickets we had been given for the main gondola and went to the top of Mont Tremblant. The view was spectacular. Wooded hills for as far as the eye could see in every direction. We did a bit of a trek and walked around the top of the mountain to the observation tower to get 3600 views. We must have liked the view as we spent more than the obligatory 4 minutes that we had at Sugar Loaf mountain!
Back down the mountain, we had a ride on the luge. Not the Winter Olympic kind but ones with wheels. It was good fun and Sarah has asked me not to say that she got over taken by several young children so I won’t mention it. After the exertions of the luge we needed something to eat and remembered we’d seen a creperie. We ordered one each but when they arrived we realised we should have shared one. They were huge! We needn’t have had the pizza for lunch. That didn’t stop us from scoffing them down though.
To work off the crepes we decided to go for a drive and see what else was in the neighbourhood. There is the village of Mont-Tremblant which was the centre for tourists until the resort was built and on the opposite side of the Lake Tremblant from the resort we found some nice restaurants, houses and a quaint waterfall.
Being in the countryside we thought that there would be a chance of seeing a beaver, so when we got back to the resort we had a look around for what we thought we be good beaver territory. As it happens there is a marshy wetland within the grounds of the resort and we quickly spotted a beaver dam, but no beaver. We walked around the wetland to get a better view of the dam from another angle, constantly thinking we’d seen a beaver only to realise it was either a log or a duck. After thinking that we needed to get our eyes tested, I spotted another log only this one was swimming through the water. A beaver! We followed the direction he was swimming in and sat on the bank as he swam right towards us. I kept putting off taking a photo as he we getting closer all the time making the potential picture even better and then…he dived under the surface. Dam! I hadn’t taken a photo. Luckily for us beavers have to come up for air and we could tell where he was going to surface by following the trail of air bubbles. He surfaced not far from us and began swimming in circles just off the bank from where we were sitting. A couple of times he turned away from us and made a big splash using his tail. It took us a while to realise that he was angry with us because we were sitting right near another dam and he was scared to go home because of us.
On Sunday we were driving to reception and saw two deer and another fawn by the roadside. Sarah got some nice photos (see Tremblant). We checked out and drove home to get the flat clean and tidy for our guests, Stephen and Anne, arriving tomorrow.
posted by Ian @ 3:07 pm
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