Back to Maniwaki

Three of us who were last here on New Year's Day took my mother to the Chateau Logue in Maniwaki, up the same road through Kazabazua, etc., after stopping for lunch at Wakefield. The Gatineau River, very blue this time (rather than white) was on our right for most of the way through the autumnal farmland. They haven't started harvesting yet in the Vallée des Canneberges (cranberries) but we bought some dried ones from a gift shop. Also stopped at the Algonquin Trading Post at the Kichimikan reserve, where, had we not had the promise of a bed elsewhere, we could have spent the night in a teepee or wigwam. We had time for a look around the aboriginal displays inside, then on to Maniwaki itself where there's another point of interest: the draveurs' tug-boat, the Pythonga, that used to pull log rafts (booms) across the Baskatong Reservoire, now beached on the roadside and surrounded by information about the log drive. We went for a pretty walk along the river bank and board walk to get there, on the way back stopping at the stadium to watch the last few minutes of a hockey game, a Zamboni coming onto the rink to clean up the ice after the skaters had cleared off. Supper at the hotel pub at a table overlooking the river at sunset, and afterwards, Mum saying she would love to see the stars, Carol drove us a short way down the road to a darker place so that we could gaze at the Milky Way on this clear, cold night.