River Route: Bon Fjord Route: Comme ci, comme ca

Our days in Quebec City have flown and we are on Highway 138, the St Lawrence River Route again. The downtown traffic was surprisingly light and in no time we were at Montmorency Falls, Quebec’s Niagara. We saw them from a distance yesterday from the boat and today was a close-up. They are quite impressive and the park offers both a walk up and across and gondola cars for closer viewing, neither of which we take advantage of as we’ve many kilometres to ride and rain is forecast. We are certainly not enjoying the hot dry weather that Vancouver Island has this summer - thanks for rubbing it in, everybody back home!
We stop at the Shrine of Sainte Anne-de-Beaupre because it is right on the highway but it is so commercialized, we snap our photos and leave. This is a site of healing and a centuries old pilgrimage for the believers in New France. Sadly it hasn’t any of the serenity or the expansive well-tended grounds of the Cap-de-la-Madeleine shrine, however, it does have many visitors. It begins to rain lightly, and even though we’re riding through the wooded hills of the Laurentian mountains our visibility is limited by the weather closing in and we’re not appreciating the scenery much.
Just west of Baie-Saint-Paul the road descends to the St. Lawrence River, the wind dies down, the rain stops, the sky is lighter and we begin to enjoy the ride into this very pretty little town set in a valley. We leave H138 for H362 at Baie-Saint-Paul and as the road climbs away from the town there is a rest stop that offers sweeping views of the town, the river, Isle-aux Coudres, and the mountains. We can understand why this area is known as an artists’ paradise.
Highway 362, under construction in sections and poorly surfaced in others, is some ride! Up and down, it twists and turns through hilly farmlands with magnificent views of the St. Lawrence. We ride through the village of Eboulements nestled in the hills high above the river and then the road tumbles down to the saltwater shoreline of the St. Lawrence to climb again to the highland village of Saint-Irenee. We rejoin H138 in the resort city of La Malbaie where we stop for lunch. This city has a gorgeous golf course, a casino, and a Fairmont hotel among other tourist attractions such as great scenery, lakes, rivers, forests, and salt air. It is low tide and the bay is dry with many large boulders. Our awesome River Route ends at Saint-Simeon and we take Highway 170, the Fjord Route toward Saguenay City.
We have high hopes for this route and it reminds us of the road out to Tofino but where is the fjord? We ride more than 100 kms before we see the Saguenay River and we have yet to see a fjord. We spend the night at the Comfort Inn in Chicoutimi which is part of Saguenay City home to 146,000 people. To be fair it is a very pretty location and if the rain holds off we may see a fjord tomorrow.