Zoo of St Felicien and Val Jalbert

Although we were disappointed by the region around Lac St Jean, we did visit two very interested sites. The tourist office suggests one full day in both sites, but we did it in 6 hours, as we had to head to Montreal the same day too.

The Zoo of St Felicien is an open zoo, meaning that the animals are not really caged. There is the normal zoo park, with cougars, grizzlys, coyotes, wolverines (i didn't get to see them unfortunatly, which was a downer as i love this unique animals) and three funny icebears who are really the stars of the parc. There's no Sea World like show or anything, but these bears just love posing and doing silly water jumps for the visitors. They really seemed to have fun. HOnestly. Then there's also a train ride you can take through a large park that depicts several habitats of the Canada. Of course, it's very touristy, and we would have preferred to see those animals LIVE along our trip. But we didn't and so we appreciated this park a lot. While you are looking at some Virginia deer to the left, there is a black bear passing by to your right. A bit further you see buffalo, caribous...and a moose!

Honestly, ever since we left POrtland we saw these Moose crossing signs. So we were really anticipated to see moose, after all it's the animal you see on every shirt and in every store. it's like national symbol. But NO. You see dead racoons and dead foxes on the road, but no moose and definitly no dead moose. So there we saw one, hidden in the shade of a tree. A moose. A male moose. My god, that animal is BIG!!!!!

The other site we visited was Val Jalbert, also located around Lac Saint Jean. Val Jalbert used to be a thriving village that prospered on the paper industry, but in a few months time, the factory closed and everybody who lived there left the place. The city became a ghosttown until of course some clever businessmen turned it into a charming tourist attraction. Most buildings have been renovated, apart from the factory. There's a nice waterfall in the parc and you can go up on a hill to have a view over lac st jean. But the most interesting thing is that the people who work there are all actors who really live like the people lived beginning of the 20th century. A nun was teaching three children class in the renovated school, which you can just walk in. So you have the nun teaching three children and some 15 tourists watching the 'scene'. Enters a Father. The three children jump up to greet him and the nun looks around and shouts very convincinly at the tourists that it's very bad to stay seated when the Father comes in. All tourist got up and interacted in the scene. Nice.

Of course all this was in Quebec French of which I really didn't understand 5 percent.