Day 2 - Camping in Quebec

On Saturday morning, we up at 6:30 and got ready to head north on Route 389.  We stayed at Hotel le Comte in Baie Comeau and they included breakfast in the rate.  It cost $124 for a double bed room for the night.  After breakfast, we went to Canadian Tire and bought our 3 day Quebec fishing licenses.  This license cost $31.10.  We found out that we could have purchased our licenses the night before and told the clerk that we wanted the license to start the following day.  We also picked up some last minute fishing supplies.

We drove about 5 hours in on the road and came to the access road to the Hart Jaune Dam.  We drove about 10 minutes in on this access road and our plans fell apart.  There was a locked gate across the road, courtesy of Hydro Quebec.  I had scoured the internet about information on the dam and even talked to locals on a fishing forum and no one knew about this gate and there was no information indicating that it was there.  The gate looked fairly new and there was no way to get around it.  

We were pretty bummed about this, but we decided to try and make the best of the situation.  We drove on to Gagnon, an abandoned mining town that has since been dismantled.  All that is left are the curbs and medians down the center of the town.  We decided to take a left hand turn onto a dirt road in Gagnon to see where it took us.  We didn't have any maps and were just guessing that it would eventually lead us to a body of water.  At the beginning of the road there was a sign in French warning of erosion.  The road was in rough shape and almost all of the side roads off of Route 389, it isn't maintained.  There were large rocks all throughout, pot holes, some sections of erosion and washouts, and water flowing across the road in one spot.  We drove about 5 miles in on this road and came to a fork.  We took a left and drove about 5 more miles but weren't sure if the road was going to end up at a body of water or not.  Roads out there can go on and on and not lead to anything.  We turned back to the fork, took the right and drove about 2 miles further.  This led to a lake (Lake Audet we later found out).  There were a few cabins on the lake and at least one family that we saw was camping.  This wasn't ideal, we planned on being alone, not having anyone around, and fishing near a dam.  However, we tried to make the best of it and found an area by the lake that had a beach and a spot to pitch our tent.  We set up our camp, cooked dinner, and did some fishing from the beach.  We had a few bites, but didn't catch anything that night.  It was raining off and on and we eventually called it a night.

The follow screen shots shows our SPOT tracks while we were driving in on this unnamed road.  Pinpoint 2 was the furthest we went after taking the left at the fork.  Looking at the map now, we were actually fairly close to coming to the Manicouagan Reservoir.  This might be worth driving into on another trip.