I woke up in the morning, and Rob wasn't at the campsite. I quickly found him, enjoying the porch across the "street" LOL.
Rob went to the registration building while I was doing morning stuff, and got the story about the road closure. The staff's English wasn't as good as the man the night before, but he gave him a park map and showed where the road was closed. It had just closed the month before after a bad storm, and they wouldn't get it fixed this summer. So, to go from the St Donat/Lac Provost sector to the Diable/Mt Tremblant sector, you have to leave the park and drive the long way around. However, after the drive the night before, I didn't that was too bad of an idea. I wasn't expecting the road through the park to be washboard gravel. Maybe when there's constant traffic on it, it's in better shape, but I thought it would at least be paved.
We decided to take the long route and see what we could find coming in from the other end. That's where the cool visitor centres are.
This is the one thing I really love at the Discovery Centre. It's a really nice place to go for souvenirs, snacks, or a comfy chair while it's raining. I picked up some souvenirs for myself and my mom, and some snacks made by local companies. I got a glow in the dark star chart that's more durable than the cardstock one I have that you can't see in the dark, and a t-shirt with a French saying ("time spent in the forest is not lost time"). I also bought a camp kitchen towel so I don't have to bring my home kitchen towels.
There are taxidermized animal displays that are cool to see.
There's also a nice little dock on a lake. There were all these mid-sized fish. Looking at a poster later, my best guess was white striped sucker, but I'm not totally sure.
What a nice place to sit. That red-brown water is so iconic to me, it's what I knew growing up. The turquoise lakes of the Rockies were bizarre. Cool, but also...a little creepy. This is nostalgia. This is every summer of my childhood.
We left the Discovery Centre and almost immediately, I noticed a temporary sign on the road, indicating deer. Indeed, in a tiny meadow across from the Discovery Centre were a herd of deer having a nibble. When we had camped in the Lac Chat campground with the kids, there were deer everywhere. We didn't see any over at Lac Provost.
We headed back down the road to the first waterfall on the Diable River, Chutes Croches. We had taken the kids on these hikes when we had come before and they were not impressed with "hiking" except for the jerky I had made and brought.
This was them when I told them there was a second hike and they weren't getting anymore jerky or fruit leather until after the hike.
We thought this tree was really cool. It looked burnt, and twisted.
We continued up the road to Chute du Diable.
This was the kids back in 2016! No wonder people thought Megan and Lucy were twins. Now, Megan is 4" taller than Lucy!

This rock face at the look out (we think the upper level) provided a fun mini photo shoot back then. This time, there was a couple sitting on the bench so we didn't want to intrude, and I made Rob pose on a nearby rock face instead.
On our walk back (it's really not a hike, but also, the family carrying a stroller probably wouldn't consider it a "walk"), I saw something run across the path ahead of us. I thought at first it was a squirrel, but its body was too long.
It ran back across the path and I realized it was a mink!! Although my mom has had some around her pond, I'd never seen one! This picture below was the best I could do.
The loon being fed, and the mink, were two of my best moments from this trip!
We were ready for lunch and didn't really know where to go. We'd see a sign with a picnic table, but didn't know how far in, and they weren't on the map. So we decided that at the next campground, we'd pull in and find an empty spot and have a quick picnic. The crazy thing is, there were this little campgrounds all along the road, but they weren't marked on the map! Some of the campgrounds were, but not the one we stopped at.
We kept it quick. All I could think of was when we tried to find our campsite in the municipal campground in Grand Falls, NB. It was the only vacant site, and the site we thought it was, had a couple eating dinner at the table. Awkward!!
We continued up the road and cam to Camping du Lac-Escalier. We had to wait 5 min for the staff member to return from his break. At the entrance to this campground, the road that continued on was barricaded. We asked just how "impossible" was it to continue. He spoke good English, but was struggling. He said "like, Mission Impossible." He also said that he hadn't actually seen the damage. We asked if we could walk to it and he didn't know. So we decided to walk.
We set a limit of 10 min and then we'd turn around. We went about 12 minutes because we both have the curse of "just to the next bend". We didn't make it there and have no idea of how much further it would be. It was a nice walk though. As you can see, there is traffic on the road. We were told they weren't going to repair it until the spring, so what's going on? We could see the barricade had been moved aside and Rob asked me to move it for him but I refused LOL.
Basically, it says you can be kicked out if you go past!
We had to admit defeat. I said I'd do some detective work when we got home and see if I could find pictures. Unfortunately, even a request to Sepaq hasn't yielded anything. They just said it was closed for safety and they appreciate us respecting the closure.
On the way back, we stopped at the Lac Monroe visitor centre for firewood. The map said there was "ready to eat" food here but all we saw was grocery and snack items. Prices weren't too bad, even for the camping items like one burner stoves and even Starfrit frying pans.
For firewood, you get two pieces of twine, and you choose your own wood and stack it in this contraption.
The pictures make it look much bigger than it is!
Rob of course tried to stack it as high as possible. The first try, the twine was not in the right place so he had to stack it again. It was hard to tie the knot with barely any twine tails. And, it did fall apart on the way to the truck!
On the way back, we stopped at the IGA in St Donat. It's a great store! Lots of Quebec food options, and the deli, cheese, and desserts looked great! One thing we picked up was a ready to bake pizza, which we cooked on the BBQ. We even got a dessert which was a lovely treat while camping.
We had some trouble lighting the fire. We didn't have a lot of cardboard or paper, and we didn't want to turn too much of the firewood into kindling! We did find a few small sticks in the campsite and on the road, but we won't go into the forested parts to get wood. Plus, much of it was wet from the rain earlier.
Although we spent a lot of time in the truck, we managed quite a few steps this day too!
It was quite cool, and we were tired, so we opted to skip a shower and just do the dishes and our teeth. As we finished up, it started POURING. The wash up station is covered, but not closed in. A man pulled up and asked if there was anyone in the lady's washroom. I asked if it was his wife and kid, they were in the shower when I went in.
Then, before they came out, the power went out!!! I'm sure there was emergency lighting, but man, imagine being in the shower with a young kid and the power goes out! They had taken lights with them because it was already dark, but wow.
We got back to our site and it was already quite wet! Our tent was still dry. Rob hooked the fridge up to the battery pack and we went to bed, because it was already 9:45. We did get up later to go to the bathroom, and the power was still out. We used the handicapped washroom and there was no emergency light. The water barely flushed, and the door couldn't be locked. There was no water in the taps.
Surely the power would come back on soon?