I woke up to the sound of rain on the tent.  I managed to take down the tent during a break in the rain.  I went over to the shelter and had breakfast inside while Mo and I chatted a bit more.  I finally set off around 9 am when it seemed that it was letting up again.  I tried out my hiking umbrella but it would lean forward if I clipped it to my shoulder strap the way that they suggest.  I gave up on it and it stopped raining anyways.  Around noon, I arrived at a waterfall called Chute à Picot. 

I was surprised to see ropes on the trail going down to the fall, I had heard that one section of the trail had ropes in the Reserve Faunique, but I had no idea that there were others…it was quite steep and although I didn’t use them, I could see how they would be helpful if it was very slippery.  There was a picnic table at the base of the waterfall and I decided to stop and have lunch, which was cheese and cucumber wraps.  After the waterfall, the trail leads to a dirt road that it turns down.  I was using an app called FarOut to navigate, which only recently added the SIA to their offering, but could also look at the map produced by the SIA association in an app called Avenza.  Both would show my location using GPS, but the FarOut app had a lot better resolution.  So following the FarOut map, I went past a what looked like a trail leading off the dirt road and kept going.  It was quite sunny by now and there was no shade to be had on the road so it was quite hot.  I eventually got to the turn off from the dirt road but a few 100 meters down this path, there was a chain across the path and a sign stating it was private property.  I checked the SIA map and saw that the route on this map was different than the FarOut route, and took the trail that I had walked passed.  So, back I went along the hot dirt road..at least it was a nice view across farm fields and hills. 

I later figured out from a map in one of the huts/shelters, that the trail used to go the way indicated on FarOut but not any longer.  Back on trail, it climbed through a wood and then a farmer’s field and eventually came to an observation tower.  I was feeling quite tired at this point, but managed to climb the tower and take in the view as the farmer’s tractor seemed to come surprisingly close to the base of the tower and my bag sitting next to it.  Not sure that I was very welcome, I kept on after a quick snack.  The trail continued through the field and to a road that it crossed before heading into another wood.  At the road, if you looked left, you could see the town of Saint-Andre-de-Resitgouche, less than a km away.  The campsite, being just the other side of the town and me being tired and hot, it was tempting to just head down the road to the town, but I decided that I couldn’t start a bad habit of cutting corners this soon, so I kept to the trail.  It went up and down quite steeply and took in another smaller waterfall. 

At one point, the trail was hard to find since a new logging road had been built over it.  I found the trail markers eventually after a couple false starts and having to wade through a mucky area.  I finally made it to SAdR and was extremely happy to find that the COOP was open (it was Canada day).  It was a cool little shop with a zero waste section.  I bought an ice cream (Drumstick) and a Perrier and ate/drank them while getting pestered my mozzies on their porch.  I had 2 km left along the road and down a short track to reach the campsite.  The skies were starting to fill with dark clouds and I got there just in time to throw up my tent and jump inside before the thunderstorm hit.  I realised that the although my tent is waterproof, that if there’s condensation on the inside, which given that it’s a single-walled tent happens easily, the force of hard rain, pings the condensation onto you.  The campsite was beside a pond and there was one tent platform, as well as a rustic hut (refuge).  After the storm passed, I went to check out the refuge and ended up making dinner there to shelter from the mozzies, which were biting me even inside the refuge but a million times worse outside.  No one else was staying at the campsite so I could have stayed in the refuge, but I was glad to be inside the tent with mosquito netting.  I was exhausted and quickly fell asleep.