We drove east from Rustrel for a couple hours to our next campsite just a few kilometers outside of Moustiers-st-Marie. We were coming to this area to visit the town and to enjoy Lac-St-Croix and the Gorges du Verdon. Just outside Moustiers, we pulled over to get a closer look at some very adorable baby donkeys. Our campsite was packed and although we got a fairly large place, we had no privacy. The campsite was quite cheap but it definitely wasn't a campsite you’d want to just sit at and enjoy the day. There were lots of really noisy kids that were up till at least midnight running around and making a racket. I guess they can’t really be blamed because their parents were playing boules by the night lights just outside the bathroom until even later. Luckily, we had no trouble falling asleep.

The following morning, we were expecting rain according to the forecast so we had planned to just relax in camp until it passed. However, the rain never came and we decided to head into Moustiers instead. It was a short, but steep walk from the parking lot at the base of the village. We were sweating by the time we reached the village but continued climbing our way up to the old church perched up amongst the rocks. The rocky path up offered us exceptional views back over the valley and as far as Lac-St-Croix, the enormous man-made lake almost 6 km away. As we were making our way up, we heard a really loud siren go off that lasted for a good minute – it was the EDF (national electric company of France) announcing that the dam controlling water flow through the Gorges du Verdon (and eventually leading into Lac-St-Croix) was going to be opened. The gorge is usually flooded twice a week and it’s on these days that one can go white-water rafting down the gorge. Within about thirty minutes or so, we were up at the old church, La Chapelle Notre-Dame de Beauvoir. This church dates from the 13^th century and became a pilgrimage site because it came to be known for the miracles performed there. Parents brought their still-born babies there which were then "revived" momentarily so that they could be baptized and then be given a proper burial. This was one of the few churches in Provence where this miracle occurred. We had a short look around the interior of the very dimly lit church and then admired the views back down over the rooftops of Moustiers. The descent was quite slippery because the cobblestones had been thoroughly polished by the thousands of tourists, not pilgrims, that walk the path.

Once we were back down in the village, we wandered through it looking at lunch menus. We didn’t find anything particularly appealing so we settled for a couple snacks from the boulangerie. We got “fougasse” (Megs got the jambon, I went for the ratatouille) which is a bread topped with various things, a cross between a pizza and calzone. For dessert, Megs went for the chausson pomme and I went for the “Sacristain Crème”, a twisted pastry with custard through the middle and covered in icing sugar. We sat just outside the boulangerie on a little bench by a fountain as we snacked away. After lunch, we continued walking around the town, browsing various shops, especially the pottery ones. The town of Moustiers is picturesquely situated at the base of a large cliff and there is waterfall that cuts through the center of town, with a high, arched bridge and a smaller stone bridge crossing it. The streets around the small stone bridge are very colourful because of the numerous potted plants and hanging baskets decorating them. Moustiers is famous for its pottery (faience) and we both really like colourful pottery so we are always on the lookout for new items to add to our kitchen. We really liked the pottery in one shop in particular but the salad bowl we were considering was quite large and we weren’t sure if we could carry it as part of carry-on luggage so we put off purchasing it right then until we had looked up our carry-on restrictions. We had finished looking around the town and there were some really dark clouds moving in so we decided to head back to camp.

The following morning, we drove down to the nearby Lac-St-Croix to rent a kayak and paddle up the entrance of the Gorges du Verdon. When we got in line at the rental place, we were a bit surprised at how busy it was and how many boats were already gone. We had about ten people ahead of us and by the time we got to the front, there were only two kayaks left! The pedal-boats were clearly the most popular choice because steering was a cinch and it also meant you could go for a dip in the refreshing waters when you wanted and easily get back into the boat via a ladder on the back. We didn’t have that luxury so we paddled up the entrance of the gorge for about an hour. Despite the hundreds of other people on the water, it was still amazing to be able to admire the grandness of the canyon from this perspective. The further we went up the gorge, the less crowded it seemed to get. The turquoise green water of the river reminded me of the waters of Lake Louise in Alberta. We paddled very leisurely, our necks craned upwards to admire the rocks all around us. At some points, the canyon walls were a couple hundred meters high and the highest walls reach up 750 m! After paddling for about twenty minutes, we decided it would be easier if I just paddled and Megs focused on taking photographs. We had brought our little point-and-shoot camera for the trip as we weren’t willing to risk our regular SLR but this was clearly not a concern for many of the other boaters. It was great being in a kayak as we could tuck in right under the overhangs and see the rocks really close up. Part way up, we also passed a waterfall that was probably 10m high that was pouring into the river and then a little while after that, we came to marker that indicated that boaters were not to cross beyond that point. I think beyond that, you enter into the rapids. It had taken us about an hour to come to the turn-around point and since we only had a two hour rental, it had worked out perfectly to do an about-turn and head back. After dropping the kayak off, we returned to the van, changed into our swimsuits and packed up a quick picnic. We walked back to the lake and found a relatively quiet spot to go for a swim. The water was cool but very refreshing and we stayed in for at least ten minutes before getting out to eat some lunch. We went back in for another dip after lunch as we were warm again and then made our way back to Moustiers. We hoofed it up to the village and went back to the pottery shop we had visited the day before. Confident that we could carry our purchase with us on the plane, we bought a salad bowl that was a light green with “chevre feuille” vines painted all over it. We then made our way back to the van but had to stop at a gelato place. I was very pleasantly surprised when Megs came out holding gelato on a cone, in the shape of a rose. Our first flavour had been scooped into a little ball in the center of the cone and the second flavour had been scooped on top in the form of “petals”, to form a rose. It was a work of art, especially for a take-out gelato place, and the ice cream itself was delicious. Megs had mango and peach, while I went for mango and melon. We returned to camp after finishing our ice cream and I prepped for a job interview while Megs wrote some postcards. We relaxed for the rest of the evening in camp and got the van packed away as much as possible so that we could get off to an early start the next morning.

We set off from camp at quarter to seven as we had been warned by our guidebook and the local TI brochure that driving the Gorges du Verdon in the summer can quickly turn into a headache if you get caught in traffic. We planned on driving a part of the gorge, doing the loop on the Route des Crêtes (Crater Route) and then deciding if we were going to continue on doing the entire scenic drive. The entire drive is around a 100km of narrow and twisty roads, with plenty of hairpin bends thrown in. The short version we were planning on doing was probably around 30 km. We drove right past our kayak rental and there was not a soul to be seen on the lake at this time. We only passed a few cars on the entire drive and I think it was one of the most scenic drives that we’ve done on this entire trip. For nearly the entire drive, the road is several hundred meters (up to 750 m) above the river below. The canyon walls can be very close together and almost a kilometer apart in others. It was almost an hour before we began the route des Crêtes. We stopped at a popular vulture spotting point, but we were only able to spot a single vulture off in the distance. There were two serious photographers with their ultra-zoom lenses and binoculars and from the wisps of conversation we could overhear, they didn’t seem to be too happy about the vulture appearance that morning. A couple of the viewpoints literally jutted out over the canyon and it definitely gave me chills looking over the edge. We finished winding our way slowly along the road, stopping at numerous pullouts for a better view and a photo. Getting our choice of pullouts was a definite advantage to doing the drive early as we learned just later that morning as we were making our way back out of the gorge. When we had finished the loop, it was quarter past nine and we decided to stop in the little village of Palud-s-Verdon. We had skipped tea that morning to get off to an early start so we sat down for a café at the local bar with along with a number of working locals having their morning coffee and croissants. We wrote a couple postcards as we sipped our coffee and decided that we weren’t going to drive the rest of the Verdon loop as the traffic had picked up and we could always do it on another visit. After our café, we wandered down to the post office and to get some stamps. Megs came out with stamps but she was smiling and quite excited which meant that she must have got some really interesting ones. Sure enough, she had spotted a souvenir sheet for the 100^th Tour de France and they only had a limited quantity on sale. On the way back to our van, we stopped at the boulangerie to pick up some bread and treats and that’s when one of my suspicions was unfortunately confirmed. I saw a large delivery truck that was supplying the local boulangerie with its patisseries! I had guessed all along that this must be the case and that each shop didn’t make its own treats, but I had desperately wanted to believe I was mistaken but the proof was in the pudding! We piled into the van and began our drive back down to the entrance of the gorge and on towards Valensole, about a hundred km or so west of Moustiers. On the way back down, we saw long trains of vehicles and many of the pullouts we had stopped at earlier that morning were full. We also saw a large group of road cyclists with matching jerseys and shortly behind them was their support crew, a lady on a little Vespa scooter, wearing a matching jersey, too. We commented that this is what Megs would have needed to have driven to keep up with us on the mountain descents but then the downside would have been that we couldn’t have had hot crepes like we did after completing the Col d’Izoard. It had been a fabulous few days in the Moustiers area and we were now off to see the lavender on the Valensole plateau, hopefully in full bloom.