Mont-Mégantic Camping and Treehouse Cabins

At 4149, chemin de la Montagne in Val-Racine, at the foot of the mont Saint-Joseph, the Camping et Chalets dans les Arbres Mont-Mégantic sits in the middle of a hundred-year-old forest, only 6 km from the ASTROLab and Mont-Mégantic National Park. Which is to say, the perfect base for a stay built around summits and the sky.

The campground has more than 50 sites, about ten of them with 2 services. You can set up a tent, a camper or a small trailer, and a washroom building is available to campers. It's a resolutely rustic campground — you don't come here for the pool and the splash pad, but for the forest, the silence and the mature trees that close in around the sites.

The place also has a fine story. It used to be called the Camping Cédrière de la Montagne, and in 2009 the owner, Roger Pépin, had the slightly crazy idea one January evening of building cabins perched up in the trees. A few months later three of them had appeared along the chemin de la Montagne — the property has four today, one of them rustic. The campground eventually took its name from that good idea.

What makes the site really special is, of course, the sky. You're right in the middle of the Mont-Mégantic International Dark Sky Reserve, the first in the world to earn that status. Lighting across the whole region was rethought accordingly, and the Milky Way unfurls above the sites the way you rarely get to see it. That's the whole meaning of the house motto: "Set your course for the stars… and come breathe the earth!"

One practical advantage worth knowing: the campground offers a partner discount with the ASTROLab, which is far from negligible if you're planning an evening of astronomy. And 6 km from the park's welcome centre, you're front row for heading up to the summits early in the morning, before the crowds.