Today was a very hot day and we had a lot of fun. We left the Cantley campground and drove to Gatineau where we went shopping for groceries and then sat in the van, Pepsi panting, and Martin downloading Netflix episodes while we were in good cell coverage, the free Walmart Wi-Fi having blocked our downloading intentions. Ruth claims this process took hours and many sips of water, although lunch was also provided during that time.

Finally we were enroute to our first destination, the Fairmont Chateau Montebello. We’ve always wanted to check this resort out for a possible stay and today was the day. Wishful thinking set in and we asked ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be nice to spend some time in an air conditioned, luxury resort?” We went in and booked two nights for the end of our trip to celebrate our anniversary.

After driving the bumpy and partly gravel roads yesterday on our way to Cantley, it was a pleasure to have a fast and smooth drive on a much better two-lane highway. Our destination was Mont-Tremblant and our first stop was the “Big ?”, otherwise known as the Information Center. Here we found out about the Camping de la Diable campground, the Blues Festival that was happening and the free bus rides to connect the two. We BBQ’d delicious hamburgers, left Pepsi in the air-conditioned van and ran to the nearby bus stop.

After a somewhat long and scenic tour of Mont-Tremblant town, we arrived at the resort village and were immediately greeted with live blues music.

We took the gondola to the top of the village where a loud funk blues band gave it their best, but we were mesmerized by a little girl playing the piano with her index finger. A future star for sure!

We walked back down to the lower part of the village, enjoyed some Starbucks iced drinks because it was still hot and were on the way to the bus stop when Ruth heard one of her favourite songs and broke out in dance. Soon she was accompanied by an equally enthusiastic young lady.

Our bus ride home didn’t seem as long because we met a nice couple and talked in a combination of French, English and a little bit of German until their stop.

Our fun day ended with a mopey dog who felt she had missed out on some of the fun.

After updating our blog and a great breakfast, we left our campground and headed towards St-Sauveur, another ski resort in the Laurentians. The highways in Quebec can be pretty rough and in some places the potholes are deep enough that Pepsi could comfortably hide in them. We gave up on the scenic route and instead opted for Autoroute 15 which was much better.

Our first and only stop today was St-Sauveur. During the time that Martin lived in Montreal, he can remember going to a small bakery in St-Sauveur with his parents to buy freshly baked buns. The bakery is still there, but now has other shops in the area where the wood fired ovens used to be.

Right next door to the bakery is the Cotard chocolate shop, the winner of the best Canadian chocolate award in 2015. Here we were greeted by a chocolate wolf and bear. Scarily delicious!

Lunch was at a fabulous Greek restaurant called Souvlaki 7 where we had souvlaki in a pita.

Our home for the night is a rest area, especially for big trucks. We made it just in time before a severe thunderstorm with torrential rain hit. We battened down the hatches watched some Netflix until the rain and thunderstorm got too loud. After the storm passed, we finished the episode.

Our exciting intentions for today were to visit Trois-Rivieres and learn about the paper industry, but this was not to be.

The cabin air fan had stopped working and with it went the cool air that it blows around while driving. With the temperatures being what they are, this makes things a bit uncomfortable. Fortunately we were in a city with a Chevrolet dealer so all would be fine, or so we thought. The dealer in Trois-Rivieres that we stopped at said they were all booked up and there was nothing they could do for us until Monday at the earliest. We left and drove to a shopping centre parking lot and called Sean at Any Transmission back home who looks after the maintenance of our van and he walked us through some steps to try and diagnose the problem. He suggested replacing a resistor pack so we walked back to the dealership to get the part. They didn’t have it in stock, but referred us to the Nicolet dealer (11kms away) who had two of the parts in stock.

We took the bridge across the St. Laurence and arrived at this dealership only to find it virtually abandoned because it was lunchtime. We decided to have our own lunch while waiting and then Martin decided to try disconnecting and reconnecting the main battery. Hurray! The fan started working again and off we went, happy as clams. That success was not to last and soon afterwards the cool air vanished again.

We agreed to abandon Trois-Rivieres for now and drive to Quebec City where there were multiple dealers. We arrived at a large and impressive new looking dealership with many service bays and thought that for sure they would be able to help us. Alas, they only had two technicians on this Friday afternoon and couldn’t look at our van either. They did, however, refer us to Auto Diagno-Centre which is a small and highly competent diagnostic and repair shop. The technician proceed to measure voltages at various points in the fan circuit, removed the dash panels to get to the control and then needed to loosen the driver’s seat to get to a fuse box located there. The issue, it turned out, was a faulty relay, likely damaged by the vibrations of the many bumpy roads we’ve been on. An hour of labour ($89) and a $24 relay later, cool air was once again caressing our faces. Pepsi could also stop panting.

After all this adventure we were ready to settle somewhere for an early evening. We found a lovely municipal campground just outside of Quebec City and fired up the generator to warm some leftovers, but no electricity was available at the microwave. More manual consultation and a circuit breaker on the generator underneath the van was found to be the problem. Once it was reset, we once again had power.