With heavy hearts we left Montreal but not before picking up St. Viateur bagels. Four dozen sesame bagels fresh from the oven and still hot served as breakfast and were delivered to ex-Montrealers at home.
The traffic got worse as we got closer to Toronto and we asked ourselves why, exactly, we were returning.
Montreal is one of our favourite cities and wanted to spend another day here shopping and eating. We took the river ferry from Longueuil to Old Montreal and found the Cafe Caffeino that had just opened for the first time today. The owner was still a bit nervous but did everything to give Ruth an amazing cappuccino while Martin had a fruit juice.
Ruth thought she needed more beads for her next round of necklace production so off we went to Pierres St. Dennis for shopping and a quick lesson on some new techniques. The shop owner was very helpful and patient and really knows her trade.
Now hunger got the best of us but fortunately Schwartz’s Deli wasn’t far away. The lineup was fairly long and we probably spent 45 minutes waiting in the sun to get in. As usual, it was worth the wait and this time, in addition to the sandwiches we added smoked meat poutine to our order. Let’s just say it will be added on all future visits. We sat at the bar and talked to one of the servers. When asked how many briskets they go through a day he said around 200! Each brisket takes 10 days to cure before smoking, so that means they’ve got around 2000 briskets in production at any time.
Martin wanted to return to the Maison de l’Astronomie telescope store to get some more information. Our home area may not be the best place for observing because of light pollution, so the telescope purchase has been put off.
On our walk we again admired the street art. One building in particular stood out.
After walking over 13km today, we were tired and headed back to the campground.
Although it was supposed to be a rainy day today, the sun was out and we had good weather. Old Quebec City has many art galleries and we visited quite a number of them, including Galerie Beauchamp which had multiple locations, one with three levels of stunning art.
The old part of Quebec City is largely a tourist area, but we discovered the Karkass clothing store that manufactured partially in-store and had very good quality.
We took a break from walking, galleries and shops and sat on a bench listening to Marc Levine, a pianist, playing beautiful classical music on the street. We talked to him and found out that he worked as a professional pianist and had travelled the world. He had a number of CDs for sale and we purchased one.
Lunch was at the Petit Chateau, right next to the Chateau Frontenac where we enjoyed a trio of fondues – cheese to start, beef as the main and chocolate for dessert. It was a decadent and filling lunch that also served as breakfast and dinner today.
Quebec City is full of life and street performers, whether musical or busking are plentiful. One busker was juggling knifes while lying on a bed of nails. Not something we’d like to try!
We want to spend tomorrow in Montreal so we drove there tonight and stayed at the campground next to the Marina in Longueuil. This time we even had a riverside spot.
It was a rainy day and the forecast for the next couple of days also wasn’t looking all that great. Time to move on and find a cheese factory, this one called Fromagerie Le Détour in Témiscouata. They have a number of prize winning cheeses and little information sheets describing them. We focused on some of their soft cheeses, but unfortunately a few that were of interest required an additional 2-6 weeks of aging before they were ready to eat. Two ready to eat varieties and a small baguette made for a delicious lunch.
We continued to the town of Témiscouata and the bakery directly across from a beautiful park on the shores of the lake. Almond croissants had to be. The town itself seems to have fallen on harder times and many of the shops on the main street were empty or for lease.
With Quebec City input as our destination, our GPS let us know we could save 33 minutes by taking the Lévis-Quebec ferry vs driving further and taking the bridge. This ferry is the first we’ve been on that loads from the sides, rather than the front or back of the ship. The actual passage was quite short and we arrived in Old Quebec City close to a parking lot we’d used on a past trip. They offer 24 hour parking, and since we’ll have to come back tomorrow anyway, why not just spend the night here. We took the opportunity to explore the area, although most of the shops were already closed.
After spending almost two weeks in Quebec, it was time to move onto the next province – New Brunswick in our case. On our 2019 trip we had discovered the Fromagerie Les Blancs d’Acadie (47.77444N, 64.99578W) and enjoyed their fresh cheese curds. They were so fresh that we saw them come out of the basin and they were still warm! This time was no different and we got to sample them again.
We picked up a big bag of fresh curds and some other types of cheese that we were able to sample.
A short drive further is Le Carrefour de la Mer which is a recreational and cultural centre right by the marina. It has a performing arts centre, a couple of restaurants, artist run shops and walking paths along the bay. One of the artists made woodcut prints on paper he had made himself.
We enjoyed a nice beer on the patio and walked along the boardwalk at sunset, ending the day with a chocolate dipped ice cream.
After a brief stop at the Metro grocery store to buy groceries we travelled down Hwy 299 for a new adventure. Near the junction of Hwy 299 and the Murdochville road, there is the Mont Lyall Agate Mine (48.80427N, 66.08610W) where we prospected for geodes and agate after a brief training session of what to look for and which types were no good.
It was very hot and humid and hard work, but in the end we used our pick hammers and dug up some rocks to take down to the stone cutter who told us which ones were promising and cut those open for us. After all the hard work, we had three rocks that were good.
A nearby stream of cold, fresh water helped cool us down and reversed the effects of heat exhaustion.
On our east coast trip in 2019 we discovered Ferme Bourdages (48.07730N, 65.59403W) which had the best strawberries we’ve ever had. It was time to pay them a visit again, but alas, no strawberries available this time. It was disappointing, but a strawberry vine and strawberry pie would have to do. The pie survived about half an hour while the vine will be coming home with us.
To our great surprise, the farm offers full-featured free overnight camping with toilets, showers, laundry, dump station and even electricity.
We met a German couple with a licence plate starting with MG which is the Mönchengladbach area in Germany where Ruth is originally from. They were just finishing three months of touring eastern Canada in the 18 year old RV that they had shipped over from Germany and that was having some mechanical problems, so we hope they make it back to Halifax so it can be shipped home.
After breakfast we left our great campground and drove to Projet Éole, a wind farm nearby which has the world’s largest vertical axis wind turbine. This was built as a research project in the 1980s to study and improve the efficiency of wind mills. The wind mill was commissioned in 1987 and shut down in 1993 as the efficiency of horizontal wind turbines improved.
The wind mill is 110 metres high with a 350 ton rotor and 100 ton alternator, producing 3.8 megawatts of power. The two guides were terrific and provided lots of information, both technical and historical.
The next major stop was at Couleur Chocolat in nearby St. Anne des Monts for ice cream and blueberry sorbet dipped in dark chocolate. The chocolatier, Carl Pelletier, is a very precise man and creates many diverse types of chocolate goodies, four of which joined us on our trip. Three remain.
Exploramer is an interactive museum about the St. Lawrence and the fascinating life that exists within its waters. We learned so much about invertibrates such as squid and octopus. Did you know that octopuses have three hearts and blue blood? Now you do!
At 3:30, there was an interactive learning event with touching various sea creatures like starfish, sea urchins and lobsters.
It is definitely worth a visit!
The last stop for today was the glass blower Le Cueilleur de Verre. We had seen some of his work at Exploramer but he has even nicer marine life inspired pieces in his workshop, and we were unable to resist taking home a memory.
It was getting late and we hadn’t made it very far, so we decided to return to the Phare Cap Chat campground for another night. We received a very friendly welcome.
Before going to sleep we walked down to the waterfront and along the beach.
Today’s highlight was visiting the Empress of Ireland Museum. The Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner that sank in 1914 after colliding with a coal ship Storstad in dense fog. The Empress of Ireland sank in 14 minutes and 1012 of the 1477 people aboard died. William Clark, who worked on the Titanic and survived her sinking, also worked on the Empress of Ireland and survived her sinking.
The museum has a large number of artifacts recovered from the wreck on display.
Some of the display tables are made from teak planks recovered from the ship. A history study from McGill, who is worked at the museum for the summer, gave us some interesting extra bits of information. One of the displays features the brass letters of the ship’s name from the stern of the ship. All of the letters except for the ‘D’ in ‘IRELAND’ are solid brass. The original ‘D’ must have been lost or damaged and was replaced with a brass sheet affixed to cork.
The wreck site, in 45m of water off the coast was designated a historic site which protects further artifacts from being removed. Many divers have done this very challenging dive and five have lost their lives in the process.
Now hungry, we stopped for croissants and coffee and tea at a local bakery.
Tonight we are staying at the Phare Cap Chat campground featuring a working lighthouse, a beautiful view of the St. Lawrence, walkways and tree. The folks running the campground are really welcoming and supportive and the sites are very reasonably priced.
After a great sleep in the municipal campground, we drove the short distance to the ferry terminal to be first in line as we didn’t have any reservation. This ferry is extremely busy this year because of strikes at other crossing points. We arrived at 11AM for the 3PM crossing and were told we’d have an 80% chance of getting on. We were put into the number 1 standby parking spot. The nice thing about having a van is that you have your home with you, so it was time for a nap.
The ferry arrived and by now many more vehicles had also arrived and there was some concern we might not be able to board after all. Luckily, after measuring the van length, they managed to squeeze us in. Any by squeezed, we mean squeezed. There were barely 4 inches between vehicles. Getting in and out of the van was quite challenging. The contortionists at Cirque du Soleil would have been proud.
On board we quickly made friends with Rufus and his mom. The dog was pretty stressed and a loud mouthed woman nearby didn’t help. He did finally manage to settle down with reassurance from the three of us.
We continued to Rimouski and stayed in the parking lot/informal campground on the pier right next to the Empress of Ireland museum and Onondaga submarine. We were pretty lucky to still get a spot as the place was packed with RVs of all kinds, even one from the North-West Territories!
