The plan for today was to drive up to Lac L’Achigan where Martin spent his youth at their cottage and go for a swim. There is a municipal beach there, but unfortunately there are now signs that declare that it is only for residents of St. Hippolyte and that proof of residency may be demanded. We didn’t swim, but it was a nice detour into this beautiful area of the Laurentians.
Without further delay we drove to Montebello were we will be spending the next two nights.
We again left for Montreal after a long morning and visited the Bank of Montreal Museum where we learned of Canada’s first bank, its founders and history. The bank was founded by nine Montreal businessmen in 1817. The bank rapidly expanded to various other cities and had interests in the US, particularly New York and Chicago.
The Bank of Montreal was also instrumental in unifying Canada’s currency and printed the bank notes for some time.
Since it was a hot day we thought a cool movie would be refreshing and fun. The Science Center has an IMAX theatre and here we saw a 3D movie entitled Super Dogs on the extraordinary skills and talents of dogs used for search and rescue and therapy. Too bad our super dog, Pepsi, couldn’t join us.
After the movie we strolled through Montreal a while and took the shuttle back to our campground.
We had a comfortable lazy morning before taking the river shuttle back to Montreal. We had planned to see a number of museums but ran into a historic skills, trade, food and drink festival right in Old Montreal. Here we saw blacksmiths and wood turners demonstrating their crafts, various traditional foods and drinks to try, and for young people snowshoe racing. If you were so inclined you could get a short lesson on swordsmanship and then try fencing.
There was not much time to visit many museums so we picked an exhibition by Yoko Ono at the Foundation Phi pour l’art contemporain, a fabulous gallery that offers free admission to all their exhibitions. Yoko Ono’s exhibition was interactive and many pieces dealt with abuse and family.
A video showed a performance of her sitting motionless on the stage and having members of the audience cut pieces of clothing off her body. It was entitled Cut Piece and gave the impression of a victim being abused.
It was too late to visit another gallery so we went for an early dinner and then headed back to our campground on the river shuttle and enjoyed the beautiful evening light.
It was an early morning and we took the first shuttle to Montreal to have a second breakfast with our friend Jean of Camtec Photo. He suggested we visit the Jean Talon Farmer’s Market and a short Metro (subway) ride later we were there. The market is huge and has everything from seafood to vegetables to apples and berries. Corn is in season and we each enjoyed two corn on the cobs followed by a couple of cheese curds. A big basket of wild blueberries had to come as well and will provide us with vitamins and anti-oxidants for the next couple of days.
We took the Metro back to Place Des Arts where we returned to the design and fashion show to see a truly amazing dance performance featuring 12 dancers. Lots of “don’t try this at home” stuff.
While we had a short rest in some bean bag seats, an all black group of models put on a flash mob performance.
Tired and hungry we had an early dinner at St. Hubert. The chicken dinners are way bigger than those of Swiss Chalet and the half chicken portions we ordered were pretty filling. Outside, two people where playing chess with pieces the size of small children on a huge board in the pedestrian zone.
On our way out of Quebec City we finally found a place that could fill our propane tank which was getting a little low. Montreal was calling so we took highway 20 without any further sightseeing. We arrived in Longueuil just across the river from Montreal where there is a campground at the marina with a nearby river shuttle to Old Montreal.
The river shuttle runs every hour and takes about 30 minutes with one stop at Jean Drapeau Park. Montreal was full of festivals. An Oriental festival was the first we found, right at the port with music, food, crafts and clothing from various countries. We walked through Old Montreal and up St. Laurent Blvd to Schwartz’s to have an early smoked meat dinner. The line outside wasn’t too long but the small restaurant was buzzing inside.
On our way back, we stopped at a design and fashion festival at Place Des Arts and enjoyed all the displays and activities including a dance competition, fashion show and a performance by a great drummer.
Dead tired we took the shuttle back to our campground and enjoyed the Montreal skyline by night.
We enjoyed breakfast outside at our campground by the St. Lawrence River before heading out to Quebec City. We tried to find a propane filling station but were unsuccessful as one closed at 11am and the other didn’t fill automobile tanks.
We found a great parking lot near the abandoned market hall by the marina and walked through the lower part of the city visiting shops and galleries. The city was alive with tourists, colourful decorations, music, and even a costumed interpreter.
Ruth especially like the Swedish embroidery at a crafts cooperative and Martin liked an arts exhibit entitled “Eternal Snow” featuring the bust of Louis XIV trapped in an eternal snowstorm in a snow globe as a reminder of the rigours of Quebec winters.
We then walked up to the upper city towards the Chateau Frontenac where street performers showed their skills and we had lunch at Starbucks with some of Ruth’s gift cards.
We drove along highway 132 to slowly make our way towards Quebec City, not that we necessarily wanted to reach Quebec City today. We stopped early on to enjoy the view of the St. Lawrence river.
A little further on, in Saint-Andre. we visited an exquisite leather shop with purses of various leathers and furs, gloves, belts, etc. Right next door we found a photography gallery and met the very talented young photographer. Her photography wasn’t only available as prints and postcards, but also encased in acrylic as pendants and earrings.
The next town was Kamouraska, a lovely town with Victorian houses and many shops.
One house had unique figures carved out of the stumps on their front yard.
We started our shopping at a smoked fish shop where bought some incredible smoked salmon, moved on to the grocery store for fresh local blueberries and a dried pork sausage infused with red wine.
You would expect to find a chocolate shop in a town like this and we found one. A truffle and ice cream each made us very happy and the ice cream tasted better than the one from Alibaba yesterday, despite it being significantly cheaper.
We visited several more stores, including one selling beautiful pewter oil lamps made in the Laurentians but we resisted the temptation to buy one. The General Store had freshly baked baguettes which shortly became part of our lunch in conjunction with the smoked salmon and a cheese from yesterday’s cheese factory. Yummy!!!
On our way we made a detour to a wharf near Pointe-des-Orignaux which took a bit longer due to construction. We talked to a couple from Ottawa and enjoyed a strong wind and dark clouds. The wharf had a ladder leading down to the water and a fascinating composting toilet using wood chips whose product will be used to fertilize the town’s flower beds in two years.
It began to rain and our focus turned to finding a campground. After passing though several construction sites, we settled on Camping Guilnette near Beaumont. It is a large campground with many seaonal sites with curious trailer additions and a short walkway down to the St. Lawrence river.
Our campground was not only cute, but had the best, biggest (8’x8’), nicely tiled, individual free shower we’ve had on our trip.
Our goal was to make it to Quebec today but did want to have a stop in the Edmundston area before leaving New Brunswick. The city of Edmunston has a pretty area around city hall with an amphitheater and even a hotel for insects.
Many of the stores and restaurants seem to be struggling. The main employer appears to be the large paper mill in the city.
We visited the former C.P.R. station and learned about the success and decline of the railway lines that came through Edmunston as part of the St. John and North West network.
In keeping with the rail theme, we visited the Du Reel au Miniature Railroad Interpretation Center. Joel, our guide, walked us through a small museum with artifacts of railway construction, signalling, security and life while asking us what we though certain objects were used for.
After watching a short video about the owner and his collection we saw the miniature railway layout of part of New Brunswick.
We skipped the 2km ride on a small train.
We left the railway system but stayed on the transportation theme and after a long and tedious search because of lack of signs, arrived at the Antique Automobile Museum. We took the guided tour and had an outstanding high school student who shared her knowledge of these old cars and their history in the area.
Among the artifacts were old licence plates, including old medallions which were originally used to register cars and simply had the registration number. If you had 26, it meant your car was the 26th registered in the province.
One of the highlights was a 1974 Bricklin which was manufactured in New Brunswick during the short life of the Bricklin company.
The large collection of antique cars were donated by a businessman who lived in the area. Among them is a 1910 Detroit Electric Car, an ancient ancestor of a Tesla. This car had a range of about 40 miles and was often driven by women because it was easy to drive. An interesting curiosity of this car was that it lacked a steering wheel and had tillers instead to control direction.
A 1939 Nash Lafayette Sedan featured seats that could be folded into a bed and suicide doors where the rear doors opened into the wind and were thus hard to close.
We made it to the Quebec border and were soon greeted by a cheese factory where we stocked up on curds. A detour took us to the Alibaba Gelato shop where we had the most expensive ice cream ever. We aren’t sure whether the detour was worth it.
It was a bit sad to leave Mt. Carlton Provincial Park with its beautiful lake but Grand Falls was waiting. The roads were pretty good and we arrived around lunchtime at the impressive information center. Here we learned of the formation of Appalachians and in particular, the change in flow of the St. John’s River over the last 20,000 years.
The gorge is quite wide, but the water flow is fairly small because of a nearby hydroelectric plant. The tree line along the gorge shows how high the water gets in the spring.
We walked a trail along the gorge but skipped the 401 step decent down to the water because of the humidity and chance of rain. The trail had several lookout points including some in the city campground. We looked at this cute campground with mature trees and enquired whether there was still a site available for the evening. Again we were lucky and got the last one with hookup. As we were doing laundry we saw a number of trailers and campers show up looking for space and they were offered overflow spots without services.
Today was a rainy day but we liked the park so much that we extended our stay for another day and spent the time reading, napping and going for short walks during the sunny periods between the rain showers.
The night sky was clear with lots of stars and Ruth got to see her first meteor!