Week 1 on the Road

Current Location: Camping Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec. We have traveled 1,725 kilometers since leaving home May 8.

Our first stop on the was west was the Walmart Parking lot in Fredericton, New Brunswick, about 575 kilometers from home. We had a leisurely start to our first day, driving just 6 1/2 hours. Day 2 was a further 600 kilometers to Camping Transit, a decent sized campground in Levis QC. The campground has a free shuttle to the Levis - Quebec City ferry and this will give us a different approach to visit the old walled city of Quebec.

Last week, the Saint John River was in full flood mode and the Trans Canada Highway was closed for most of a week. Even when we passed, the river looked more like a lake and we got this shot of the flooded land. What a tough end to this winter for the people along its banks.

In lots of places here there is still snow on the ground:

We did some grocery shopping and settled in for our first night. The forecast is for rain on Friday and we plan to take it pretty easy.

Well, it did rain quite a bit overnight and there are rainfall warnings for the entire day. We are leaving our Quebec City walking tour for Saturday, but we want to see the Parc des Chutes de-la-Chaudiere. The weather lightened up for a bit in the early afternoon and we did get in a 3 kilometer hike along the banks of the river to the Falls. It was wet and wild, but really nice to get in a full walk on a day that looked pretty bad. By the time we got back to TaJ in the mid afternoon it was pouring rain and we settled in for an afternoon of reading and relaxing.

Saturday, May 11, we woke to the sight of the sun coming up. After 36 hours of non stop rain it was a pleasure to see it. Our day walking the streets of Old Quebec was underway. Sadly, the weather turned cold, cloudy and blustery before we even left the campground. Camping Transit is a great place to stop. Washrooms were spectacularly clean, although it is early in the season.

The campground provides a free shuttle to the Levis ferry terminal. The owner told us that next weekend he is fully booked as the camping season in Canada really begins to ramp up.

The Levis/Quebec City ferry is a great way to get into the old city. It costs $7 return per person and the ride is jut 10 minutes or so. The ferry runs every half hour.

We spent three hours walking the city before lunch. In order to warm up, we did a 1 hour power walk around the citadel. Here is a typical street scene:

We stopped for lunch at La Chic Shack, a pretty darn good little restaurant. We shared a Venison Burger and a Mushroom Poutine;

We took a bit of time to rest in the Notre Dame Cathedral. Lovely interior:

The weather was so foul that we returned to the campground early. Since we were the only people who had taken advantage of the free shuttle from the campground we called them for an early pick-up. Normally, they would have come at 4:30pm, but we got them to pick us up early. Even with the early return, our GPS watches said we had gotten in over 12 kilometers of walking in total for the day!

Sunday, May 12: After a cold night(-1 C) we woke to full sunshine for our departure from Levis. We headed out at 10:00am and followed the St. Lawrence River towards Montreal before turning north to the Laurentian Mountains. There were signs of flooding everywhere. We passed through many kilometers of water out of the banks of the rivers.

We arrived at the campground in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts in the early afternoon on Sunday. The campground is closed at this point and we are the only paying travelers in a 408 site campground. About one half of the sites are seasonal. The only washroom open is the one at the main building although they expect to open all the washrooms by Monday afternoon. The campground opens for the season on Friday of this week. Many of the owners of the seasonal sites are here prepping their trailers. There is still snow on the ground around many of the buildings. Spring is barely at the early stages of arrival.

We made a great pasta dish for supper Sunday evening and had French toast and bacon for breakfast this morning. Life is good on the road. As long as we have coffee and a good heater in the TaJ-ma-Haul we are content to be on the road. We will be doing some hiking here for the next two days before moving on to Northern Quebec later in the week.