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I love potato chips. My three favourite foods (not counting tea, which is not a food, but rather a necessity of life) are, in order: cheese, wine, and potato chips. I would eat potato chips every day if I could (and I almost do, sad to say). But I am determined to lose some weight on this trip, so I am seriously curtailing my potato chip consumption. ‘Seriously curtailing’ for me has meant no chips for at least 29 of the 32 days I’ve been on the road. That’s a HUGE reduction for me, and I’m quite proud of myself – honestly, it hasn’t been as hard as I had thought it would be – and no, you smart alecks, I haven’t replaced them with popcorn or peanuts (altho I did consider that). LL left on Sunday, and I actually threw away the opened bag of chips – okay I can explain why we even had those. On our last night we had prosecco with chips, creme fraiche and caviar (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, trust me). But yes, by Monday I was travelling in a chip-free RV.

Until I saw the sign. A massive billboard on the side of the highway in New Brunswick – it seems Covered Bridge’s factory was 2km ahead, just off the highway, with tours, tastings, and a shop. I love Covered Bridge – particularly their Creamy Dill Pickle – oh dear. Well I had to stop, right? It’s not like I had to buy anything, right?

I didn’t do the tour, there was a rather greedy family in front of me at the tasting table, but, what would a small purchase hurt? I simply had to buy four bags as there was a BOHO sale going on. So I only bought flavours I’d never tried before (except for the small bag of dill – I mean, come on – what is a girl to do?).

But I am going to exercise some will power – these chips must last me until the end of the trip. Uh-hunh.

Oh, BTW – last two days? Steps before breakfast: 4,102 and 3,897 respectively. Not bad.

Okay, here goes.  I have a spreadsheet with my entire itinerary laid out, from July 6^th to October 4^th. Because not all campgrounds are booked yet, it’s a work in progress and resides on my laptop. 

I left Lévis (Québec City) at noon today, and started my 3-4 hour drive (unusually long for my typical drive days) through southern Quebec, into New Brunswick, and on to my next Terego dry-camping site, Le Vieille Église Blanche in Saint-Leonard-Parent.

Drove past Rivière du Loup, a town I’m looking forward to visiting upon my return in September.  The highway there passes through beautiful rolling hills, steep cliffs, and green valleys – looks lovely.  I kept going and got to La Vieille Église Blanche just before dinner (it was closed, but I would check out the Friperie (Thrift Store) that it had been turned into in the morning).  There was one other camper parked there.

Not sure why, but I decided to open my planning spreadsheet just after dinner.  Well, f”*£!. I’m not supposed to be here tonight.  I’m booked to be here TOMORROW NIGHT.  Right now, I’m supposed to be at a campground on the banks of the St Lawrence, in Rivière du Loup.  A campsite I have already put a downpayment on.  A campsite I drove by several hours ago. Splendid.

Three issues: (1) I have to call the Rivière du Loup campground and cancel.  En français. (2) What if I’m in someone’s spot here behind the Vieille Église Blanche?  Where am I supposed to go? (3) What about tomorrow night? Do I stay here? What do I do all day in Saint-Leonard-Parent?

Great – another camper just pulled in. Gotta go. . . .

*Edit: it’s the next morning.  Last night I approached the arriving campers and explained in French (they don’t speak English) that I’m an idiot, I screwed up the dates, and I parked in their spot.  They were so nice; they just parked in the next spot over and said not to worry, it was late, likely no one else would show up (no one did).  I called the Rivière du Loup campground who seemed pleased to hear I was an idiot, as they were full and another camper had just pulled in and would be happy to have my spot.  (I was feeling so stupid that I didn’t have the nerve to ask for my deposit back – it was a small one.)  I called the Fredericton campground I’m due at Wednesday and it seems they have a spot for me tonight – not a great spot, but a campsite nonetheless. All solved, but I’ve been so flustered for the last 14 hours that I forgot to take a photo of the absolutely delightful la Vieille Église Blanche Friperie et Buanderie (thrift store & laundromat).  Here are a couple from online.

We shall never speak of this stupidity again.

We arrive at the Quebec South KOA.  LL heads home and I park the RV and catch the next shuttle into the city to her house.  She’s already started the laundry (thank you very much), and has bought a pizza for dinner, so we have a great dinner and an early night.  Next morning I pack up all my clean laundry, hug her good-bye, and take an Uber back to the campground for what is going to be a day of setting up camp, re-grouping, cleaning, trip-planning, and relaxing. 

Not so fast there, Lainey.

I spent a couple of hours setting-up, showering, cleaning, and re-packing as planned, then reached for my computer to start booking the next leg of the trip and update my blog.  That’s when I realised: I’d left my laptop charging cable at LL’s.  Dammit – setback number one.  Ordered an Uber to pick up and deliver the cable – problem solved.  Walked up to meet the Uber driver and get my power cord.  Great – except something went wrong with my Uber account – setback number two.   I never did figure out what happened, but about two hours later it resolved itself.  Walked back to through the campground only to have my right knee pop out halfway down the hill – setback number three.  Limped home to the RV only to discover (after 15 months of ownership) that there is an automatic lock on the camper door, and if triggered, will lock the rig.  OMG – I had left my keys in the camper, thinking I was leaving my door unlocked – setback number four.  Tried not to panic – started to look up locksmiths in Lévis, then thought – what if I had unlocked the driver’s door when setting up camp in the morning?  Limped around and – thank heavens – crisis averted, although I still don’t know quite what triggers that sescond auto-lock – that is tomorrow’s project.  Then the final nail in the day’s coffin: I had made soup in the morning in the slow cooker – a soup I make probably twice a month.  But when I went to dish it up, well, it tasted like crap.  I have no idea why, it was just awful.  Not really setback number five, more just a disappointing end to a challenging day. 

I’m going to bed.

Had I mentioned that it’s been raining?  A lot.  I love the sound of rain on an RV roof.  Except when the sound is that of a drip in the bathroom.  Not from a faucet or a shower head.  Oh no, this was a drip from a screw in the ceiling.  Well crap.

But one is never enough.  The leak travelled into the middle of the bathroom ceiling and dripped on our heads.  And then I found the puddle beside my bed, under the slide-out. Oh goody, we’re in the middle of rural Québec with leaks.  How do I find a repair garage?  How do I book an appointment that fits with our schedule?  How do I say the words ‘leak’, ‘ceiling lining’, and ‘slide-out’ en français?

But I found answers to all those questions, popped into a local RV garage (thank heavens I’m in a province full of camping-nuts), showed him the problems, and drove away 20 minutes later with dry ceilings and hardly a dent in my wallet.  Whew, crisis averted.

Yesterday was probably my best day of travelling so far.  A: LL was driving.  B: the weather was spectacular.  C: I bought a beautiful new coat. And D: we went on a 3-hour cruise from Tadoussac, up the Saguenay Fjord, to L’Anse Saint-Jean and back.

The cruise was fantastic – we were the only guests on a boat holding 36, so we got a private tour with detailed answers to all our questions.  We learned about the fjord – it’s a fjord not a river because there is salt water and fresh water all at once (not brackish water, but two separate layers of salt & fresh) over 100km upstream from the St Lawrence.

And we saw whales.  The captain stopped the boat and we saw several pods of beluga whales, some upstream, and some when we arrived back in Tadoussac in the St Lawrence.

An absolutely fantastic day.

The two days that we did the most driving turned out, of course, to be the two worst days for weather.  LL was following behind in her car as I navigated the Laurentian mountains. (I think they are actually a small off-shoot range of the Laurentians whose name escapes me – geographers can take me to task later.)

There were points where the visibility was almost nil, and LL must have wondered why we weren’t stopping at the side of the road, but I could see lighter skies ahead, and I was afraid that if I pulled over on the side of a slope and lost momentum, I wouldn’t be able to get the RV chugging back up the steep mountainside.  We made it without incident (well, maybe got a teeny bit lost on the last leg of Day One) and I was so glad when we got to a campground where we could leave the RV and Lori could do all the car driving to go sightseeing. 

BTW, if you don’t know about le Déluge de 1996 à Saguenay and la Petite Maison Blanche, you really must look it up.  Awful & awesome all at once.

Then it was time to drive back down the mountains.  Down.  You’ve seen those runaway truck lanes on mountain highways?  Well, that’s all I think about as I meet 7%, 9%, 12% steep grade signs and head down the hills, downshifting, tow-hauling, and whimpering the whole way down.  Only to head up an equally steep slope with a line of 10 – 15 impatient drivers behind me as we struggle up the incline.  I was going to buy one of those hand-strengthening clamps to improve my grip, but it turns out white-knuckling it through undulous mountain ranges has the same effect.

Dear God, I miss driving the backroads of Scotland (a sentence I never thought I would say).

Anyhoo, I made it safe and sound and am relaxing along the shore of the St Lawrence River, G&T in hand.

I’m not going to make this cross-Canada blog about each of the places I stay – it would be great to do a true travelogue, giving an overview of each locale I visit, but that’s not my goal here.  Not that that type of blog isn’t great – believe me, I have taken pages and pages of notes from my friends’ North American RV tour in 2021/22 (see attached), because they absolutely did an amazing job of painting pictures of each attraction, or campsite, or restaurant that they visited – so far I’ve done l‘Abbaye de Saint-Benoit based on their recommendation, and have already dodged a campsite in northern Ontario because of their experience.  But my blogging is less about location and more about my experience and my memories (in other words, Lainey, it’s all “me, me, me” – we get it).  Whatevs.

Having said all that, I have to tell you about the delightful stay we had last night in Saint-André-du-Lac in the Saguenay region of Québec.

Stayed at the Terego farm ‘Domaine d’Oscar’, a chicken, goat, duck, turkey, vegetable farm run by two delightful women, Julie et Sabrine.  They have created a village on the farm with interactive buildings, a café (our breakfast was amazing!), walking paths, and kids’ educational demos.  There were pigs and ponies and alpacas, and five absolutely beautiful and friendly dogs.  Plus a store full of their produce.  All of which alone would have made this a great stay. 

But just after dinner the ladies came over to ask us about our reservation (they had a no-show from Ontario with the exact same last name as me (same spelling) and were wondering if I had accidently double-booked).  One question led to another, and the next thing we knew, we were sitting on their patio, chatting in broken French & broken English, and sharing a couple of bottles of wine.  As I explained to them, “Quand je bois du vin, je parle mieux français, et quand tout le monde boit, je le parle encore mieux.”

Only a tiny headache the next morning. 😛  

Said good-bye to my new CFUW friends and headed back into my adventures.  Joined up with LL in Quebec City for a 10-day tour of the Saguenay/Lac-Saint-Jean and Charlevoix regions of Quebec.  Yippee!  Haven’t seen LL in months, she is an experienced RVer, and she is bringing her car so we can leave the RV hooked-up in campgrounds while we explore.  Only problem?  To get to Saguenay, one must drive through the Laurentian Mountains.  Yes, mountains.  In an RV.  And in thunderstorms.  Pouring rain and thunderstorms.  In an RV.

It was not a good day.  (Well, I suppose the fact that I survived unscathed made it a reasonably good day.  But I am not looking forward to the Appalachians in New Brunswick – or, for that matter, next year’s Rockies.)

Spent the first three days of last week with the RV in storage, and myself in the Delta Marriott in Montreal with 150 women from CFUW.  A pretty good conference – great food and interesting speakers – and I spent a lot of time describing my current RVing lifestyle to people wanting to know my ‘story’.  Last time I was at one of these conferences (in Windsor), the subject of my Scotland sojourn came up at a lunch table with 8 – 10 strangers, and one woman (again I emphasise ‘total strangers’), suddenly said, “Are you Ontario to Orkney?  I follow you all the time!” – an absolute highlight of the conference for me.

Before I forget, I want to make note of the restaurants I ate in that week: Île de France Le 9e (posh, excellent service, good food); Escondite Old Montreal (Mexican, fun, delicious tacos and margaritas); and Auberge Knowlton (great location, good food).

After the conference the CFUW Sherbrooke chapter hosted us in their homes and toured us around the Eastern Townships for three days.  My host was club president, a lovely lady named Ann Louise, who let me park my RV in her driveway.  We visited the town of Knowlton (setting for the Inspector Gamache Three Pines village); Lakes Magog and Massawippi (stunning scenery); and the Haskell Free Library & Opera House that straddles the Canada/US border in Stanstead (yet another example of Canadian/US camaraderie that has been f******d by you-know-who).  Oh, and we met Louise Penny.  Yup, you read that right – our hosts arranged for Louise Penny to come and meet us all at the Knowlton bookstore and café.  Wow.

Based on these past three days, I’ve re-vamped my last week of my trip to re-visit this area with LL.  I cannot recommend this region enough.

On Sunday I posted that I’d include my steps/day and here it is Tuesday evening and I’ve already forgotten – way to live up to a public commitment there. ( I prob won’t share steps daily, just as I add new posts; but this is a good way for me to stay honest going forward.)

Monday: Steps – 8,653

Tuesday: Steps – 9,916