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.
I forgot to take many photos; this is the only one. Oops.
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.
The not-so-treacherous part of Charlevoix
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.”
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.
These houses are on the US side of a street straddling the border. The lampposts carry the stars & stripes, but the locals have hung Canadian flags from their porches with slogans like: “We Hate Trump Too”, and “Elbows Up Canada”, and “We Stand with Canada”
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.)
I think we all know what it means when someone says “oopsie” – a mistake has been made. And I’m guessing that you can figure out what it means when a camper refers to a “poopsie” – an unfortunate excrement error has occurred. (Last year’s urine incident doesn’t count – a mulligan on Day One of RV ownership.)
I was leaving the KOA in Cardinal this morning (which by the way, is quite the campground! Pools, splash pads, sandcastles, pizza stand, you name it) and decided to use their dumping station at the exit.
Unusually, it supplied its own sewer hose, instead of being expected to pull mine out. Okey doke. Rubber gloves on, watch off. I opened the cap on my RV and slotted on their hose.
Now any camper will tell you – always empty the black (icky) water tank BEFORE the grey (soapy) water tank, so that the hose ends up getting a rinse out with old sink and shower water. But my Dad always liked to start for 10 seconds or so with the grey tank outlet, just in case of any gaps in the connections. Well thank heavens for Bill Reid, because yes, I hadn’t firmly attached the campground hose to my sewer connection, so when I opened the valve, soapy soupy water spilled all into the hose compartment. Ugh. Just imagine if I had followed all the ‘experts’ advice & opened up the black valve first (blech – it does not bear thinking about). So I corrected the attachment and tried again, and all was good to go.
So not so much of a “poopsie” as a “soupsie”, still a bit gunky and gross, but a far cry from what it could have been.
The whole point of buying a not-too-inexpensive, Canadian-made, folding bike was so that I’d be able to park in a Walmart or Loblaws parking lot easily in the outskirts of a town, then cycle in to do my sightseeing, shopping, etc. Then, I’d get back to the RV, fold the bike up, and pop it into the storage compartment in the back of the rig. It had simply never occurred to me that a bike with 18” wheels, might not easily slide into a 19” outer compartment.
Well, Jim spent a good thirty minutes in my driveway last week folding & unfolding, wriggling & jiggling, and jockeying my bike into the storage space. I have no idea how I’m going to get it out by myself. And now, it is taking up the room that other items could be using, dammit.
Barb suggested a bike-rack attached to the rear hitch. Excellent idea. Off I toddled to the Canadian Tire in Morrisburg and lo and behold, they had exactly one rack for under $200 in stock. Great – just one problem – I can’t lift said rack due to my torn rotator cuff (not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to play this woe-is-me card, but it worked in Cdn Tire!).
So I asked if a mechanic could assemble and install it for me then and there. The clerk looked a little perplexed, but I assured him I’d pay for the time worked. They had an opening later that afternoon, so for the first time in their Cdn Tire location’s memory, one of their mechanics stood with the instruction manual and assembled and attached a bike rack to the back of a motorhome.
The movie was cute, but I enjoyed the book more. If you remember, the start of each day’s diary read something like: Weight: 9 stone, 4 lbs; Cigarettes: 14; Alcohol Units: 5. These were all numbers she felt she should be improving upon. Well, I don’t smoke, my alcohol consumption is both low and consistent, and under no circumstances am I writing my weight down anywhere – hell, I don’t even know my weight; I don’t look when standing on the scale at the doctor’s. But I am trying to move more and eat less – I’m walking the campground each morning. So maybe I’ll start reporting my steps/day as a way to stay on top of them. We’ll see how long this lasts.
This morning: Steps: 5,123 (and it’s only 7:29am).
