CANEAST 20,21

7 Aug.

We spent all day travelling along the scenic route 132 heading slowly east through small towns and villages.
Quebec City/Levis to Ste. Luce near Rimouski is very scenic along the St, Lawrence Seaway.  Many small towns, churches farms and interesting stops.  It took us 8 hours to travel 300 kms!

Can you find FJ?

One stop for sure was a cheddar cheese maker (Fromagerie des Basques) that is so popular their store is open 24hrs/day with RV and bus parking.

Elizabeth here.  What I like about travelling through these small picturesque villages are the colours and the variety of architecture in the houses and shops.  There are very old stone houses and new stone houses, lots of wooden homes and such wonderful roofs.  They love red here.  There are lots of roofs in reds ranging from brick to vibrant cherry red - many are steel.  Siding colours are also quite varied from cream to mustard to ochre, sage green, navy blue ... I even saw pink!  Colours I have never seen on Ontario houses.  The combinations are also intriguing, some I would never have considered but quite wonderful like the yellow ochre siding with turquoise trim and others that should not, in my opinion, have been considered like the bright red house with black trim and the inn with a red upper floor, white main floor and all trimmed in Kelly green.

Sorry - no pictures, the road is so narrow that there was nowhere to pull over.

I was also enjoying the very long, narrow and flat fields of many different crops - each with lovely colours.  Lovely ribbons of creamy white, lemon yellow, sage, forest green and light rust.  I have no idea what the crops are but I did recognize corn and maybe barley or oats.

Jerry again.  We pulled into camp at Sainte-Luce-sur-mer and immediately thought we were in the wrong place.  We were!  The address for the camp we wanted was wrong on the app we used.  This was a bit of a tight predicament as the camp was downtown, at the beach, busy traffic, a narrow entrance lined by flowering shrubberies, posts and no place to turn around to get out of the camp...we backed out using the  walkie talkies and help from Elizabeth and three other campers.  Three times we had to stop traffic but finally Clifford and Miss Adventure Too were back on the road.  (Our friends, Mark a Marilyn suggested using the Walkies when we first started RVing and they have been well worth it!)

So, finally we found the correct camp which was close by and got settled in.  We can just see the water and we can hear it on the shore.  We could also hear some great music coming from the bandstand directly below our site.  We learned later that music on the beach is a regular Wednesday night event.

Then...we got a phone call..."Are you still coming?"  (2 months earlier we had, by mistake, reserved at a camp called "Camping Luciole" which is south of Quebec city and nowhere near our route) and now we were in what we thought was our reserved spot at "La Luciole."  One word different and boom you are somewhere else.  Multiple confusion as I said to the caller "we are already here in site 5!"  But no we are not there...we're here. Lucky this camp had room for us.  The app has some corrections to be made.  I plan to send them some address info but part of the problem is me as usual...LOL.  Elizabeth here: Jerry the whole problem was with the app.  The address on the app for Chalets and Camping La Luciole, was actually the address of the downtown campsite and, interestingly, owned by the sister of the man who showed us our lovely site in the campground where we are.  He is the son of the owner and helping his mother while on vacation.  On the app the link to the website for Chalets and Camping La Luciole was to Camping Luciole.  We used this website information to make the reservation.  Big screw-up for sure, but Jerry is not to blame.

Aug 8

(We're in Rimouski sitting in the laundromat so will blog a bit.)  Today we went to Pointe-Au-Pere where there is a National Historic Site (a lighthouse), the Empress of Ireland Museum and the Onondaga; Canada’s only submarine you can tour.  It was raining all day so great timing for these tours.  We spent 5 hours touring and enjoyed all.  The sub made me (Jerry) claustrophobic.  It was commissioned in 1965 and taken out of service in 2000ish.  Very interesting to be able to walk the whole inside including torpedo bays with a guided audio tour.

The Empress of Ireland was hit by another boat in 1914(?) and sank in 14 minutes with a loss of over 1000 people. (This happened just off shore from where we are camped!) Many people are unaware of this disaster as it was overshadowed by the Titanic and WW I.  Not many people are aware of this disaster.  The freighter that hit it made it to port, after rescuing hundreds of survivors.  There are lots of artifacts on display.  The ship was exploited for almost a 100 years before the government declared it a National Historic Site. 

The museum is designed to look like a ship.  The camera can not capture properly.

The Engine room.  It also has two huge batteries that these engines and generators charge for under water running.

A better building shot...see the stacks?

As you are waiting for the information/movie, you realize you are the people on deck.  (Live, flickering sepia cinema.) . We are on an isle seat about half way up.

After doing our laundry we stopped at the beach in Sainte-Luce-sur-Mer, which is down the hill at back of our campsite.  The "plage" reminded me of a tourist area (Duh) like Sauble Beach or something.  Some great sculptures and interesting colours on the houses/establishments.  There is a "Jelly Bean Row" here in Quebec.  Home made fahitas for dinner.

Beach art