Author: danleeth

It was good to get back to Québec City again.  It was my fourth and Dianne’s third visit to the four-century-old capital of French Canada.

This time we did something different from what we’ve done on our previous visits.  We finally saw the city in the summertime, not the dead of winter, and for the first time ever, we did not stay at the iconic Chateau Frontenac.

Instead of the upscale ($341 per night) Fairmont hotel overlooking the Saint Lawrence River, we stayed at an RV park (Camping de la Joie) where the only thing we looked over was our neighbor’s campsite.

We chose the campground not only because they got high reviews on RVparkReviews.com, but because they offered shuttle service to town.  For a commercial campground complete with screaming kids, barking dogs and loud, cursing campers, it was quite nice.  But it wasn’t the Fairmont.

Taking advantage of the shuttle, we headed into town to experience the city sans snow.  Over a 10-hour walkabout, we revisited and photographed some old favorite spots, saw and photographed some new favorite spots and walked around, guidebook in hand, looking for spots.

Québec is definitely a tourist draw.  While it’s the capital of French Canada, we heard more English being spoken here than at the Home Depot back home.  Everywhere we stopped, the staff were multilingual, and even some of the signs and interpretative placards around town bore English translations.  For us, knowing only how to kiss, not speak French, getting around was not a problem.

We were to meet our shuttle outside the Chateau Frontenac for the trip back.  After shooting 884 photos and stopping for a farewell brew at Pape Georges, our favorite Lower Old Town bar, we climbed the endless stairs up the Cap Diamant cliffs to the hotel.  We took a self-guided tour of their lobby restrooms, then walked around recalling warm memories of previous stays.

Tonight, instead of robes, slippers and evening turndown service complete with pillow mints, we will be bunking in our little trailer.  We’ll hang out in our skivvies, don flipflops for the 50-yard walk to the bathroom and crawl into a bed whose pillows have never met a mint.

Our biggest problem will be trying to figure out just how to spend the $300+ per night we’ve saved by camping.

I’m not used to camping around kids.  Other than occasional midweek nights spent in the mountains around Denver, our A-frame camping has been done in the spring or fall.  We may encounter a few preschoolers out with their grandparents, but for the most part, shoulder-season campgrounds look like AARP conventions.

Now we’re up in Canada in the height of summer.  School’s out and every campground we’ve hit has been filled with families enjoying the great outdoors.

Which brings us to an important discovery we’ve made about Canada.  We now know what couples in the Great White North do to stay warm in the sub-zero temperatures of winter.  About the only families we’ve seen without multiple offspring are young parents with infants.

Dianne’s family (five kids) were avid campers.  Her parents, ages 91 and 85 still take their tent trailer out camping.  She’s used to this.

My family were not campers.  My dad’s idea of camping was a Motel 6.  I only got out in the wild with my Boy Scout troop in Phoenix.  That’s probably why for the most part I enjoy seeing kids camping with their parents.

It brings back a wealth of childhood memories I only wish I had.

Part of what makes camping special is the ability to converse with other campers, something that seldom happens when bunking in motels.

We’ve had long conversations with fellow campers as we’ve traveled through Canada, and through that, we’ve learned a lot about life in the Great White North.  Because we don’t speak the language, that hasn’t happened yet here in French-speaking Québec.

The inability to converse in French has not been a problem for things that really matter.  So far, campground check-in clerks have all spoken passable English, as have the gas station and store clerks we’ve dealt with.  And because many of our words and theirs have similar roots, we do a passible job at translating signs.

It’s meeting strangers in a campground that has failed us.  In English-speaking Canada, campers are constantly greeting each other with friendly hellos.  I even had a guy who’s face was covered in shaving cream greet me when I rushed into the bathroom to relieve myself, and Dianne had a long conversation with a lady in the next shower stall over one day.

That hasn’t happened here in Québec.  Both Dianne and I have made an effort to smile and say “bonjour” when passing other campers.  At best, we get a perfunctory “bonjour” grunted back.  Most of the time, we get nothing.  More often than not, we’ve both found people averting their eyes when we approach, long before we utter a sound.

Please understand that we’re not neophyte travelers.  We’ve extensively traveled independently around the world, often in places where nobody speaks a word of English.  Not knowing the local language is nothing new for us.  A smile and a friendly greeting are nearly always returned in kind.

Perhaps it’s our clothes that give us away, or maybe they remember we’re the couple with the Colorado car and perhaps they don’t like Americans.  In any event, it’s a bit disconcerting to be rather rudely ignored.

Some English-speaking Canadians I’ve talked to over the years say they don’t like traveling in French Canada.  Maybe we’re finding out why.

We just discovered a good reason for pulling a short trailer.

Today we boarded the ferry for the 65-minute voyage across the Saint Lawrence.  We lined up behind a guy pulling a trailer that must have been about 30 feet long.

With the tide out and the boat heavily loaded, the ferry floated well below the entry ramp.  Vehicles had to enter down a short, steel ramp that sat at about a 30-degree angle.

The 30-footer’s tow vehicle went down nice and easy, as did the front of the trailer.  The problem began when the trailer wheels reached the boat deck.  The front of the trailer leveled out while its hinter end was still high on the ramp.

The scraping of metal on metal was as piercing as a scream in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  The driver stopped, but there was nothing he could do.  He had to continue forward.  By the time he parked, both of his rear stabilizer jacks were completely severed from the frame.  His bumper had scrapes on its underside, but somehow remained attached.

Our little A-frame boarded without an issue.

We spent a couple nights camped along the Fjord du Saguenay, an inlet off the Saint Lawrence.  Our next stop was to be a two-night stay along the seashore in the town of Saint Simeon.

Experience in the States suggested that reservations needed to be made months in advance for national and provincial parks, but I was assured by fellow A-frame owners that we wouldn’t need to worry about them for commercial RV parks in Canada.

Two weeks before our planned arrival, I sent an e-mail to our desired Saint Simeon RV park.  No response.  I then tried calling several times, but nobody ever answered the phone.  Figuring that was a bad sign, I began calling alternative sites.  None had spaces available.

Back when we camped in the bed of a pickup truck, that wouldn’t have mattered.  We would have just pulled off the road and camped.  These days, we need a legitimate campsite.

With Saint Simeon apparently out of the picture, I started looking for alternatives.  A provincial park across the bay had a site available complete with power and water hookups.  It was a good 50 miles out of our way, but it was doable and I quickly reserved the spot.

It was a 90-minute drive to the ferry terminal and the ferry folks advised riders to be in line 90-minutes before departure.  That meant we needed to leave Fjord du Saguenay by 6:30 a.m.  I normally don’t even get out of bed that early, let alone get packed up, hooked up and caffeined up.

But we did it.  We made the ferry and got to our next campsite in plenty of time to get set up before the rain hit.  A quick stop at a Tim Horton’s along the way took care of the caffeine need.

After starting in the Rockies, crossing the prairies and going for days through the North Woods, we have finally reached the Atlantic.  Our original plan, of course, was to go from ocean to ocean, but our start on the Pacific got nixed due to a three-week delay when my surgeon insisted on doing a slice-and-dice on my hand.

We’re now circling Québec’s Gaspe Peninsula on a road that hugs the coastline.  The breeze is stiff and the smell of saltwater perfumes the air.

Our route is peppered with brightly colored homes and dotted with small villages, each sporting a towering Catholic church steeple.  Nearly all offer municipal roadside pullouts complete with restrooms, picnic tables and views of the endless ocean.

We were parked at one of these yesterday when an elderly lady walked past our trailer on her way to the community mailboxes.  She stared at the state-and-provinces maps on the back of the trailer.  Although she barely spoke English, we were able to have a bit of a conversation.  We told her about our journey and she shared accounts of where she’d been in Canada and the U.S.

As we were ready to part company, she asked us the question we’d been asked repeatedly on our journey across our neighbor to the north.

“What do you think of President Trump?”

Québec is like a country within a country.  Through much of the province, about the only maple leaf flags we saw flew above post offices.  Instead of the national flag, Québec’s provincial flag flew solo.  It was worse than Texas.

From British Columbia through Ontario, about a quarter of the campers we saw displayed Canadian flags at their sites.  None in Québec.

And even though Québec was one of the four initial provinces that banded together to form Canada, we saw nary a 150^th anniversary of confederation flag or banner.  None of the gift shops carried any of the commemorative souvenirs so prevalent elsewhere.

Québec refers to their provincial parks as “national parks.”  That must confuse visitors who think they can take advantage of Park Canada’s 150-year anniversary free admission promotion.

Unlike provincial parks in most of the other provinces, Québec charges a daily, per-person admission fee in addition to a rather tidy camping fee.  And they’re the only provincial parks outside of Manitoba we’ve found that have coin-operated showers.  But the washrooms were clean (but small), and the parks abounded with activities from first-rate kid playgrounds to canoeing, kayaking and via ferrata climbs.

We saw very few big rigs in most of the Québec parks.  Instead, the majority of campers we encountered bunked in tents or tent trailers.  Families predominated, with nearly every camper clan having 2+ children, all under the age of 12.  We saw very few out-of-province license plates and precious few folks spoke English as their native language.

Still, every adult we talked with spoke passible English, so our lack of French was not a major problem.  One guy we met on a trail told us we should learn French in advance of our next visit.  Probably won’t happen.

Our travels through the province were predominately a series of two-night stands.  We would drive to a new campground, check in and set up.  The next day would be a layover allowing us to hike, explore the countryside or sit in the trailer and wait for the rain to stop.  The following morning, we would pack up and drive to our next site.

Our two-week journey took us to the Mont Tremblant ski village and adjoining provincial park.  It was then on to Québec City.  From there, we camped at Jacques Cartier Park, an hour’s drive north of the city. 

We hit our first salt water at the Saguenay Fjord, crossed the Saint Lawrence on a ferry and camped in the mountains of Bas St. Laurent.  From there it was up the coast with stops at a series of campgrounds on a route hugging the edge of the Gaspé Peninsula. 

Along the way, we photographed lighthouses, ate fresh seafood, took a tour of world’s largest vertical-axis wind turbine electrical generator, visited a visitor information center whose walls were made from 27,927 aluminum beer cans and hiked to Land’s End at Cap Gaspé — the very tip of the peninsula. 

We passed through countless small villages filled with colorful homes, most of which bore attractive front-yard flower gardens.  Ideal for guys with weak bladders, each town sported a “Halte Municipalité, which was a small, in-town roadside pulloff complete with picnic tables, flush-toilet restrooms and endless views of the ocean.  Unlike small-town America where houses are often surrounded by weeds, abandoned cars and discarded junk, nearly all the homes here were tidy and well kept.  Our journey was a visual feast.

A week ago, we were looking forward to the day when we would finally exit the province of Québec.  A few hours ago, we crossed the bridge and entered New Brunswick.  The first thing we saw was a street plastered with endless signs for the same chain stores, motels and restaurants we have back home. 

I’m already missing Québec.

Boarding the ferry at Saint-Simeon, we watched the guy pulling the trailer ahead of us lose both of his rear stabilizer jacks on the sloping boarding platform.  His were totally ripped off – completely severed from the frame.  We boarded without a problem.  Our turn came later.

We were heading for a commercial RV park south of Miramichi, New Brunswick.  I had the address programmed into the Garmin, and Garmie flawlessly got us on the correct, narrow but paved farm road to the park.

“You will arrive in 200 metres,” she assured us as we blissfully drove right past the not-too-well-marked entrance to the park.

“Isn’t that where we’re spending the night?” my intrepid copilot-navigator calmly asked as we sailed by.

“Oh shucks!” (or something like that), I screamed as I realized my error.

We now had two choices.  We could try to back up the length of a football field to the entrance or we could go forward to a pullout and turn around.

I first tried the backup option but backing up a 17-foot, single-axle trailer with a mind of its own down a narrow road is not an easy task.  With no traffic and a bit of time, I suppose we could have done it.  After a few yards of watching the rear of the trailer weave back and forth like a dog at a fire hydrant factory, I opted for the second option.  We shifted into first and started heading up the road.

Pullouts on narrow farm roads are not commonly found in Canada, and this road lived up to the expectation.  Finally, a kilometer or two up ahead we came to a farmhouse with a wide driveway and a large area of bordering grass.

Rather than pull into the drive and make a wide turn through the farmer’s front lawn, I decided to do a simple Y-turn turnaround.  I’d back up, turning the trailer at a 90-degree angle so we’d be perpendicular to the road.  Then I’d stop, turn sharply and take off in the opposite direction.  The procedure worked perfectly, but I failed to take note of the slope of the ground I was backing into.

Reversing our path, we were soon back at the campground.  We checked in, found our site and began setting up.  After leveling the trailer, I started dropping the stabilizers.  The first three corners went down perfectly.  I then got to the fourth.

I found the jack bent back against the frame.  Impaled on its base was a divot of grass that would have made Arnold Palmer proud.  A swift kick straightened the jack, but the threaded screw-rod inside was bent causing the jack to oscillate violently as I tried to lower it.  I got it down, but with another 40+ days of camping ahead, it needed to be replaced.

Fortunately, there was a major RV dealer just a few kilometres up the road, and for a mere $80+ I was able to buy a replacement.  Two hours and one beer later, I had the new one bolted on and ready go.

Garmie, by the way, has now been placed on probation.

“It’s your own fault,” my always-right wife, Dianne, tells me.

I hate tailgaters, those people who cruise 65 mph down the highway a mere 10 feet from my bumper, or in our case, the trailer’s bumper.  I’ve heard of too many people who have had their trips turned into insurance settlements by some tailgater who failed to stop in time.

Unfortunately, it seems that along with hockey and curling, NASCAR-style tailgating is a national sport up here in Canada.

“They’re just coming in close just to check out the maps you put on the back of the trailer,” Dianne suggests.

Our decal maps of the U.S. and Canada showing which states/provinces we’ve camped in do bring in a fair amount of attention.  At our last campsite, for example, our neighbor popped over to ask why we hadn’t colored in Nova Scotia.

“Haven’t been there yet,” I explained.  “But it’s next on the list after P.E.I.”

Nova Scotia was his home province and we proceeded to talk about places to go and things to do while we’re there.  At other times, we’ve used the maps to show where we’re from and where we’re going in Canada.  The Canadians use them to tell us where they’ve been in the U.S.

I just wish they wouldn’t study our maps from 10 feet back when we’re cruising down the highway at 65 mph.

We left Québec, crossed into New Brunswick and spent the night at Sugarloaf Provincial Park near the border town of Cambellton.  In the winter, Sugarloaf is a one chairlift ski resort.  In summer, their two-person lift is used to haul mountain bikes up to the top of the hill for what is apparently a thrilling ride down.

From Sugarloaf, we headed south to Mirimichi where we bunked two nights in our first RV park since Ottawa.  For a commercial RV park, it wasn’t bad, and we were entertained every afternoon and evening by the seemingly 600 pre-teen kids who chased through the park like a pack of rabid wolves.

After an oil change in Mirimichi, we headed south to Kouchibouguac National Park on the coast.  Our first task there was learning how to pronounce the park’s name (Koo-shee-boo-gwak) and then how to spell it without looking it up again on the map.

The park sported a long, sandy beach that Dianne longed to go to for a sun soak.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see the sun much during our stay.  Instead of a day at the beach, we hiked a riverside trail, photographed lobster boats, talked to lobster fishermen and caught a free concert by two Acadian musicians doing their versions of bygone American rock songs (remember the dead-teenager song, “Well, where oh where can my baby be…” by J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers?).  I can’t get the damn thing out of my head.

Next stop was a two-night stay on Prince Edward Island, a place we bicycled across on the abandoned rail-line Confederation Trail ten years ago almost to the day.  On that trip, we had excellent weather.  On this trip, it was overcast on our arrival day and sopping wet with rain falling on our layover day.

Instead of wasting away, ensconced in our 84 square feet of A-frame living space, we took off on a mission to photograph the vertical-axis wind turbine electrical generator that supposedly resides on the island.  Google hinted that it was on North Cape, so we went there first.

The test units that were originally there had apparently been torn down, but we were told a working one could be found 45 minutes away at West Point.  A drive there provided a rainy look at a lighthouse, but no vertical-axis wind turbines.

Tomorrow, we head back across the 12.9-kilometer-long Confederation Bridge to New Brunswick.  Nova Scotia, our ninth province, lies just beyond.  I’m looking forward to applying yet another provincial sticker to the map on the back of the trailer.