Into Quebec

8/22

We got our scissor jacks fixed this morning and were on our way by 9 am!, earliest ever. So we probably racked up close to a total of 300 miles today.

Then, once we crossed into Quebec, your mother started looking at the map (uh oh) and we took off north into the boonies. We ended up at a nice little campground along a lake that was cheap. She does this a lot and every time it is a positive thing. Today we actually will end up cutting more than 50 miles from the original plan, plus better scenery and a lot less traffic.

We have seen some amazing country – probably a thousand lakes, deep forests, and here, expansive farm country near Macamic. No new animals other than Sandhill cranes today.

We just went to a little burger joint and bought two ice cream cones as it was only thing I could say in French and we got the same flavor as it too was easier.  They must have had 20 different poutines. This is a Canadian classic fast food, which starts with a heaping plate of French fries with cheese curd, and then covered in brown gravy.  But here you could get almost any thing on it, including spaghetti sauce with meatballs.

Susan has been studying French, I just heard her say what in English was “Up yours dog breath.” I think we are going to be popular.

We could be in Baie Commeau, where we hit the challenge north into the wild, in 3 days. At that point we will need a couple days to get ready. Get the generator out and make sure it works, extra water, and 6 gallons extra diesel, plenty of food🍗🍔🌭🍞🍕🍋🧀, and 🍻🍻, and we are off!  We will be out of touch for several days, maybe a week. It should take about 8-10 days to get to Newfoundland.

Oh, do not hesitate to write emails (contrary to previous advise) as we can pull them up when we have WIFI, which has been most places (not here) In most communities  they have free unlocked wifi at their library. I doubt that we will have any wifi on the TLH – probably not until we get to Newfoundland – maybe in Goose Bay.

8/23

Woke up to thunder and some heavy rain. We will leave here by 11 and who knows where we will end up. Kinda a cool way to travel – into the unknown. Well, granted this is not darkest Africa, nor the arid plains of Patagonia.

Evening.

Well Susan’s map skills were put to a test today. We got to the town called Amos which, on the map, had this highway heading due east. We went around that town twice finally taking this road we thought would get us there. Four hours later and 100+ miles of dirt road got us where we wanted to go.

Once back on a real road, we only had to drive about 10 miles and found a cool Native (Cree) town and immediately got a campsite, gas, and food to go.   Came back to the camp, ate & crashed.

We were in some pretty remote country today and saw little wildlife. Both the pickup and RV are coated in mud.

The guy next to us in the campground came back from fishing with about a dozen nice size walleyes.

No body speaks English except for the little Cree kid that pumped gas for us.

What a day.

8/24

We had another strong thunderstorm in the night with constant lightening, very heavy rain, and hail – but I still got over 9 hours of sleep!  First, coffee, then breakfast, then hookup and leave – same routine every day, life is good.

NOAA has an aurora forecast for both poles, and last night was one of the better nights for this latitude but clouds and rain negated any chance of seeing the northern lights.

These campgrounds are unusual as most sites are taken, but there’s nobody here!  This is a municipal park, but the provincial parks are the same way. There are all their toys – RV, boats, playground equipment, storage sheds, etc., so they must rent the site for the summer and come on weekends.

I will try to send this on the way out of here as they have internet at the office.

Thinking of you all.

M n D