States & Provinces visited on this segment: Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick
Dates: Wednesday, July 18 to Friday, July 20
Miles driven: 563 (5573 total to date)
Summary: Rain, rain, then more rain, followed by heaver rain and strong winds pretty much describe the three days we spent in Québec. It was cloudy when we entered into Québec province in late morning on Wednesday, and before we made it to Québec City it had started to rain. We found a campground just a few km from the city center, and got unhooked in the rain. The campground was on a steep hill and was heavily wooded. With the rain it made the gravel/dirt roads very slippery. I had to go into 4WD mode to be able to back up the hill into our site. It rained all night long, and was still raining when we got up in the morning. We waited for a while in the morning hoping it would stop, but finally gave up and headed toward the city center, stopping to buy some umbrellas. It finally stopped raining about the time we parked in the old part of the city. We had a rain free afternoon and early evening in the city, although it was very windy and cold especially late in the day. We spent a bunch of time walking the city streets and walls of the old city, took a tour of the Citadel, and took a horse pulled carriage ride tour of the city. Shortly after we got back to our camp site it started to rain again, this time harder than previously. The weather forecast was calling for rain for the next 2-3 days, so we decided to head east and try and get out from under the storm even though there were more things we wanted to see in Québec. It rained hard all night long and It absolutely poured the next morning as I got the trailer ready to go, and I was soaked by the time I was done. I changed clothes and we headed down the road. Driving was miserable all day long as it poured down rain and we had 30-40 mile an hour winds that blew the rain horizontally in sheets. It was as bad as or worse than the worst winter rain storm that occurs in Oregon. At the rest areas we didn’t even try and walk over to the restroom buildings, we just ran back and used the toilet in the trailer. Even in the few seconds it took to do that you got really wet. On a day like that it would be nice to have a motor home so you never had to get out of your protective cocoon. The rain finally started to let up late in the day as we approached New Brunswick, and when we arrived at our campsite south of Edmundston the rain had finally stopped. Québec City was beautiful despite the rain and I would definitely recommend visiting there, but hopefully you will have better luck with the weather than we did.
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/bryan.vacation/Part9OttawaToEdmundston
Other notes: Shortly before we left for the trip we bought a portable GPS navigation system. After looking at reviews of different mfg and models on-line I decided to buy a Garmin Nüvi 350. It was the least expensive Garmin model that had audio prompts that said the name of the road – e.g. “Turn right on Main Street” rather than just “Take the next right”. This is definitely helpful if you don’t want to have to look at the unit while driving and want to confirm that you are turning on the correct road rather that just turn when the unit says to turn. So far it has performed almost flawlessly and we couldn’t really ask for anything better. The unit has taken us where we want to go whether that was to Dale and Gladys’s farm in rural Minnesota on County Road 32 or to the Hard Rock Café in Ottawa. The only place we didn’t get to directly that we wanted to was a Wal-Mart in South Dakota. We asked it to take us to the nearest Wal-Mart and it found one in Spearfish, SD. However, when we got there it was an empty building & parking lot. Turns out that Wal-Mart had just closed that store and opened up a new store the next exit down on the I90. Like any map, things can get stale rather quickly. However, every other preloaded place we have tried to go was still where the system said it would be. Our biggest gripe is that it doesn’t know how to pronounce Oregon correctly. It says “or-e-gone” rather than “or-e-gun”. Can’t really fault the system for that as that is how most people outside of Oregon pronounce it.
Next up: Further east in New Brunswick, then Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia
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