Bang! Bang! Bang! Bonjour!

Good nights sleep! The honeymoon suite suited me well even though I was all alone. Quiet and isolated I got a fine nights sleep. Woke up at 4:30 but stayed down until 5am. Cleaned up the tent and went to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I can not stress how essential this coffee bit is. Being completely addicted to the routine of 24-32 ounces a day forces a system of seeking and drinking not to be ignored.

Sat around the camp waiting for Cheri to wake which was about 6:30am or so. Down to the showers for another of those routine things. I was wondering how many people have to shower every single day and how many are fine only showering when needed. Seems a very American thing to shower daily.

The road trip started at about 8am with Cheri, the Unhappy Traveler, Puss and Boots and I crammed into a over stuffed Toyota Corolla driving up route 93 north. Of course 11 miles from the camp I realized that I left the camera back at the trailer. So we had to turn it around and get it. Good job! UnhappyT gave me shit about it for hours. Radio was the soundtrack for this part of the trip.

Back on the road having only lost a half hour. Northern NH and Vermont is just beautiful, rolling hills with mountains in the distance, green fields and grazing cows turning into pine forest. I would live here except winter doesn't end until mid June, and of course there are absolutely no tech jobs anywhere outside of Burlington.

Crossing into Canada was a snap, couple questions about where we are going and when we will be back and we were through the checkpoint at the border. The woman that checked us in did make a strange comment though, at least at the time. We told her we were heading to Jocquiere for the night and she said "Oh you may see whales." Now I am no Geography expert or anything but I am pretty sure Jocquiere is well inland. As you can see by the image here. We just figured she was didn't really know here geography.

We kicked off our official roadtrip soundtrack here, you can follow the link to the entire list. So with Godsmack blaring and the sweet smell of fertilizer damaging our nostels we cruised into Canada. Route 55n turns into 10 and 55 but somehow we missed that and started cruising east instead of west and north. Took quite a while for us to notice but after stopping in a small town for coffee at a Micky D's we had to make an adjustment in our plans and cut up route 139 to 55 north.

We lost about 40 minutes with this error but these things happen. I just wish UnhappyT was as forgiving as Cheri was because it was my mistake by not navigating well and missing the turn. The music carried us through this part of the trip. The Terrain was bland and after getting to 55N and then quickly to route 20 east we needed it as it was a long flat stretch to Quebec City. we did not stop in the city because we had lost time, about all we saw was a distant view and this bridge.

Oh yeah and we saw the prison too! That is about it, as a matter of fact the rest of the driving for the day was this really long hard to pass on hilly road, route 73 north. We were on this road for hours with nothing but emergency fones and a lake every few feet. Check out the less than stunning pictures here.

The rest all the way to Jocquiere was a haul we were reminded just how big Canada is. Finally though we arrived at the Holiday Inn. Checked in, and went about town for a bit lookingfor the downtown, which there was none from what we saw. Still we found the nice walking Bridge and park on the River, fjord or whatever the water way was. Being a Fjord apparently has its props and one of them is every now and then WHALES come in. So the girl at the border was right. The walk along the bridge with UnhappyT and Cheri was nice and believe me after 7 hours in the car we needed to be outside. Not finding anything that looked like a good place to eat we headed back to the hotel and settled on Mike's for Dinner

Boy it is a shame I did not do more homework on this area before we came, I would have had a day just for exploring and then a week more for Kayaking the Fjord, Whale Watching, fishing, Mountain biking, rock climbing, water skiing, and any number of other activities this area offers. For more try http://www.saguenaylacsaintjean.net/defaultz.asp?lang=an

Knowing that tomorrow is the worst driving day of the trip 9.5 hours we crashed out fairly early withnthe clock set for 6am. Unfortunaely for us there was a wedding in the motal and thee was the bang, bang, bang Bonjour! out in the hall at 2:45am Unbelievable!