Where am I? Où suis-je?
To make up for yesterday's aborted
start, we left very early—5:30am. We had hoped to beat the Boston
morning rush hours. It was not to be. We took the same route as
yesterday and managed to get past Wollaston Beach without being hit
again, but the Southeast Expressway was already jammed. It broke up
before the tunnel and was pretty clear driving after that.
We cruised up I-93, hitting only a bit
of traffic in Concord, NH during their 7:30 rush and got onto US-3
after Franconia Notch. Our original plan (from yesterday) was to stop
at Lake Francis State Park, about 20 miles from the Quebec border.
Since we left at 5:30 rather than 9:30, we arrived at 12:30pm, a bit
too early to stop. We decided to press on to Quebec.
After a stop at First Connecticut Lake
(There are four of them, “First” is the southermost) for lunch on
the lakeside, we continued on to the tiny Pittsburg-Chartierville
border crossing at the northern end of US-3. It is also just beyond
Fourth Connecticut Lake which seems to be the headwaters of the
Connecticut River. After passing the US Border station (tall fences,
jersey barriers and cameras everywhere, we reached the Canadian
Border station (no fences, a single lifting arm barrier and no
obvious cameras). We chatted with the officer for a couple of
minutes. He took our passports, then returned them and off we went
into Quebec.
We crested the top of the hill just
past the border to find a 15% straight downhill grade. In New
Hampshire the roads wind through the mountains with a few steeper
grades, but nothing like 15%. In this part of Quebec they must have
laid out the roads with a ruler, so what if there are a few hills in
the way. We had a 36% grade for our driveway in New Zealand, but it
was only about 100 feet long. This was about a mile and looked like
staring down the first drop on a roller coaster. Off we went.
Our backup plan from yesterday was to
stop at Parc national du Mont-Mégantic, a Quebec “National” Park
(actually a provincial park, but they do things differently in
Quebec), if we decided we had enough time when we got to Lake
Francis. At this point it was only 2pm, so we decided we could
continue on.
The next park on the way to Quebec City
is Parc national de Frontenac, on the lake of the same name. It was
supposedly about 60 miles further, but we were a bit unsure of where
we were going. The lake is about 15 miles long and we didn't have
much of a clue as to where the campgrounds were. I had Quebec
campground locations from an app called Allstays programmed into the
GPS, but we didn't know if they were accurate. We took the
information anyway and headed in the direction indicated.
It turned out that the campround
coodinates were wrong, but we got lucky. As we were driving along
RT-108 just past the town of Stornoway, Ellen noticed a park sign. It
pointed down a side road in a completely different direction from the
GPS. We decided that the signage was the better indicator, turned
around and headed down the side road towards the park's Southern
Sector. After four miles of this back road, we reached the lake and a
one-lane bridge. At the end of the bridge was a sign for a left turn
to the park and we headed down what seemed to be a driveway. Another
couple of miles and we reached the park visitor center, a very nice
timber framed building.
We knew we were in Quebec when we spoke
to the ranger at the desk who didn't speak english. We were able to
get a campsite at the Baie Sauvage campground, electric-only. Another
8 kilometers down a dirt road and we were there...only about 15 miles
from where the Allstays waypoint said it was.
It is a very nice campground. The sites
are large and private and the restrooms are modern and spotless. The
only downsides are no campsites with a lake view, even though we are
on the lake, and the showers take quarters, four quarters for four
minutes...a bit much when the campsite was nearly $57 CAD (about $44
US) for the night. I don't know if we have any Canadian quarters.
But at least we know where we are.
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