Levis, Quebec to Metis-Sur-Mer, Quebec – 214 miles
Last
night’s campsite was nothing to brag about, but we did have a nice view across
a wide field down to the St Lawrence River about a half mile away. We were near the town of Levis, Quebec
(pronounced LAY-vee), which is across
the river and a few miles downstream from the city of Quebec. So we have now camped beside two of North
America’s main rivers, the Mississippi and the St Lawrence, and two of the
Great Lakes, Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
I expect that we’ll be camping on or near the shore of the Atlantic
Ocean in just a few days.
Today’s
drive was one of the most scenic we’ve experienced so far. We pulled out of the RV park at about 9:30am
and turned left, or northeast, on Highway 132, a two-lane highway designated as
a scenic route called the Route des Navigateurs,
complete with blue signposts with a ship’s steering wheel – or helm, if you
insist on 100 percent accuracy). This
road wound its way alongside the St Lawrence, sometimes a stone’s throw away,
but never more than a kilometer away except for a couple of places where it
veered inland around a headland that jutted out into the river. The river itself was quite wide, perhaps as
wide as 15 miles once past the Ile D’Orleans, a large island in the river at
the point where we stayed last night. Most
of the traffic going north and east along the river follows the newer Autoroute
20, part of the Trans-Canadian Highway system, so traffic was light as the road
passed through the many quaint villages along our quiet, backroad byway. The road wove its way through the centuries,
winding its way among the 17th, 18th, and 19th
centuries and occasionally into the first half of the 20th
century. The latter part of the 20th
century, and certainly the 21st century of today were up along the
autobahn which made its way alongside us but over the hills to our south and
out of sight. Villages and small towns
seemed to be assembled by the time period in which they were settled – a 1700’s
village here, an 1800’s village there, with an 1920’s or 1940’s town randomly
thrown in along the way. Of course
Quebec is very French (more on that in a minute), and at times, the
architecture and the character of the villages made you feel as if you were in
France. The common theme that held
everything together were the town names – they’re all Sainte-this or that or
Notre Dame de something – and each town has a church made of native fieldstone
topped with a tall, slender, silver spire visible for miles around.
We stopped
for lunch at a delightful small seafood bistro in one of these villages, and
shared a delicious combination of lobster bisque and a lobster roll – a
sandwich made with sort of a lobster salad, consisting of chunks of lobster,
celery, red pepper slices, onions, and mushrooms, with a side of bowtie pasta
served over fresh greens, followed by a to-die-for caramel-coated brownie for
dessert.
Now a
few observations about Quebec. For those
of us from south of the border, Quebec is something of an enigma. It’s almost like a country within a
country. Perhaps the best equivalent
would be the autonomous regions in Spain, like Galicia and the Basque country. We didn’t spend enough time in the more
metropolitan areas of Montreal and Quebec City to make a broad statement, but
this portion of the province is thoroughly French. A few of the merchants we’ve encountered speak
a little English, but most seem to be even more limited in their ability – or
willingness – to speak English than I am to speak French (my French is limited
to bonjour, merci, and s'il vous plait). While the rest of Canada seems to have
placated their French-speaking citizens by making signage and official
documents bilingual, in Quebec everything is in French only – in your face,
Anglophones. In fact, for readers of
this blog who plan to visit Quebec and who don’t speak or read French, my
advice is to bring a French-English dictionary so you can at least look up the
meanings of the signs along the highway as you pass. I don’t say this to discourage anyone from
visiting this area – on the contrary, it’s a beautiful region and quite
charming – but simply to prepare you for the reality of the language
situation. Most Americans are
mono-lingual, but we are lucky that English is the second language for most of
the rest of the world. But I suppose,
like many of the off-the-normal tourist itineraries around the world, the
locals don’t speaka da language.
So
tonight we have stopped at a beautiful, wooded RV park near the town of
Metis-Sur-Mer, at a point where the St Lawrence River has widened to thirty
miles or so (we can’t see the other side).
I’m not sure where the line of demarcation between the river and the Bay
of St Lawrence is located, but surely we must be near, or perhaps already past
it. We drove past tidal flats on the way
in, and saw surf-like waves splashing ashore, and that to me says ocean so I’m
calling it the Bay of St Lawrence. We’ve
just finished a gourmet meal (or as close as can be prepared in our tiny
motorhome kitchen) prepared by Chef
Jeanette, accompanied by a glass of delicious Reisling from the wine shop in Peterborough. John or Catherine, if you’re reading this,
please pass our thanks to Jennifer for this treat.
 |
| Along the St Lawrence (1) |
 |
| Along the St Lawrence (2) |
No comments:
Post a Comment