Daily Archives: September 16, 2009
Canada, Oh, Canada…
Today we headed back into Canada for a few days on our way to Rome, NY and Niagara Falls.
We could have gone back by staying in the States, but going through Canada was only about 50 miles further.
So why not?
About 9:30 am we drove the truck down to have breakfast at our favorite Big Stop truck stop and then by 11:15 we were back there with the rig filling up with diesel. While we were in Canada last week I just put enough in to get us back to the States since diesel is about $1 more a gallon there.
We put in 102 gallons for $280 and by 11:30 we were on our way up US 1.
We were heading toward Quebec and the town of Notre Dame du Lac (Our Lady of the Lake) about 150 miles away.
One of the things we wanted to do was to drive to the end of US 1 in Fort Kent, ME, since we had been in Key West, FL at US 1’s Mile Marker 0, and although we didn’t travel all of US 1 between FL and ME, we did travel a lot of it.
Here is the photo I took of Mile Marker 0 in Key West.
US1 mile marker 0
And here is the other end in Fort Kent, ME.
End of US 1
And then about a block past the end of US 1 we took a right turn across the Rue Ferry bridge and we were back in New Brunswick, Canada.
Customs took about 10 minutes and we were on our way. And about 12 miles later we entered the province of Quebec for the first time. Then an hour later we pulled into our park in Notre Dame du Lac.
This may be the most beautiful site we’ve been in so far. We’re parked on a bluff overlooking a lake.
Notre Dame du Lac 1
Notre Dame du Lac 3
And Mister really enjoys the view too.
Notre Dame du Lac 2
After we puttered for a while we headed to find a place to eat. We drove about 6 miles north to the town of Cabano and found a nice-looking restaurant called ‘Bistro du Duc’ or ‘Duke’s Bistro’.
Our waitress didn’t speak much English and I don’t speak much French. Spanish and German are more my thing. But we did get our order OK. We ordered the Spaghetti with Meat Sauce and it was really good.
One thing I’ve noticed is that in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, pretty much all signs, i.e. traffic signs, street signs, billboards, etc, are in both English and French. However that apparently doesn’t work both ways.
Here in Quebec, everything is in French, with no English at all. Even Stop Signs say ‘Arret’, and not ‘Stop’.
We saw this last year too, going through Canada to Alaska. All of the English TV channels had French subtitles and/or French audio subchannels.
But the French language channels had no English translations whatsoever. When I mentioned this to a waitress in Whitehorse, she just laughed and said “You’ve noticed that, have you”.
Getting back to the rig, I got the satellite set up and Jan and I enjoyed the view. By then it was starting to get a little chilly, so we went in for the night.
Tomorrow we will head for Quebec City about 150 miles away.
More tomorrow…
