A week on the road

Storyline: Atlantic Canada, Take 2

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The constant change in scenery and events make it feel like we’ve been on the road for months, yet it is only a week. Below are some of the notes I jotted en route. Aside from the ticks all-in-all it’s been a fun time (even the bag of clothes thrown into the garbage instead of throwing the garbage bag😊.

Tue, May 24

Finally! We woke up in a quiet campground surrounded by farmland just south of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Outside, the temperature this morning is 4°C. Inside, as much as we want it to be. After the long and stormy weekend (north of here) everyone but two other RVers has left. The two couples are leaving as I write this. Lovely sunny morning. When we left Marian & Jim’s yesterday morning, they were still without power. Fingers crossed, the propane for their generator will be delivered today. Power on the other hand may take a week to be restored (it did). The powerful storm defined by the forecasters as derecho (“a group of thunderstorms that produces a swath of downburst winds that cause intermittent damage along a path over 600 km long and 100 km wide”) left about 1000km of severe damages and fatalities in Southern Ontario and Quebec. Ottawa area bared the most. (According to recent publication by CTV news the winds in Ottawa reached 190km.) Worse than the ice storm way back when! It may take weeks to fix it all.

The morning we left our generous hosts, we needed to find fuel for the van. Otherwise, we wouldn’t go far. We’d read about huge lineups and stations running out of gas or being unable to pump due to power outages. After a few attempts we eventually filled Doranya. All good to go. The second “important” thing of course was Alex buying his lottery tickets.

The selected route took us through some very quiet and picturesque country roads. We took our time enjoying it all. It is a beautiful wine country. However, unlike Ontario, the wineries we drove by were not yet open for the season or were only open on weekends.

Dinner by the campfire, the smoke of which kept the mosquitoes away. The evening drew to the cooler side. The wind picked up and the sky showcased its beauty.  We moved inside, ready to call it a night.  As Alex took his t-shirt off with his back towards me, I noticed a strange red spot on his shoulder blade. “Walk back towards me please!” Now is the moment to mention that red spots and rash is a side effect of his chemo-drug. But this was different. It was a tick! Another one? (We mentioned the first in the previous post.) Shit, what do we do now in the middle of nowhere? Luckily, in the emergency department of Almonte hospital the previous day they gave him a tick removal tool. He also had been given antibiotics to prevent Lyme disease. Using this little tool, I was able to remove the tick and it was still alive. Let’s hope it hasn’t been there for long. The only place he could have gotten it was the first campground where he walked in the weeds. Perhaps it was in his clothes or on his body. No more high grass photography!

This morning we drove to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to get some supplies from Canadian Tire – fire starters, mosquito repellent and such. It was rather busy with narrow streets. We drove back to the quietness of our campground.

It is a brand new one. The owner and his wife speak English and are very friendly, unlike the Quebecers in the Roadtrek campervan that pulled near our site in the afternoon. All our attempts to say bonjour were met with absolute silence and rude indifference. There is no one else but us and them. At least they could look and nod or smile. Nothing! They walked by our campsite stared at our van, but there was no acknowledgement that there were human beings siting beside it. Really! Not sure what exactly is wrong in this picture. Why do they have to be so surly and hostile? This comes to us as a surprise since we camped in a few campgrounds last year, one not that far from here, and people everywhere were friendly. And everywhere we stop in Ontario we attract a swirl of people that want to talk to us. Our experience with Ontario campgrounds is the same. People even in Covid times would come and chat while keeping their distance.

Back to the campground. It is a brand new one. The owner told us he test-ran it for a couple of months in the fall after they build it on a farm land he owns. They opened it officially for the long weekend and it was completely full. They are still creating campsites.

We only had a minor hiccup that was fixed as soon as we found about it. You see, all the clothes that Alex wore when we found the tick were packed in a white garbage bag to be washed at the first opportunity. Back from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu we decided to clean up the van. Alex left the clothes laundry bag on the picnic table together with other things that were pulled out of the van. At the end of the cleaning, I pulled the garbage out and gave it to Alex, who walked to the garbage bins and threw it in.

Or so I thought. After all was done, we had some fun with wine and recording videos, Alex started the fire and it was dinner time. As I was passing the utensils, I spotted the garbage bag one on of the cases with firewood. “What is that?”, “My clothes” … “Looks like the garbage bag to me…” “Really!? I must have thrown my clothes away then.” Says Alex, grabs the garbage and runs to fetch his clothes back. Luckily no one (aside from the Roadtreck) was in the campground so he could easily retrieve his clothes. Don’t ask me how this could happen when I gave him the garbage bag in hand expecting he’d trash it right away.

Wed, May 25

Today was a good day. Leaving Camping Bomont near Henryville, we drove to Venise-en-Québec at the top of the Lake Champlain. It was still early for lunch though, so after Alex wet his fingers in the lake, we began our winery tour.

As in previous days many wineries were closed. They all have different days of the weeks as their opening times. I had a few on my list that opened on Wednesdays.

The roads to them are narrow, twisty, with no shoulder and lots of potholes, yet the speed limit is 90km/h. With much more maneuverable cars on Doranya’s tail even when we spotted an open one, it was hard to make a fast turn uphill into a narrow driveway or road leading to such.

As I was driving Alex was identifying them on google map. Vignoble de l’Orpailleur was one on the list. Luckily it had a big sign and a large driveway leading to the parking lot, so it was easy to get in.

Wine tasting here is different to those we are used to in Ontario – the $15 for 3 samples are not waived if one buys wine. But you get the sampling glasses as a souvenir. We tested 6 wines by sharing 3 samples each.

Two glasses in hand, plus a box of wine is now travelling with us. Yes, although the van is full to the brim, there is always room for a (small) box of wine!

We had lunch in the winery’s grounds and decided against looking for another winery. Doranya would not fit a second box in.

We arrived to our boondocking destination at the Waterloo (QC) arena early enough to park Doranya with the fridge on the shady side (it is important when it’s sunny and hot as it is today and one is boondocking).

We then walked by Waterloo Lake. This little city amazed us with its bike trails and many cyclists all over. It felt like everyone from the city was on a bicycle. It was hot and still is as I am writing this. Returning from our walk, we found another RV (a B+/small C class) parked next to us.

Time to think of dinner. There was a small pub and pizza place with a patio (important for immunocompromised people,) Maurice Pizzeria. It was the only place we found with a decent patio away from the main street.

We enjoyed our dinner and walk to and from that place. Walking back, the arena parking lot was full of cars.

Apparently, it was soccer time on the next-door field for the kids, with parents cheering them on. As I am finishing this page, they are all leaving.

Thu, May 26

We had a quiet night next to the only other RV. The arena is in an otherwise residential area adjacent to a school, and using common sense we did not run the generator. There was a Tim Hortons around the corner. We bought our breakfast there and had it in the van.

We are now at Camping Pointe-Aux-Oies (no photos from it) , situated at the mouth of Riviere a Lacaille in Montmagny. It has been pissing rain most of the day and it is forecasted to continue raining until after we depart in the morning of May 28^th. Stopped by the Poissonnerie Donald Lachance (a fishmonger). Donald and probably his son fish in the St. Lawrence River and many of their products are homemade (by his mom and his wife – she and the son speak English, that’s how we know their story). Perhaps this is the only reason we elected to camp here again. We were here last August during our unfinished road trip. Weather was perfect then, and I loved les bourgots (whelks) so much so that it was a must stop this time.

I enjoyed my bourgots (again no photos, but a video will come soon) with a glass of wine while Alex explored multiple dips, patés and mousse we bought from the grocery and fish stores. Perhaps because Alex was already sick last year but not knowing it yet, he did not share my enjoyment of the bourgots, neither then nor now (he says he associates it with his illness). But luckily, he found other products to enjoy.