We awoke quite stiff, but nothing we couldn’t survive so we kept on trekking. We got out of the car and stepped into a winter wonderland. It had DEFINITELY snowed most of the night. We stretched out, checked out the slushy road, and realized either way we better keep on moving.
We noticed…again…that the semi who pulled in sometime during the night was still sleeping, and so we cruised Jerusalem around the semi’s back end and back onto the highway.
Because we had gone a fair distance past our original destination for the evening, it didn’t take us long to get completely across the mountain range, and begin our decent into lower altitudes. We travelled about 50km until we reached Maniq Cinq, the fifth reservoir used by Hydro Quebec on the Manicougan Lake. Directly reaching that area our slushy bumpy gravel road changed into a lovely paved road. From there on in it was all paved road. Hooray!! (for that!)
With our paved road came another challenge; our speed limit became faster. You may be really confused why an higher speed is a challenge, so let me explain. We noticed when we arrived in Goose Bay, Labrador that the jolty, bumpy, pot-holey gravel road which we had travelled had cause our lovely car Jersualem to be very unhappy. His unhappy was most evident upon reaching speeds higher than 80km/hr. We could travel from 80-90km/hr okay (90 km/hr being the speed limit) but anywhere from 95-100km/hr onward Jerusalem wobbled fiercely causing the car to be very, very challenging to control.
We still had many, many kilometers to go, and this great wobble had been on our mind since Goose Bay, but we had to continue on. We tried to look for a mechanic on Sunday, but like all other Sundays the garages were closed. We wanted to find one today, but, it is, after all Thanksgiving….so, a mechanic; not so much.
We carried on, causing a few traffic jams along the way, with Quebec drivers passing us on both the right and the left, and doing the same on solid lines and turning lanes. It was definitely an interesting site to see.
Despite our concern over poor Jerusalem, we did get a chance to enjoy the beauty of the autumn colours throughout Quebec, The orange, reds and vibrant colors that took over the leaves were an amazing site to see, and we marveled in the beauty of travelling through Quebec during the Autumn.
At Tadoussac, QC we had to take a ferry across a small river to continue on the highway and from there we headed towards Quebec City. Quebec City was just over 2 hours from where we got off the ferry and from there we continued to cause a few traffic jams ;)
Many towns were more and more evident as we got closer to Quebec City and Quebec City snuck up on us quite quickly. GPS helped us out as we got into the craziness of the city itself, and we managed to make it to our hotel with quite ease. We somehow managed to check-in at the hotel, using a bit of charades to talk to our French-speaking receptionist, but we managed just fine. We parked Jerusalem and let him rest for the night and we got inside and….crashed…from exhaustion.
Trying to fathom out what we were going to do for supper we decided maybe pizza would be the best option. Searching through a French written phone book is quite a challenge, but I think between working for J.D Irving, Limited and reading signs/menus/phone books, etc. by French reading skills have improved quite well.
We found pizza places to call, looked at our telephone and read “Pizza” on one of the speed dial options. Sweet, lets try that.
“Bonjour”?
“Parlez-vous Anglais?”
“A little”
“Perfect!”…and on we went.
Pizza ordered and a quick shower to refresh myself from three days of travelling, not soon after our pizza arrived and we enjoyed a meal sitting on our bed.
Another episode of Castle watched we got ready for bed and fell asleep in Quebec City!!!
Bonjour Quebec!!!
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