Gaspesie

July 24
We were sad to leave Rejean and Francine at the wonderful Navigateur but off we went. The day had cleared somewhat and we headed out.
Real conversation:
My husband Lynn: So - I guess we're heading over to the German town...
Me: German town?
Lynn: Yah, you know, the town that sounds German.
Me: What town sounds German?
Lynn: The town that sounds like the sausage...
Me: The sausage.... Bratwurst?
Lynn: Yah! Bratwurst!
Me: (After a second to process this) Yes.. we're going through Bathurst...

Good grief... The thing is, we have these kinds of exchanges often. I'm fairly convinced my husband does this on purpose for two reasons: #1 - Because he knows it makes me a little bit crazy and #2 - Because I think half the time it takes too much effort to remember things properly and he'd rather just make it up as he goes... but he sure does make me laugh. :)

So, we headed through "The German Town" and started up the Gaspesie. The weather had turned rainy and then sunny and then rainy. Lots of on and off with the rain gear but finally we dodged the clouds and we found nice blue sky. We had heard that the Gaspesie was the "Cabot Trail" of Quebec and we were certainly impressed. Along the southern shore, there were a lot of cute little towns with lots of tourist oriented cafes, shopping, beaches, motels, camping etc. Very nicely done. We made our way to Le Roche Perce - "THE" Gaspe spot where the big rock with the keyhole is that one thinks of when you think of The Gaspe Peninsula. We ended up staying at the Lighthouse campsite that has a panoramic view of the Perce Bay and, from the lighthouse, a gorgeous view of the Rock. It was lovely. We noticed the campsites are more expensive here in Quebec than in the Maritimes... but worth the price for the incredible view and the GREAT bathrooms/showers here.

July 25
We woke up to a nice sunny day and from Perce northwards, we started to head into more mountainous terrain. In fact, the road becomes A LOT like the best part of the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton and certainly rivals it for GREAT twisty roads, stunning views of the water, beautiful mountains and picturesque little villages along the way. We loved the Gaspesie as much as we loved the Cabot Trail. It really is one of the highlights of the trip and a "Must Do" in any cross-Canada route. We got as far as Matane where, incidentally, one can take ferries across the St. Lawrence to Baie Comeau and Baie-Trinite. We looked for a campsite but couldn't find one but, as we came through town, we noticed a bunch of RVs parked behind a shopping mall. We drove around to the backside of the mall and, would you believe, it's right on the water??? What city planner, in their right mind, would put the back end of a shopping mall on prime waterfront real estate? They should be fired is all I can say. BUT - their lunacy was our delight because you can also park there for free overnight and use the very clean and brand new bathrooms in the mall. Also, there is a little coffee shop in the mall that opens at 6:30 that serves a killer breakfast for $5. Go figure. We spend a lovely evening watching the sun go down over the water, sitting in our camp chairs and BBQing steaks out behind Sears!

July 26
Woke up this morning and it was FREAKING COLD!!! BRR!!! Only 45 degrees! We spent a lovely night in the Mall parking lot and greatly enjoyed our breakfast in the little Mall cafe and then packed up quick and hit the road because it was so cold. We actually hauled out our electric vests, it was that cold. Overcast and looking like rain, we wanted to get some miles behind us as quickly as possible. We rolled through Rimouski - what a beautiful area this part of the Gaspesie is. Lots of farmland now, tons of corn and soya bean in particular as well as hay. The farms are gorgeous and the hillsides look like patchwork quilts of varying shades of green. The houses are all old - as are the barns - and well looked after, we noticed. Lots of manicured yards, freshly painted buildings and everything neat and tidy. We puttered along the 132 which goes along the water and through all the small towns but there was increasingly more frequent road work and finally, when we hit a detour that took us 20 minutes off track, we decided to make some better time and we hopped over to the faster Route 20. We took the Route 20 over the bridge at Quebec City. We made a last minute decision to bypass Quebec City because really, we would need at least 2 days to really see any of the city and we just don't have the time. Rather than battle traffic just to get in there, find a place to stay and leave again, we decided to make it a "Must Return and See" place - along with Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. With motorbikes, and pulling a trailer, we're not keen on big city traffic this trip.
SO - we waved to Quebec City as we drove through it and headed SW on the 138. We went as far as Port Neuf and found the one campsite there is for miles in that area - the Campground Panoramique.
The Panoramique is, really, a small RV city. There must be 500 sites and most of the RVs are permanent - they've all got built on decks, porches, gardens etc. and pretty much everyone has a golf cart they cruise around in. They're all squished in there like sardines and it's kind of like what we imagine some of the RV parks down in Arizona must be like, where the Snowbirds go for the winter. And NOSEY!! Good grief - we weren't even off our bikes yet and a couple showed up in their golf cart, wanting to know who we were, where we were from and where we are going. Very friendly and nice but a little bit much - and those golf carts are a bit creepy because people can sneak up on you in them because they don't make any noise. You turn around and jump our of your skin because folks are sitting right behind you, checking you out. I guess we were something of a novelty on our motorbikes because there was no end to the string of golf carts that cruised by, ogling at us. It was kind of funny but a little weird too... 
The other thing that irked us a bit was that they charged us $40/night for an unserviced site which was really in the middle of an undeveloped strip of grass which was littered with garbage here and there and was where the kids blow up dolphin waterslide was. We headed out for dinner so missed all of the watersliding but it was pretty noisy (we don't mind the sound of kids, it was the infernal fan they had running to keep the apparatus blown up that was loud and seriously annoying) and THEN - insult heaped upon injury, they had the audacity to charge for showers on top of it all. A word to the wise - bypass Port Neuf, especially the Campground Panoramique. Spend the extra few bucks and get a cheap motel instead...

July 27
We bolted out of the Panoramique as soon as we got up - we were packed and on the road in record time (by 7:30 I think!) and we headed on down the road. We went through Trois-Rivieres and stayed on the 138 until we could hook up with the 158 at Berthierville. VERY gorgeous country roads that take you through all the little towns and villages and through absolutely STUNNING farmland. Honestly, this stretch of Quebec is unbelievably beautiful. We oohing and ahhhing all the way along the shoreline. We skirted Montreal and headed into Lachute - a beautiful little town where our friends Yvan and Carole live. We met them a few weeks ago up in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland and ran into them a few times along the way and then spent the 17 hour ferry ride from Argentia Newfoundland to North Sydney, Nova Scotia with them and had a great time. We promised to stop in and see them on our way through so we did and they hosted us like royalty. They have a gorgeous little 5 acre farm and we stayed the night with them, wine-ing and dining the evening away. What a great visit and what great people.

July 28
Woke up this morning to overcast skies. Yvan and Carole decided they'd ride with us for awhile and, in fact, they rode with us all the way through Ottawa and up to Arnprior which was sure nice of them. We had a great ride and had some lunch together and then said our goodbyes. It was so hard to leave them, they've become good friends and already we're scheming to get them out to BC for a visit some time soon.
A bit of a set back today - at one point, the sky opened up and torrential rain forced us to seek refuge under an overpass. While we waited it out, I took my helmet off and when I put it back on, the Scala transmitter slipped off it's clip (which never was very secure to begin with) and it was lost. There was way too much traffic, roadwork, merging vehicles and no place to pull over to try to go back and get it. LAME!!! So - it means no intercoms for the rest of the trip. Oh well.
After we left Yvan and Carole, we continued on Route 17 just past Mattawa to the Champlain Provincial campsite. We tried to stay in Mattawa but there was a big festival there this weekend and everything was booked out. The Champlain was nice, though, and we scored a spot right on the lake. Beautiful and very peaceful.

July 29
It rained last night and this morning, we woke up to cloudy skies and it was cold again - about 50 degrees. Honestly - this is July, right?? It feels more like early April, and a cold, wet one at that. We donned all our warm gear and headed out towards Sault Ste. Marie. The drive was good but soon, we had to pull over to put our rain gear on and within minutes, it POURED. We hauled into North Bay and found a Tim Hortons, had some breakfast and waited the worst of it out. One thing we've noticed, the rain showers are fierce but short lived so they seem to clear up quickly. We carried on and hit a couple more showers but by the time we hit "The Soo'', the sky cleared right up and we had clear blue skies!! AWESOME. The whole drive today was great, even with the rain. The road was great and the countryside is beautiful - all wilderness and lakes until the scenery opens up and you come to gorgeous Lake Superior. WOW. By the time we fueled up and took a small break, we were inspired by the scenery and the great weather and we decided to carry on another 150 kms. We made it up to Montreal River, just past Pancake Bay and found a fantastic little campsite, right on the lake - Twilight Resort. The weather had cleared and warmed up so we made a fire and sat and watched the sun go down over Lake Superior. It was gorgeous. A VERY lovely evening...

July 30
We headed to Thunder Bay - it was a good driving day through miles and miles and miles of Ontario bushland. There are a million little lakes in this area and trees and rocks as far as the eye can see. No wonder Europeans come to this country and can't believe the sheer size of it and how much of it is unoccupied. It just goes on forever. We're born and raised in this country and we couldn't believe it either! The Trans-Canada in Ontario is really great - the pavement is in good condition which really makes a huge difference on bikes. The only downside to this stretch of highway is that a lot of it is single lane and there a million transport trucks so, at times, you poke along. The other frustrating thing is that the speed limit is only 90kms/hour! Anywhere else we've been, this road would have been at least 100km/hour if not 110 (most of it is quite straight)... the traffic averages about 110 kms/hour and we saw A LOT of police cars who weren't bothering with tickets so we just stayed with the flow for the most part BUT, every now and again, you get someone who does the speed limit and then traffic backs up for MILES!! One poor guy in a gold minivan did this for what seemed like FOREVER and when he finally pulled into a gas station, I thought a bunch of traffic would follow him to punch him out.
NOTE TO SELF PEOPLE!!! (My pet peeve for the week...) HAVE A LOOK BEHIND YOU ONCE IN AWHILE! If you notice you have a string of vehicles - oh, say, A MILE LONG! - behind you, pull over for heaven's sake and let people pass!! Good grief...
We skirted Thunder Bay and started to head up north. It was getting to be a long day (about 700 kms) and we were ready to make camp. There was nothing for miles past Thunder Bay! We were just about contemplating camping on a side road when we found a little fishing lodge, about 100 kms south of Ignace, at Lac Des Mille Lacs (Lake of a Thousand Lakes)... if you look on a map, you'll see it's a HUGE lake!
Anyway, we set up camp and had a look around. It's a bit run down but the property was beautiful and right on the water. We were bagged so we hit the rack around 8pm and THAT'S when our long dark journey through HELL began.
Around 8pm, the mosquitos and no-see-ums came out in force and by force, I mean in clouds so thick you can hardly see through them. The mosquitos are about the size of your thumbnail and they're HUNGRY!!!! Suffice it to say, we were at Thousand Lakes and each lake has about 10 Billion mosquitos so you do the math and them multiply it by a factor of about another 1000 for the number of equally hungry no-see-ums.
We  woke up to about 1000 of the little bastards in our tent - somehow they were getting in. In a great flurry of activity, we tried to batten down the hatches and fill in every little nook and cranny they could possibly get in through and then I ruthlessly hunted down the ones in the tent armed with a head lamp and a dirty sock. The inside of the tent looked like a murder scene with streaks of blood all over the place as I was killing the ones who had already feasted on us. This went on for over an hour and we tried to sleep for awhile. At one point, I woke up because it sounded like rain and then I realized - THAT'S THE SOUND OF MILLIONS OF MOSQUITOS FLYING INTO OUR TENT, TRYING TO GET IN!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGGGG!!!!! I'm not even joking or exaggerating!! And somehow, they were still getting in, despite our best efforts so we were chewed on all night. I thought I was going to lose my mind. We tried to cover our heads but then you couldn't breathe and it got so hot under the covers, you damn near sweated to death. It truly and honestly was a night from HELL and will go down in history as Le Grande Torment - The GREAT TORMENT!!!  Unbelievable. We held out only because to try to leave in the middle of the night meant going out into the clouds of bugs to pack up camp. We suffered through until 6am and then we RAN - we've never struck camp faster in our lives and even after we left, when we pulled over for gas down the road, Lynn took off his helmet and huge mosquitos came out!!
Seriously - it was the worst and longest night of my life. No wonder there are so many roadkills in Ontario of moose etc. I'm convinced the poor beasts are actually committing suicide to end their suffering from the torment from the damned BUGS!!!
As luck would have it, we stopped to get gas at Upsala and there's a little mom and pop shop restaurant that served FANTASTIC breakfast. Thank God. Tonight, I don't care if it costs $1000, we're getting a motel room.