Lenzen's Travels: Just Waiting for the Ship

Here I am again, on a Saturday night, but this time we are waiting for out ship to come in. We have had an interesting week as we sometimes made plans on the go.

We bypassed Montreal and planned on doing the same with Quebec City. But we checked the weather and where we were headed had rain in the forecast s we decided to go into Quebec City instead. Here we toured on Quebec City including the Basilica,

Chateau Frontenac,

the narrow streets teeming with people,

and climbed the 387 stairs to the top of the wall around old Quebec City. The next day we visited Montmorency Park and Falls.

We took the gondola to the top of the falls, walked across them and took the 410 stairs going down (much easier and quicker than up).

Then it was off to the Sainte Anne De Beaupre Church which is absolutely amazing – the design, and the size, and the opulence.

People were healed

A lot of confessionals

The floor

Then there were one more set of falls to visit - Chaudiere Falls

I have complained about how slowly my one sink drains so while in Quebec City, and we were in a campground, I decided to use lots of hot water to perhaps clean out the pipes. Well after day one, they drained a bit better, but after day two – wow, it drained immediately. BUT, then Gerry went outside and there it was, all the water. The drain pipe had come off the hose to the grey tank because the clamps holding it in place had broke. Now, we had a wet mess that needed drying plus a repair job was in store. After a few F bombs, Gerry settled in place to do the repair in an area where he could only reach with one hand through an opening 10” x 12” and about 18” back inside the cabinet. He got it done, drain is draining slowly again, no leaks, but bruised arms and even on his head.

Filling with fuel can also offer some challenges such as pulling up to the pumps and not being able to get out easily. Well in New Glasgow, NS, that is what happened – we didn’t pay enough attention when pulling in and there was no getting out without backing up. As you know, when backing up with another vehicle in tow, the front wheels go crossways pretty quickly. A brainwave – start the vehicle, straighten the wheels with power steering, and continue to back up (at least until it happens again) but it did allow us to make the turn to leave.

Then it is time to continue east so it’s was off to Hartland, NB here we walked across the St. John River on the world’s longest covered bridge.

Then we stopped at the Covered Bridge Potato Chip Factory where we walked across the worlds shortest covered bridge and toured the factory. Rather interesting to read the story about the potato and to watch how potato chips are made.

Fredericton, NB has some great history where we visited the Garrison Centre. Now this was a disappointment as all the buildings are currently being used for modern uses. I had hoped that some of them would have been a museum.

It’s always a challenge to find parking with the motorhome but they advertising free RV parking so there we went. Well, the parking is off a one-way street and there was absolutely no way that we could make that turn. So we go around a block and come in from a different direction. We get into the lot to discover that the RV parking is used by workers because it is free and there is no way out we unhook, get turned around, and leave. Gerry always runs the GPS and I often run Google maps simultaneously because one never knows. Plus one best be looking at signs as well. We follow the route suggested by the GPS but whoa, that underpass is only 3.1 meters, we need3.7+ meters so I get him to stop. Now where because straight ahead is too short, sign says “No Left Turn”. Out I go, stop and direct traffic because we have to turn left. Everyone was very good and I only heard one remark something about paying attention. It’s a good thing that we were paying attention. No photos of this one - we were too busy trying to get out of there.

Since we are in the area, let’s go to the Bay of Fundy and Hopewell Rocks. The Bay of

Fundy has the biggest tide in the world and the Hopewell Rocks have been eroded to create some real unique landscape. It is best to go there twice – once at high tide and once at low tide. While we weren’t able to do this, we did hit high tide, halfway to low tide and it was amazing to see.

As I said, out plans are fluid so when the weather was wind and rain, we decided to go all the way to Sydney and sit and wait for our ferry ina couple of days. First let’s fill with fuel so we pull into a service station (of course small) and some fellow was coming in to where we wanted to fuel. When he realized that, he backs up and goes to another pump and apologizes. That is one example as we have chatted with more locals that we probably do in Regina. Folks here are amazing. Fortunately, we found a park with a large parking lot right on the water. Just across a small bay is the ferry terminal with ferries leaving and/or coming at least once a day but there are fishing boats coming and going all the time. Some of them have a real following.