Riviere du Loup (Oct. 9)
Our trip from Fundy to Montreal involved a lot of driving through incredible scenery.
The trans-Canada highway goes almost to the Maine border and then swings north. Much of the route is through forested hills or skirting lakes. This autumn saw a spectacular display of color – it was like driving through a Group of Seven painting, or maybe a kaleidoscope of a painting. Splotches of every imaginable shade of yellow, orange red and burgundy covered the hills, with some dark green from the spruces and a bit of bright green from the trees that had not yet turned color. It was the most striking display of fall colors I have seen in years and it went on for miles and miles.
We decided that we would try to get to Montreal in 2 days – a lot of driving given our usual habits. We were not able to find an open campground in our window for stopping, from the Quebec border to Riviere du Loup (Wolf River) on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. However, the Walmart in Riviere du Loup allows RV parking, so we joined a number of other campers there. This was our first time for that classic RV experience: camping in a Walmart parking lot .
We did not really see much of Riviere du Loup, beyond a spectacular sunset, but I can say that it has a very good restaurant, Restaurant le St. Patrice, where we had the best meal of the trip (and we have had some very good meals). The town appeared to be quite large compared to cities we have visited in the Maritimes..
Among our fellow campers at the Walmart was a man who had shipped his RV (and his dog) from France for a trip around the US and Canada. He had planned to stay for a year, but unfortunately an extension to his US visa (which is usually issued for only 6 months) was not forth-coming. He had looked into renting an RV here or purchasing and then selling one, and concluded that shipping from France to Halifax was his cheapest option. It seems to have worked well for him, despite his frustration over the visa situation.
In the morning, we had breakfast at the McDonald’s in the Walmart, and then headed out on the highway on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. The leaves were not quite so flashy along the route as we were heading southwest, but we had lovely vistas over the river to the mountains on the far shore for most of the drive. As the skies had returned to blue, the river was a brilliant aqua, while the distant mountains looked pink.
We arrived in our campsite in Longueuil, across the river from Montreal, around sunset. We parked the camper backwards in our site, so that we overlooked the river. This is the sunset that we could see from our front window. And this is the scene that greeted us in the morning.