Day 3 - Quebec City

We ended our visit to Quebec City at Montmorency Falls. We were excited to see this falls, which at 83 meters high is 26 meters higher than Niagara Falls. We were surprised to discover that it is possible to turn a spectacular falls into a tourist trap. There’s $10 US per person fee to enter the area. The tram ride up to the bridge that hangs, not too gracefully over the brink of the falls and the zip line that shoots people across the front of the falls are, of course extra. Andy said it was “nature for the unaware”.

The tackiness of the area couldn’t, however, ruin the grandeur of the falls, and we enjoyed our visit. There’s a walkway that leads to the base of the falls and we were close enough to get quite wet from the spray - nice on a hot day.

Before visiting the falls we took a bike ride on a very nice bike trail around the ports and along the base of the walled part of Old Quebec.

As I road around the port of Quebec I thought about my great grandmother. She arrived in Quebec from Belfast in 1907. She had two small children with her, my grandmothers older siblings. From Quebec she boarded a train for Moosejaw, Saskatchewan to join my great grandfather. How brave she was to make such a journey!

Thankfully the bike trail was relatively flat especially compared to the hilly city above. We had lunch at a restaurant in the old part of the city. The location, with the old buildings and quaint streets, was much better than the food.

We spent the afternoon exploring more of Quebec including a tour of the Saint-Louis Forts and Châteaux National Historic Site. At some point during the forts long history the commanders went from French to English. I’ll have to brush up on my Canadian history to figure out why and how Quebec stayed so French while the rest of Canada is so English.

We left Quebec behind and headed east. One of the things we enjoy about our camper home is finding an unexpected jewel along the route. We were looking for a spot to stop and make sandwiches. We passed one rest stop, but it didn’t look so nice. I googled “park” and a place called, BIENVENUE Montagne à Coton came up. It was close by, and looked nicer than a random parking lot, so we stopped. The view from the parking lot was not great, but we noticed a family disappear through a somewhat overgrown trail. We decided to take a look. The trail climbed up and up for about 1/2 mile and we were rewarded with this view!

After some more pictures of the surrounding farms with the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the distance we headed to our next night’s stay at a Walmart in Rimouski Quebec. Not all Walmarts are the same, we were quite surprised to find 30 RVs there! We scoped out another boondocks spot we found on the ioverlander app, but it was full of cars parked there because of a festival going on. So we are now back at the Walmart writing the blog and getting ready for bed. Tomorrow we head to Forillon National Park.