Saturday, October 18, 2008

Heading Up Province

Now it was time to head out of Quebec City and see some of the countryside.

Our route today was to take us North East out of the city on the South side of the St lawrence River to a town called Riviere-du-Loup where we will catch a ferry across the river to a town on the North side where we will stay for a couple of nights.

We picked up our hire car.


After a quick debate as to whether we were going to look like drug-dealers in this black Dodge Charger we were on the road. Quebec is actually a relatively small city and within only 20 minutes or so we were out of town on Highway 20 enjoying quiet roads.

Once we were well out of the Quebec metro area we exited the highway into a small town and then resumed our route along the small country route adjacent to the river. We had plenty of time for our journey and wanted to see more of the villages & towns along the way.

Now the views of the St Lawrence river and surrounding hills opened up

Each village we passed would typically have a church at the centre


More river views


Some villages had considerably more grain silos than houses !

Another village church

Quick pit stop

Views over a village and across the valley

These became typical views on the South side of the river. A large flat fertile valley bed with lots of huge rocky outcrops

The red paint salesman had visited (lots of houses in Quebec have this bright red roofs)

Starting to see a mix of autumnal colours. The best autumn foliage was later in the hills on the North side of the River where there were an abundance of maple trees

Another village church

We were almost at Riviere-du-Loup now. This view across the river shows the ferry leaving on an earlier sailing. We would catch it when it returned.

More St Lawrence River views

A small sailing boat close to the ferry dock

I should say that there are only 3 sailings a day across the river and it is not possible to make a reservation. As we were wanting to catch the last sailing of the day we were a little paranoid that it would be overloaded so we made an effort to get there with plenty of time. OK, we discovered this is NOT BC Ferries ! Yes, we arrived with about an hour and a half to spare. We were the 2nd car in the ferry queue !
So we had plenty of time to enjoy the views from the ferry dock. Looking back at the town of Riviere-du-Loup from the ferry dock

Closer view of the town on the hill

This big guy was the anchor outside a native arts shop adjacent to the ferry dock

1 comment:

Heather Hatley Studios said...

I love the pictures of the church! Beautiful!