Tailwinds

88 km, 5 hours

It is a beautiful day. Our ride today takes us along the St. Laurence river coastline.

It seem to take forever to get out of Trois-Rivieres / Cap-de-la-Madeleine this morning. The campsite wasn’t that close to the Route Verte and the Route Verte takes you through many twists and turns as you navigate across the city. At one point, it brought us to a beautiful Basilica. We took a brief break there, and Scott took many pictures. I was intrigued by the kiosk outside that had 1/2 information booth and the other 1/2 for blessings (with a priest sitting inside watching the world go by). I thought about asking for a blessing, but wasn’t sure it was appropriate, given that I am not catholic. Personally, I think we could never have too many blessing.

We tried to stop at the library in Champlain to do an Internet update; however, it was only open on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.

By lunch time, it looked like we had caught up to some nasty rain / storm clouds. We had been watching them all morning. At 1 pm, I decided we need to eat and take cover, in case the storm clouds let loose. We had a lovely lunch and break at Bastican. The rain clouds blew right over us. We are getting much better at ordering our meals in French. I was even able to specify that I did not want lettuce or mustard on my hamburger!

In Sainte-Anne-del-la-Perade, I decided it was too early to stop at the grocery store, figuring that we could wait and their would be one closer to our nights stop. We did stop at the Subway to do an Internet update. We discovered that “Access Quebec” wifi is not free; however, the fee was not unreasonable and we needed to order some shorts and get a few emails sent. We are finding it difficult to get wifi or any type of Internet access in Quebec.

After our stop to do Internet stuff, it was already 4pm and we had over 35 km to cover before reaching Portneuf, where we intended to stay the night. We still needed to do a grocery store stop, as our food supplies were pretty sparse (although, we had enough food, such that we would not be stuck with nothing).

I had expected their to be a grocery store of some kind in Donnacona, as it is listed in larger print on our CAA map. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Donnacona appeared mostly abandoned (it was eerie at first, as we entered a well-kept town at 5:30pm with not a single person to be seen). Eventually, we did pass people and several restaurants, but no grocery store.

In the end, there was no grocery store in Deschambault* or in Portneuf. With a little bit of searching, and Becky asking someone about 50m before a sign, we found the Depanneur (corner store). It had enough of what we needed for a lovely dinner and breakfast :).

All is well in Portneuf, Quebec.

* I realized on Wednesay that I had been confusing Portneuf and Neuville. Donnaconna did indeed have a grocery store; however, it was 15 km East of Portneuf! Oops.

[gpxcheckpointtable=show;gpxcheckpointinterval=10; gpxelevationcolor=green;gpxspeedchart=show]