It’s due time for another trip down to the Coast and with a good reason…celebrating Nanny’s 80th birthday!
First stop, a trip to Saint-Jacques des Leeds to visit Vero’s grandma and her family. I really enjoy this village as it’s nice to see the rolling hills. Vero’s cousin also bought the gas station in town so it was interesting to chat with him to find out how hard it is to have a gas station in a small town like that. An evening of fun times was had and it was nice to see everyone.
It’s really great to have Saint-Jacques des Leeds as a stopover on an otherwise 12 hour trip to Gaspe! We woke up early and hit the road. Once we hit the coast we realized we were starving and stopped in to a chip stand.
We stopped in and grabbed an epic poutine. In fact, this may have actually been featured on ‘Epic Meal time’. In theory it sounded amazing, but when we saw it, I couldn’t help but have my stomach turn.
It was called La Poutine des Navigateurs and it consisted of the standard fries, gravy and curds but coupled with ground beef, ham and bacon and there must have been other things in there that I couldn’t even identify! The bacon seemed to have hit the frying pan for one second and then put into this concoction. Also, the bottom of the poutine became this interesting soup which consisted of the gravy as well as the grease from the bacon and the ground beef.
In the end, the poutine was finished between the two of us, but there was a mound of bacon left on the side and a sick stomach for the rest of the trip! Please don’t try the Navigator poutine on your way down the coast! Blech!
The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. It was raining most of the way and when we showed up to the cottage, everyone jumped at the chance to speak with us. Turns out that it had been raining all week and there was a case of cabin fever coming over everyone!
Spent the rest of the night having a great time drinking some homemade beer as well as playing some guitar with John. I also showed Vero the excellent trailer that we would be living in for the next few nights. Favourite moment of the day was dropping by Eric and Kay’s and Vero says “Wow, you have a nice big deck.” and Eric says “I have a nice big WHAT?!” Hilarity ensued.
The next day turned out to be the best of the week. We brought the sunshine with us! Everyone was excited. Uncle Gerry hopped on the bike as soon as dawn hit and I don’t remember seeing him all day!
Dad brought me up the hill on the ATV. It’s quite the steep hill and I’m glad she showed me the ropes before bringing Vero out on it. I think I would have a lot of fun ATVing around Gaspe. Supposedly there are great trails going for 100km.
That afternoon we went downtown with Maureen and John to see a street festival. It was quite fun but hit legendary status when we noticed some street performers called Papirock (sp?). They dressed up like old people and played music and acted just plain silly. It was amazing. We were trying to figure out how to hire them for Maureen and John’s wedding!
John and I modeling some Lucha Libre masks.
In the evening, we headed to Nanny Ruth’s 80th birthday party at the Legion. I have never been to a louder event in my life! I couldn’t figure out if it was due to the amount of people there, or the fact that 80% of them had hearing aids! Incredible! We had a great time and it’s always great to see Nanny have a good time. I think she is quite like me…loves to entertain and chat with friends.
We headed back to Ottawa with Maureen and John in tow. I had a good laugh when we were commenting on the town names in Quebec along the coast and John said “I bet this town has something to do with either a mountain or a Saint.” Turns out it was St-Anne-Des-Monts!
It was quite the long trip and we decided to take the Northern route over Montreal. Not sure which is the better option to be honest considering there was a lot of construction going on. I think the entire family was happy when we ended up back in Ottawa!