Day 7-8 – The Road to Gaspe

We hightailed it out of Levis Quebec so we could get to Gaspe in some decent time. It was still a good seven hours away so it would be one of the longer hauls on the trip. We’ve been trying to keep the long road trips to a bare minimum for sanity.

Vero continued to sleep most of the way there while I enjoyed the scenery and listened to some tunes. The scenery definitely increased as I hit the highway along the coast. Imagine driving for hours with only the ocean by your side. This is how to live! I didn’t even care if it’s a lower speed limit than the major highways.

We stopped off in Matane for a bite to eat the Casse-Croute. For those of you who don’t know what the Casse-Croute is, think of a chip stand. Now, I asked Vero about the name and she said croute meant hunger so I guess the literal translation would be hunger-killer or hunger-breaker. Interesting how someone ixnayed that idea and just called it a chip wagon in english.

Let us also point out that I had forgot how bloody cold it is along the ocean! I had to go grab my jacket from the car as soon as we stepped out.

After a tasty burger and Vero getting an excellent vegetarian poutine, we hit the road again. I stopped at the turnoff sign for Gaspe. Some people may wonder why there are two arrows to Gaspe. If you look at a map, you can see that if you keep going straight you can keep driving along the coast (longer trip but still scenic), or you can cut through the hills into Murdochville (where my Father is from).

Considering I had already had my fill of the coastline, we turned right and discovered a wilderness and windy roads. I always remember cruising down this highway at top speed and Mom yelling at Dad about something to do with reliving his youth. I also sped down the windy turn and imagined myself in such great James Bond flicks such as Goldfinger.

We got to Murdochville and filled up the tank of gas and luckily Vero had some cash with her as the credit and debit card machines were down for some reason! Otherwise, I would have been scrubbing toilets for a weekend to pay off my gas. We drove through Murdochville which lasted 2 minutes and headed out.

I was asking Vero if there was anything she wished to do while in Murdochville but she was confused and say “No, I’ll wait until the rest of the weekend.” which I thought was strange considering it was an hour away from Gaspe. Turns out that for some reason she thought we were staying at my parents cottage in Murdochville!

We arrived around 3PM and met Dad who had been downtown. After touring the cottage and relaxing a bit we headed into town for some Mastro’s Pizza (excellent pizza) and Mom and Dad gave Vero, Nanny and I the tour (which is funny to say considering Nanny lived there for years). We went to the docks, Camp Holdimand, up to the Sanitorium and toured around the neighbourhood trying to find some new condos that had gone up. We then headed home and had a few beers before retiring.

Let’s talk about how it got dark really fast in Gaspe. One could argue that the Gaspe coast needs their own time zone as it is pretty far on the map. Whereas Ottawa may have the sun going down around 9PM at this time in the year, Gaspe was pitch black around 8PM! Very strange and it must have been even odder for my parents who have summer nights lasting until 10PM back home.

The next day was cold, rainy and cold. Ugh. Not the best day to be in Gaspe. We skipped the idea of going to the beach and headed to Snowman’s for some lunch. We then went to tour some old forts along the coast and along the way stopped into Fox River (hence the Michael Scofield reference in my previous post) to check out the damage of flooding. It’s unbelievable to think that a bridge was wiped out and houses were destroyed in a matter of hours after a flash flood.

We headed home after meandering around the area and got ready for a lovely supper put on by Nanny. I then brought out the laptop to map out where we would head to next and decided Halfax would have to be scrapped from this trip as it would be too much of a detour.

The next morning before heading out we headed to the cemetary to visit the family. It was the running joke that Vero must have had the best time in Gaspe – visiting dead people and hanging out in the cold rain! Hopefully the next time will be nice Vero!

After saying hello to Eric and Kay, we hit the road to spend an afternoon at Perce Rock. Thanks to the hospitality of my parents and Nannies at the homestead.