Kilometres Remaining: 6,971/11,978
I slept surprisingly well in Jerusalem with the wheel between my legs and having to get up every 2-3 three hours to start the car and heat it up again. It was a pretty warm night and though it was blizzarding the whole time, more or less, it was warm enough so there was little accumulation. This was a mixed blessing. Good that we did not have to drive through heaps of snow, but bad that it was now all slushy.
We got up, stretched, and were quite pleased with the fact that we did not have to put away the tent. We were back in the car and back on our way through the snowy mountains. Everything worked out perfectly... well... mostly perfectly. Where we had stopped was on the peak of one of the last large hills. It did not take long for us to leave the hills behind us, and with them, the blizzard. The roads were much improved from there on in, and were paved from there to Quebec City.
That part was fine, but the issue was not in the roads, but in the fair Jerusalem. I mentioned before that we had acquired a nasty wobble on the front passenger tire, and this wobble became quite evident on smooth, paved, roads. The highway speed was 90 km/h the entire way to Quebec City and this was great; we could drive 90, we could even drive 95, but as soon as we were over 100 the car began to shudder violently and it became very difficult to control. Very very very difficult.
As I said, it did not take long to reach the paved roads. From where we were parked for the night it was only 50 km/h to Manic-Cinq, which was the next fuel station and the start of the paved roads. Manic-Cinq is the fifth reservoir damming Lake Manicougan. This is one of the largest reservoirs in the world, and truthfully, one of the largest batteries in the world. Lake Manicougan is an impact crater where a potentially cataclysmic meteor crashed into earth about a bazillion years ago. The earth was compressed when the meteor hit and right after it bounced back outwards, just like when a drop of water hits a pool of water. This left a great ring shape that can actually be seen from space. Hydro Quebec dammed this ring and has created an enormous battery of electricity in the form of water. Needing to service the dams, the roads from there on in were well maintained.
On we went.
We continued driving through rural Quebec and marvelled at its beauty. Autumn is the perfect time for a road drip as everything is beautiful shades of gold and red. There are many more people in Quebec than Labrador, and in a very short time that was evident. We went through many towns and continued towards our goal.
I did manage to stop in the middle of nowhere to grab some of those yellow coniferous trees. I hope I can get them home alive so that I may bonsai them. They must be hella confused now though, because they were outside getting ready to hibernate, but in the car it is warm and... well... whatever. We can only hope that they make it.
Over the next hours we continued on paved roads just carefully riding at 90-95 km/h. It was beautiful driving in terms of the roads and what we saw. We noticed that we were definitely in Francophone country when we stopped for gas and found that the people there could not speak a word of English. C’est la vie.
Since we put in so many miles yesterday the trip to Quebec City was greatly shortened. This was a great thing because of the holiday traffic and because of the not being able to drive above 100 the trip took longer than usual.
We passed more reservoirs and then eventually we came to the St. Lawrence. The road ran down the river closer and closer to Quebec City. By this time we had noticed that the drivers were getting crazier and crazier, but we were almost there and that was all that mattered. We were also starting to get worried because poor Jerusalem’s tire seemed to be getting worse and we were starting to just hope that we made it to Quebec City. It would be unfortunate to call CAA for a tow twice in as many weeks. I would probably get blacklisted or something.
There was a ferry over some body of water, and somehow we managed to get on it and then into Quebec City. I do not like driving in cities I do not know, and I especially to not like driving in cities I do not know when there is holiday traffic. FML. We made it onto some zillion lane road going into the city and with the graces of our maps, the GPS, and God, we made it into the heart of Quebec and then to our hotel. It is a small place with a manager who speaks about as much English as I speak French (I had a friend at NBSR book the place for us), but somehow we managed to get us checked in.
Exhausted from the drive we went into the hotel room and ordered Pizza. We couldn’t figure it out with the phone book, but eventually we noticed that on the phone there was speed dial for “Pizza.” Thank goodness.
We ate, and after three days of hellish driving... we slept.
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