Quebec: Land of the 4-way stops and crappy roads

Day 10

Distance traveled: 339.4 km

Cumulative Distance: 339.4

Temerature Range: 12 - 21

Maxiimum speed: 101 kph

We bid our fairwells to Joy, who had looked after us fabulously. It was a brisk and fresh 7 degrees when we got up but had warmed up to a balmy 12 degrees by the time we set sail. We had our heated jackets on to start just in case we were freezing to death but we never needed to plug them into the motorcyle. We have our "winter" motorcycle gear, so no need for electric heat as yet, though I am sure it is coming. Fall is in the air.

Leaving Joy's we were soon on gravel. There is a LOT of road construction here, which I suppose, is a good thing. Joy had warned us about the road repair near to her place and the fact is that not long after we had departed, we found ourselves down a gravel road turning around due to the road construction completely blocking the way.

We had set route finding to "get outta Dodge with no highways" so it was back roads all the way to Quebec City, which here is called simply "Quebec". We were riding narrow, windy roads amongst little acreages on hilly streets; entertaining no doubt but I'm sure that every intersection had an all-way or four-way stop. Even streets that looked like there was an obvious choice for someone (us) to have a right of way, somehow the Arret gods had decided that "more is better". On the plus side, it was very pretty, lots of interesting architecture and the roads were fun. We actually concluded that the abundance of four-way stops was part of the plan to keep motorists from speeding. That and the brutal condition of the roads. At times, when the speed limit was 90, I thought that there was no way I would ride that fast in these roads.

However, this went on for several hours. We made so many turns, right, right, left, right, left, that I really had no idea where we were or even whether we were going the right direction or on the right route. A number of times, I wondered if we might have been better off saving a couple of hours and just following the highway; Google Maps was so determined to keep us off the highway that at one point, we crossed the same rail line 3 times within about 15 minutes. I was really wondering about the wisdom of having so many turns zig-zagging our way to Quebec. However, there was no denying the amount of funwe were having. Especially Nan, who really loved seeing the old houses. Many farm houses made of brick or stone, they were clearly homes built to last. We were alsinriding through little subdivisions of small acreages where the houses were a little more palatial.

We stopped for lunch at some backwater little restaurant in some backwater little town. There were about a dozen motorcyles in the parking lot so we thought it must be a good place. The fact is that there had been very few places to eat and we were getting hungry enough that just about any option would have sufficed: grocery store, convenience store, gas station sushi, or restaurant but there was few of any such things. So we were amazed to find that there was 1. a restaurant, 2. salad on the menu 3. Things other than poutine on the menu. But they had a LOT of poutine choices. My sense of it was that this was not a typical tourist stop but more oriented to Quebecois travelers or locals. Also, there was not a "motorcycle club" having lunch, just a coincidence that a bunch of motorcyclers were all having lunch at the same time. I hadn't parked Andelska with the other motorcycles for fear of having my bike pushed over. And called '"sissy". We chatted to two guys, who were quite excited that people were riding from BC. Of course, we had to tell tham that we drove part way (99% of the way, so far) but they were still excited.

The zig zagging got us into Quebec City around 5:30 p.m., after leaving early in the day around maybe 10:30 a.m. It was realitively easy to find the hotel, though we had been riding through rush hour traffic the last hour. Check in was "self-check in": we had a room number and code for the hotel and room. It only took us about 10 minutes to find our room, afer hiking all the way to the roof. In our motorcycle gear. I then had to park Andelska in the parkade, which was two blocks by walking and 10 blocks riding. The parking garage, belonging to the hotel was dark, dingy and not very inviting. In fact I backed the bike up to a pillar and chained the back tire to a pilon. Maybe not the most secure but hoepfully enough that they will rob some poor sucker without a lock before us.

A quick shower and we were ready to walk the town and find a bite of dinner. We stumbled into a restaurant that turned out to be vegetarian. Even though we were ok with it, we just assumed it would be only "ok" but we were pleasantly surprised. They were also keen to make sure we had wne we liked, so I actually sampled a few items before I chose my one glasss of red wine.