| "We began the arduous task of ascending Riviere du Loup" |
| "We began the arduous task of ascending Riviere du Loup" |
The drive up was pretty good. We neglected to declare the vodka that we packed. Of course, they did a thorough search, found it and confiscated it. Nice lesson. Once in Claire, NB, it was 4:30 instead of 3:30, or actually 16:30 since they use a 24 hr. clock. Not to worry, we'll get our hour back before the end of the day.
There was a bit of culture shock when I went into the bank right there in sight of the US and no one spoke English. So I proudly said: "Je voudre changer cat cen dollars, sil vous plais." To which the teller replied:" Booly vooly hooey dooey la la la?", which I took to mean she was asking me for a date and I shyly said "no" and pushed the money across the counter. The women sure are fast in Claire.
We drove to town, past a lovely Lac Temiscouata, and scouted the Riviere-du-Loup on our way to the shores of the St. Lawrence. Sea weed clung to the rocky, muddy shore. We skipped a few stones, put our boats in and poled downstream into the wind just so I could say:
"We began our trip on the vast and mighty Saint Lawrence. As we ascended the torrential Riviere-du-Loup, we took a break and dined on a delicious local dish called brouchettes and drank local biere on the banks. One o'clock the next day, we found ourselves putting in to Lac St. Francis, fairly drunk with the effort."
Which translates to "We saw little opportunity to float a boat in that river, so we stopped at an excellent sidewalk cafe, had a fine brouchette (shish-kabobs), and tried both "Trois Pistoles" (dark, 9%, delicious) as well as "chambly" (light, 5%, delicious). Then we motored up to a campground and spent the night. In the morning, we loaded up and drank all the beer so that Graham and Brendon wouldn't be tempted on their drive home.
