Quebec

So we are one day from leaving for our grand adventure out west.  It has been a long time coming but we did have quite the adventure to Quebec during our two week adventure.  Our first stop was in Kingston, Ontario which was our halfway point where we spent just one night.  Here we had done the haunted tours walk, which is where they take you through the city and tell you spooky stories about the towns past.  This was a lot of fun.  The city itself was very cute, and looked very similar to a little French village.  Here is a picture of Elisabeth and our tour guide:

From here we headed up to Mont Orford National park where we spent 4 days hiking and going to the beach.  We did some really incredible hikes, including one up to the top of Mont Chauve which climbs to an impressive altitude of 1527 feet.  This was a 6 hour hike and Elisabeth went all the way up all by herself.  She was walking for around 4 hours and Antoine carried her in the kid carrier for 2 hours.  We even saw a beaver on the way!  Here are a few pictures from our hike, including ones at the summit.

Now after this crazy adventure you can imagine that we were very HUNGRY and tired.  So we went to this great little pizzeria not too far from our campsite which was awesome because we felt like we were back in France.  Everyone had a bottle of wine on their table and the ambiance was very festive.  The pizzas were delicious and it was nice to relax after that long day!! 

This campsite was a lot of fun too because we met some very cool people.  Elisabeth found some friends on the beach, Eloise and Florence, who became her good friends.  We had dinner with them and their parents who were from Montreal and we made plans to meet up with them once we got to Montreal. 

So the next leg of our adventure was onto Quebec City which is just adorable.  It is one of the only fortified cities in Canada and is very charming.  We stayed in a hotel just outside of town and were able to take the bus into town.  While it was nice to be in a hotel this place looked more like a rundown hostel than an actual hotel.  But we had a good breakfast every morning and free parking so it worked out okay.  The weather in Quebec was a little rainy but it worked out since it is no fun to have rainy weather while camping!!  So we saw the sites around the city and went to this great little Moroccan restaurant where we could bring our own wine.  It was a tiny place with only a handful of tables but it was delicious and we met, or I should say, Elisabeth met some cool people from Brazil.  Here is a picture from the restaurant:

Quebec City had plenty of things to see and do.  One of the major sites we did was the museum of civilisation which was just great.  When we walked in they had an opera concert going on and Elisabeth was really into it so we sat down and listened to the whole thing.  They were amazing Italian singers, it was beautiful.

They also had a special exposition for the kids which was a sort of fairy tale land where the young and old could get dressed up and run around in this play land.  It was fun and even Antoine and I got into the spirit:

They also had a Rome exhibit and an exhibit on Quebec's history which was very interesting considering how turbulent it has been to fight to keep their French culture.  And one of my favorite parts was an exhibit on different nations around the world and their weekly expenditures on food.  There were pictures of families from different countries with the spread of everything they eat and drink during the week, including the cost of their food.  Germany spent the most on food being around $500 US dollars a week.  But this is not necessarily the quantity of food but the high quality, and therefore high cost of what they eat.  And the African countries were very low on the cost of their food, some amounting to the equivalent of one dollar for a whole week, for much larger families.
Here are a few pictures from Quebec including the old city:

On our last day in Quebec we decided to visit an American Indian reserve not too far from the city.  These were the Huron Indians that lived in the city of Wendaka.  This was really cool because we had a guided tour of the traditional village including the long houses where they lived and the explanations on how they hunted, how they made their canoes, and their traditional dances.  They also had a show in which they did several different of the traditional dances, one of which they smoked the peace pipe and needed four volunteers... well you can guess that Antoine was the first to volunteer and smoked it on stage with them.  Then we toured around the city where they live and saw the amazing canon and waterfall that is a part of their city.  It was absolutely beautiful.  They also had a wooden promenade that went the whole way along the river.  We went back to the traditional site that night for dinner and had one of their traditional meals including sunflower seed soup, red elk steaks, and some sort of cake covered in maple syrup.  Everything was very good, we had a great time.  Here are some pictures from the reserve.  Unfortunately, the battery died on my camera before I was able to take a picture of the waterfall.  But there is one of the river behind when we were in a park in the city.  This was a cool place because the Chemin Vert (Green Trail) runs through the city.   This is a trail that runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of Canada and is usually one that people will bike.  We kept running into the trail during our stay in Quebec... But that adventure will be for another time.  :) 

After we left Quebec City we headed back towards Montreal and stayed in a National Park about a half an hour outside of Montreal called Park D'Oka.  This was a beautiful place and conveniently located for a day trip to Montreal.  We did some hikes here and enjoyed the enormous beach that they had.  The water was great for swimming.  They even had a demonstration of how to throw a spear and we made a pot out of clay.  There was a crazy story when we were sitting by the fire one night.  A lady came over to our campsite going on about something to do with a raccoon and her babies.  It turned out she was in one of these platform tents and there were two babies sleeping inside when a raccoon snuck in to get something to eat.  Her and her sister were there with the two babies and 4 kids, who were hiding in the car.  She frantically asked Antoine to come get the raccoon out of her tent before he hurt the babies.  So Antoine heroically took his baseball bat from the trunk of the car and headed over.  He looked under the bed and there was the raccoon between where the two babies were sleeping in there rolling cradles.  Antoine started to pull the cradles of the tent when the raccoon ran out.  Antoine gave him a tap before he got any closer to the babies and then pushed him out of the tent, saving the day.  Antoine was very proud of his heroic feat.

We did a hike that is a pilgrimage called the Calvaire d'Oka that climbs to the top of a peak with the stations of the cross along the way leading up to the chapel at the top.  It was very scenic and we had lunch at the top of the climb.

 This was a wooden bridge that went out over a marsh.  It was fun to look at all of the frogs and the birds.

 Definitely the best picture of the trip.  This was during one of our hikes and a quick click while we were walking gave really cool effects to the picture.

 On our way to our next campsite we took a ferry out of Park Oka with the car, it was cool.

We did one day trip to Montreal where we first toured around the city seeing primarily the old city which was nice, we had lunch at a creperie.  The city was nice but it was a much more big city feel than Quebec City.  Even though there were probably tons of awesome museums to do we didn't have much time so we did a cheesy tourist trap which was a giant labyrinth inside an old warehouse.  This was fun, it took us about an hour and a half to get through, winding through the giant panels solving riddles along the way.  Here are some pictures from the city:

We ended up meeting up with the people we met in Mont Orford.  They had clued us in on the fact that this was the time of the world famous Jazz Festival in Montreal and so we met up with them  there.  The kids played, we had drinks and tapas to eat, and listened to awesome music.  We saw some great concerts with our friends and hung out till late at night. 

After Montreal we went for one last weekend in Prince Edward county which is a peninsula on Lake Ontario which is known for it's food and vineyards.  We spent the fourth of July weekend at this campsite which is much different than the national parks.  Canad's holiday is on July 1st so the campsite was PACKED!!! The first night we were there they had 'fireworks' on the beach which consisted of small bottle rockets stuck in the sand.  It wasn't amazing but we brought our bottle of wine which makes the experience  a little better.  The rest of the weekend we spent at the pool and at the splash ground for the kids.  If we came back tanned it was from these three days only. 

One of the days we went to this awesome little restaurant overlooking the lake called Mountain on the Lake.  It was delicious and a great moment together because we were sitting out on the patio enjoying the view, drinking their homemade beers. 

Even if the campsite was not fantastic we had a nice weekend.  There was a concert one night and Elisabeth had fun dancing all night.  I also played my first round of mingolf with Elisabeth.  The drive home on July 4th was long, it took us about 8 hours to get back but we had a great time. 

...and this is only the beginning.  Sorry for the long post, this will be broken up better going forward.  But we didn't have internet access in Quebec so I had to do this all at once.  Tomorrow begins the true journey out to the far west.  Our first stop in Yellowstone.  So stay tuned...