Rob-n-Hild, Eastward Ho!

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Shawinigan - Saguenay 494 km. 6:41 hours. Elevation maximum 422 metres

Northwards to Saguenay
After being a bit lazy with the walking yesterday, we had a brief warm-up today after breakfast (and before tea, as usual). We had a quick look at the dam and crossed over into the town. Shawinigan has a long history as an industrial town with the first ironworks in Canada and a big hydro-electric power station. It is now more famous for the location of a major tax office....

We had been discussing was there anything that we could see as different between Quebec and Ontario and the general conclusion for most of the rural areas we had driven through yesterday was no. But in Shawinigan - a pretty big town with a history as an urban center we saw something which is distintive - small apartment blocks, often with stairs on the outside. We had seen these in Montreal and a bit in Quebec City with one or two family-sized apartments per floor. Here are a couple of examples with winding stairs - not great for when you buy a new sofa although it reminded us of the low-rise residential areas of Paris where we saw furniture removal using a conveyor belt like loading luggage onto an airliner!

On our road north out of Shawinigan, Hild saw on a the map a place called Fitzpatrick. Well, we had to stop in there for a photo, given that Rob's best friend from school is Gary Fitzpatrick so we left the main road at la Tuque and found our way onto Rue Fitzpatrick to see what we could find. Unfortunately, right now, Fitzpatrick is a set of roadworks alongside a railway as the road is being re-built. Sorry Gary.

We stopped for lunch at the side of a very big lake - Lac Saint-Jean and figured this was a good opportunity to show everyone how Mary Jane looks like from the inside with Tiny and all his pals. Tiny is the camera, Snus is the mobile wifi, Dinky is Hild's iPad (linked to Snus's wifi) and Max-2 is the GPS keeping track of all of the data!
We decided to drive all round the lake today on our way to Saguenay, as opposed to saving it for tomorrow, so that we could get some work done in the morning. It was also a nice day and we figured to make the most of the good weather.

After lunch we drove around the top of Lac Saint-Jean and down the east side. The lake wasn't visible for most of the road and we were driving through Canada;s biggest blueberry production area - which isn't very interesting to look at in the spring (flat fields with little red-coloured scrub). What was a bit more interesting were the waterfalls as rivers flowed into the lake (all the water runs out vis the Saguenay river where we are staying tonight). The best view was at Dolbeau-Mitassini where the water falls over rapids for a few hundred meters. The movie doesn't really do it justice.

The drive into Saguenay was nice and easy until we crossed the river and wound our way up the hill towards our hotel in Chicoutimi. As Rob was driving, Hild tested hi hill-start technique by finding the steepest road up to a set of traffic lights we had ever seen - well, since Quebec City anyway! Photos from inside the car don't show how steep the hill is - maybe we will go back there to get a better photo from the outside later.

Coming up: A walk and work day.

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