Rivière-Ouelle Day 1

 Wednesday the 27th of July. We are up early to pack and get the rental car. Luckily the #11 is running again, although with diversions because of the Papal visit, and we got to the Hilton near the Parlement Building, got our little Toyota Corolla, and swung back to Quai Andre, We got some nice sandwiches at the coffee cafe (jambon and cheese for Barney, smoked salmon for me), loaded up the car, and were off. Doubling back through town near the river's edge, I continue to be amazed by the lack of traffic virtually everywhere, even in tourist areas. We get to the main highway and drive for over an hour before connecting to the road that goes to Rivière-Ouelle. We have entered the countryside, with large areas of farms punctuated by stands of trees, and hills to the right (south). We eventually got onto a much smaller road, and entered the village, which was a few buildings and very spread out, and every other house had some sort of 350th decoration out front. We continued to the end of the road where Rivière-Ouelle connected up to the St. Lawrence River, which was huge and magnificent. We pulled off the road to take photos. Heading back, we see the signs for the 350th and park at the church. We went in and took some photos… it was rebuilt in the early 20s after a fire, and the ceiling is painted white with lovely gold insets. Then we went into the huge Quonset hut that is the community hall, as various vendors were setting up. We saw models of the three different bridges over the past 300 years, and spoke to a fellow at the Levesque table, who told us to come back the next day to join the Association Levesque.

We returned to the car, and drove up to Kamouraska where we are staying. We found a small market to get a few things, and checked into our Airbnb/gite, which is lovely and looks out at the river. It was still quite warm and muggy. After settling in, we walked about 15 minutes from our gite to the “center” of Kamouraska along the riverfront which was lovely. We had dinner at the Grand Ourse, or the Big Dipper in the US; our dinner of sandwiches and local beer was fine, nothing special, and we had a nice walk back. We read for a while and I organized my notes for the start of events the next day, including the heritage connection to Robert Levesque and Jeanne Chevalier, as I had a feeling someone might ask about this.