Day 52: Portneuf, Quebec, Canada

Day 52: Portneuf, Quebec, Canada

August 3, 2016

Miles: 43

Average Speed: 9.9 mph

Quebec City to Portneuf, Quebec


We had agreed last night we would all go to breakfast at 8:30 this morning so we could get an early start on either bicycling or driving to our next destinations.  Of course, being the Lisi family, we weren't ready by the appointed time, but it was a only a surprisingly short time later we were congregating in the hotel hall waiting for the elevator to take us down to the lobby and then ambling the short distance to the restaurant.

Breakfast at Les Trois Garcon

The woman in white sitting behind Mom in the picture above offered to take a picture of all of us using Sandra's iPhone, so here I am in the picture, too.

All of us in one picture!

Bicyclists at rest (photo credit: San)

We finished breakfast and returned to the hotel to finish packing.  We brought our panniers outside and retrieved our bikes that had been locked in a storage room for these last two days.  We were joined by the rest of the gang as we loaded up our bikes and got ready to go.  We said our goodbyes on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and it was sad parting from Mom, Dine, Sandra and Gina.  It was so much fun to explore Quebec City together and it recharged me to have home come and visit.   I am so thankful they came to visit, but it will take me a couple of days to stop being sad and missing them and everybody else from home.

Just about ready to go (photo credit: Dine)

Di tries to determine which direction we should go (photo credit: Dine)

Gina offers Di her opinion on the direction we should go (photo credit: Dine) 

Now Sandra offers her opinion on which direction we should go (photo credit: Dine)

(By the way, we still got lost as soon as we hit lower Quebec City.  There really is no helping us.)

Mom says her goodbyes to Di (photo credit: Dine)

Mom says her goodbyes to me (photo credit: San)

Mom admonishing us to "Stay safe!" (photo credit: Dine)

Bye Gina!  We had fun hanging out with you in Quebec City! (photo credit: San)

See ya in a couple of weeks, Dine and San. (photo credit: San)

Don't we look confident about in which direction to start our ride?  (photo credit: San)

And we are off (photo credit: San)

It was after 10:30 by the time we finally were on the road.  That's not too bad considering we were shooting for a 9:30 start and Di and I can easily miss our planned departure time by much more than that all on our own.

We eventually found the bike path that would lead us out of the city.  The path closely follows the shore of the St. Lawrence River and is is very heavily used by bicyclists, runners and pedestrians.  Bicycling is so popular in Quebec that even on a Wednesday morning we saw well over a hundred bicyclists on just this 10 mile stretch of bike path.  It felt good to be among our kind.

View of the St. Lawrence from the bike path

A couple we met on the bike path and tried to impress with our bike trip (successfully)

The bike path

The bike path ends at a long and wide pedestrian pier that has an observation tower built upon it.  I forced myself to overcome my acrophobia and climbed the tower to check out the view.

The pier

View of the St. Lawrence from the observation tower

View of the St. Laurent from the observation tower

View of the bridge that takes you home if you are driving instead of cycling

The pier came equipped with a number of parking stations for the bikes and also a mechanic station with hand tools and a tire pump available.  Di discovered the hard way that the pump is actually a negative tire pump, because instead of putting air in her tire, it actually just deflated her tire.  She was forced to use our small hand pump to re-inflate her tire.  She was not pleased.

Di at the tire deflation station

We were offered directions by a number of fellow bicyclists who had seen us staring at Google maps with perplexed expressions.  We were happy for the directions because it was a little tricky getting to Rt. 138, the road that we will stay on until Montreal, and we didn't want to get lost too many more times.  It was fortunate we had that help, because it reduced the number of times were got lost on the way to Rt. 138 to no more than half a dozen times.  My favorite was the one where we stopped to check Google maps to make sure we were going the right way, then changed our route to the superior route offered by Google, only to end up on a dead end street.  Ha-ha, that Google!

Trying to find Rt. 138 - bike paths are everywhere

Shortly before we found Rt. 138, we received a text from Sandra.  She asked if that was us they had seen at the observation tower a short while ago.  It seems they were crossing that bridge over the St. Lawrence and saw two bicyclists that looked like us with bikes that looked like ours. Yes, it was us!  Di and I laughed at this - perhaps they saw us just as we were taking the picture of that bridge!

We encountered some steep hills on our way to Rt. 138.  We knew one climb in particular was coming because it was presaged by a remarkably tall railroad trestle.  The hill was so steep the rail track had to be built to create a gradual ascent for the trains.  Its an impressive structure, in a mad erector set kind of way.

I think my brother Frank had an erector set that looked like this

Sunlight reflecting off the river

Close to the end of the day and Di looks like she could easily ride another 40 miles

Di took this shot right outside of Portneuf

We arrived at our hotel at 5:45.  I forgot to take lunch and dinner pictures, as you can see (or not see).  Only three days off from riding and I've forgotten everything!  Well, you aren't missing much: lunch was a greek salad wrap from Tim Hortons and dinner was chicken for Di and lasagna for me.

Tomorrow we think we are riding to Trois Riviere.  Its about 48 miles away, so if we find a nice spot (by that I mean hotel) a little before Trois Riviere we may stop to have an easier day.  We have less than 140 miles to Montreal where we will meet up with Brian and Michelle, and because we have four days to get there we don't really have to push.  So why should we?

I leave Quebec with one great regret - I never found that cannon ball lodged in a tree.  Is this just an urban myth?