There are a few things peculiar to Quebec in summer. First of all there are roadworks everywhere! It’s like Quebec’s version of the old adage: “Fix roads while the sun shines”. Another thing is their obsession with rocking chairs, the outdoor type even more popular than the indoor; and if you’re talking to more than one person and if their chairs aren’t in unison and if you’re having a beer, gosh, you get dizzy! Another oddity is that every second house has a swimming pool (not heated). Finally, there are heaps of festivals and celebrations and tomorrow is Canada Day!
We stayed the night at Forestville, a small town in the Côte-Nord region along Route 138 (Route des Baleines), a road that hugs the north side of the St Lawrence River. But our hearts dropped when we pulled-up at our motel and saw three dead black bears on the tray of a ute. The bears ears were tagged so the killers must have had permits but it was nonetheless sobering and saddening for us to see them reduced to this lifeless state. There was a party across the road from our motel that rocked all night.
Next day we continued along Route 138 then turned left at Baie-Comeau to take Route 389. I was excited because it’s the road that leads to Labrador and Newfoundland; Andrew was excited because it’s the road that leads to the Daniel-Johnson Dam and Manic-5 Generating Station; and the kids were really great because they were completely disinterested in the direction we were heading.
Daniel-Johnson Dam is the highest multiple-arch-and-buttress dam in the world, bridging the Manicouagan Valley. If you took all the concrete used to build Daniel-Johnson Dam, you could make a sidewalk from the North Pole to the South. Directly north of the Daniel-Johnson Dam is the Manicouagan Reservoir, a curious, huge, circular lake where, 214 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth. Manicouagan Reservoir holds 140 billion m3 of water, making it one of the biggest freshwater reservoirs in the world.
It was really hot and the black flies were in abundance. I’d been bitten by them at Tadoussac and was going crazy scratching myself; they must have toxin in their saliva because the bites were swollen and hard like a broad bean under my skin, they were itchy and ached. On the way to/back from Manic-5 we stopped multiple times for roadworks and the black flies would swarm around the car like a horror movie. When we stopped for lunch we ran from the car to the cafe.
We returned to Baie-Comeau along the 389 and got back on the 138 towards Sept-Îles. It was a long day of driving, poor kids, possibly the most boring day of our holiday, although Andrew and I had nice views along the St Lawrence. Heidi refuses to accept the St Lawrence is a river and Andrew supports her, arguing that if you can’t see the other side it’s not a river; maybe technically it’s the estuary. We arrived at Sept-Îles quite late, bought the weirdest, worst, most expensive, pizzas ever, and went to bed.
Five for the Road 