The Scourge!!!

6 June '75

Cold today, quite cold due to the high wind which swept the plateau all day and funneled down narrow streets. Still, there were people sunbathing on the Plains of Abraham - I have noticed that Quebec's public places are mercifully free from the scourge of the portable radio. We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was small but quite nice - saw an exhibit of sculpture (Henry Moorish and geometric), paintings by [a] Qeubec artist; he didn't create his first work until age 50, thirty-some years ago. Encouraging to say the least.

7 June '75

Rode thru Parc des Laurentides today, a rather bleak former logging area of innumerable little dirt roads, strange blasted-looking aras, and little lakes. There are only two paved roads in an area over 50 miles square, which as far as I'm concerned in the proper way to run a park. Route 17 along the Saguenay is definitely the second best scenery to date - high, dark mountains, beautiful, dark-looking streams and lakes, very few houses, noble vistas thru gaps in the hills. Missed the thrice-daily ferry as St. Simeon, and so holed up at a small campground. The only other campers were a Quebec trio - Pitou, Bernard, and Claire. Drank beer and conversed in their broken English and our broken French.

8 June '75

It was worth missing the ferry to wake up beside the St. Lawrence. Spent most of a beautiful morning 8th in line (of an eventual 70) for the 10:30 ferry. Met Roy Trannante, a lab technician from Labrador City, NF, which sounds like the end of the world for snow and isolation. He is a native Newfoundlander and loves it. Very self-assured and into the hot car mystique. His idea of a vacation is to drive 800-1000 miles a day if possible, at 80-90 mph.
The scenery throughout New Brunswick was somewhat disappointing. If was not overly dramatic or beautiful, and the moment we crossed the Quebec border, it seemed to go downhill. The graphics were not as good, the countryside seemed more cluttered (also more American, and hence, less foreign - sigh). Ended up a long, dull day of driving at Lubec, ME, easternmost point in the U.S. We could find nowhere to camp, and as soon as we told a grocery-store keeper, Howard Jones, or our predicament, he offered us his land to stay on and shanghaied a friend in the store to lead us out there at night. We had not been parked on his land 1 1/2 minutes when two men drove up to find out what we were doing there. Solicitous (nosy?) neighbors, these downeasterners.