St. Anne des Monts to Notre Dame des Neiges and further!

Another nice day and we were able to get a pretty early start on our trip to Notre Dame des Neiges. At this point on

our journey we are beginning to feel that we are gearing up to get home. Twenty- one days, or whatever it is, has been great but both the driving and unloading and loading the car every night and morning is increasing wearisome. So, once again we have planned no particular places to stop on our way to the Motel Trois Pistoles. (Apparently I spelled this incorrectly in the previous blog.) While on the topic of this unusual name it’s interesting to note that the word pistoles, according to the Oxford Dictionary, refers to “any of various gold coins used in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries”. One source suggested that it referred to Spanish or Basque coins.

Snow covered mountains afar.

Lots of wind turbines.

Another also indicated that this area is one which was frequented by Basque whalers and fishermen in the same time period or even earlier. So, it appears that we are headed for an area with historical links to the Basques.

Now, for me the the number of photographs that I have made.is a measure of our feeling that this part of the trip is definitely homeward bound.  I think about 6 or 7 images! On earlier days I would likely make that many or more in one stop. And, from Motel Trois Pistoles to Drummondville, Québec, our next stop,  the number of photos was zero!.  As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I am not sure precisely where these photos were taken, with two exceptions. The photo above from Saint Flavie is interesting because someone has decided that it would be nice to have some sheep and a shepherd on the lawn by this building so, he/she created this "flock" of sheep, we think carved from wood, though we weren't able to get close enough to be certain.

On this part of the trip we noticed a couple of significant changes in the landscape. First, with the warmer and sunnier weather things are much greener in large part due to the deciduous trees having begun to sprout leaves. And the second change is in the topography. From St. Anne des Mont en route to Notre Dame des Neiges we are moving out of the mountainous region and, especially between Notre Dame des Neiges and Drummondville, flatter almost prairie like landscape. This is clearly farming territory.

In Notre Dame des Neiges we checked into a tiny motel, Motel Trois Pistoles, and a tiny room with a reasonably comfortable bed but no extras. We had booked this motel only a couple of days before and in some desperation as others we had tried who would take pets were full because of the beautiful long weekend. We were a bit surprised at a couple of things in this motel, most significantly the electrical arrangements.

There were very few outlets and the grounding piece on the air conditioner plug had been cut off to allow it to be plugged into an ungrounded extension cord! And the air conditioner itself had seen better days. We did not use it. The owners were very pleasant and friendly but the general state of repair suggested that they might be struggling to keep the motel in operation. Like a couple of other places we experienced, because  the owners lived on site they were able to keep a small business alive under difficult circumstances. But, it worked fine for us for one night then we were on our way to Drummondville and a few more comforts in a Comfort Inn. In walking the dog Ruth had discovered quite a lovely view of the valley south of the motel - see the photo above.
The drive to Drummondville was just that, a drive. We were now in high gear to get closer to home and we stopped once, maybe twice, during the approximately 370 Km drive. 

I have talked about going home but, in fact we were actually heading for our cabin at Crow Lake to meet Michael who will be there for the US Memorial Day weekend and the timing was working out perfectly as we had one day more than we needed in order to be there before Michael.  So, we decided to take another break and stay in Drummondville for 2 nights in ordered to rest and prepare for the nearly 400 Km drive to Crow Lake with a stop in Perth to pick up some groceries. And we are at Crow Lake as I write this and the photo left was made on our first morning walk.

It’s been a terrific trip and we are extremely happy we had the experience and we are equally happy to be here at our second home at Crow Lake!  We are now looking forward to a relaxing 4 day weekend with Michael before we do go home to Dundas.