On the Banks of the Saguenay River OR "We aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto"

We left Lapeer, Michigan last Sunday morning at about 8:30 AM and crossed into Canada at the Port Huron (US)/Sarnia (Canada) border crossing.  For the first time ever the border guard came inside our RV.  He wanted to know if we had any guns.  We assured him we didn't but he wanted to look around anyway.  We got into Brampton, Ontario (ON) at about 2:30 in the afternoon.  Irene and I had church service in our RV.  We sang about 5 songs, had a couple of prayers, read John 19 and 20 and then had the Lord's Supper (communion) together.

After we were done with out assembly we called our daughter Mary and got together with her and her husband Brad and Amélie and went to the park.  Amélie is quite the wader.  She reminded me of a crane.  Here are a couple of videos showing her in the wading pool at Stanley Park behind their home:

She's also quite the hoofer.  Watch her "cut the rug in the two videos below:

After going to dinner we took it back to the Trekker for the evening.  Monday we played some Scrabble.  Irene won 2 out of 3 games.  DRAT!  Then we watched TV that had recorded from the previous week when we were in Mission with Brenda and Phoebe.  Thank the Lord for DVRs!  Then that afternoon it was back to the kids house to meet with Brad and Amélie for the evening (Mary had a prior commitment that she couldn't get out of).  For dinner Irene and I had the BEST fish and chips. Well, the best fish anyway.  It was a firm, dense Haddock filet.

We left Tuesday morning for our trek to Saguenay.  We decided to hold driving to about 4-5 hours per day, so we left at 10 and got to our next RV camp about 3 PM.  It was the West Montreal KOA.  It was a really nice park.  It has a great play area for kids.

Wednesday we got out about 10 AM again and and got to our RV Park about about 2.  It was about 10 minutes from downtown Quebec City.  It is called "Camping Transit." Now THERE'S a "catchy title" for you!  This one was a let down.  The spot was great but when I called to ask for the WiFi password the guy told me.  "I will bring it to your rig in just a few minutes" but then the NEVER showed up.  That kinda yanked my chain.

RANT ALERT! RANT ALERT!

One of the biggest problems with being in Canada is the fact that they charge INTERNATIONAL ROAMING rates.  How can this be?  I mean I KNOW its another country but we have the same phone system!  You don't have to dial 011 to place a call to Canada.  They use 1-AREA CODE-NUMBER just like we do in the US.  800/888/877/866/855 calls to/from Canada are all still TOLL-FREE.  Why is it that they have to charge international roaming rates for cell phone use?  Since that's the case AND since so often RV park WiFi systems are pretty shoddy (even in the USA) I couldn't do any blog posting the last 4 nights.  Even now my cell phone is sitting here with Cellular Data turned OFF.  Canada mooches off of the US for national defense, why can't they let us mooch off of them for WiFi.  (FYI: Do you know that 90% of Canadian citizens live within 100 mile of the US border?)

Back to our day in Quebec City.  I decided to drive through the city to check out our route to Saguenay.  It proved to be VERY easy.  It was all on "Interprovince(?)" roads.  Then I took Irene to dinner at a sidewalk cafe/restaurant in the downtown area: "Versa" was its name.  It was VERY GOOD. Pure, dumb luck I guess.  We had no ideas about where to go.  We just found a parking spot downtown and walked to something close.  When we got there it was 4 PM and NO ONE else was there.  But we sat down and gave it a shot anyway.  It was NOT a mistake.  Here's a pic of the love-birds at "Versa":

That is Irene with her French Onion soup (the best she has EVER had she said) and me with some "Seafood Chowder."  It, too, was very flavorful.

After beating her 2 out of 3 in Scrabble and watching "Brooklyn Taxi" last night we retired for the evening to get on the road at 10 AM this morning to drive up to Saguenay Sainte Ambroise.  We were here by 2:30 PM after a very lovely and pleasant drive through the Canadian Laurentides (The extension of the Appalachian Mountains into Canada).

The first thing we did was "pop the top" on the Trekker (get the electric, water and sewer hooked up and open up the slides).  The we drove to Alma (about 16 miles away) to get our car washed and find the closest Walmart.  After that we invited the Greniers (Jean and Ana) to dinner with us.  Having gotten back I'm just finishing putting the blog posting to bed at 11 PM.