Sonya's Blog - Day 56 - Driving to Montreal

Sonya’s Blog - Day 56 - August 17th - Driving to Montreal

We only had about a 21/2 hour drive to Montreal today, which was nice. Blake wanted to get on the road though because he was so excited about getting to Montreal. Packing up went well and we were on the road by 9:30ish. It took us quite awhile to get out of Gatineau though because they have bizarre roads and the road we were on did not exit onto the highway that heads to Montreal, it only exits onto the side that heads to Ottawa. Our GPS wanted to take us to Ottawa again, but we wanted nothing to do with that. We drove around and finally managed to find the road that would allow us to exit East and off we went. After that, there was not much to see until we got closer to Montreal. We really wanted to get on the 30 and circle around Montreal, but we must have missed our turn or something because we ended up on the 15 which pretty much goes right beside downtown Montreal before going across the massive bridge across the St. Lawrence. Luckily, there was an accident on the bridge so all the traffic was jammed up and it took us forever to cross.

Our campground is in Saint-Phillipe which is about 30 minutes from downtown Montreal. We found our campground with no problems and managed to get set up really quickly. However, it was smokin hot by this time, over 30 and so humid. We had some lunch and then Blake wanted to head into Montreal. We decided to head to Mount Royal Park in Montreal as there is a large park and we wanted to have a walk around. We went through some of the surrounding towns, like Candiac, Delson, Saint-Constant and Saint-Catherine and took a different bridge over to the park so that we could see what was around us. This was a more convoluted route to get to Mont-Royal and we ended up going right through downtown, but found the park in the end, well our GPS did. It is quite a large park that is part of the Mountain that lies in the midst of Montreal Island. From where we parked we could head downhill to Lac aux Castors (Beaver Lake) and the other way (uphill) took us to the Chalet du Mont-Royal. Natasha and I decided we wanted to head over to the Chalet and check that out, which ended up being a good decision as there is a huge look-out area and you can see all of downtown Montreal and the surrounding areas from there. Here are some pictures:

We headed back down the hill after exploring the Chalet and lookout and checked out Lac aux Castors. Both the Chalet and the lake were from work projects in the 30’s that were created to help workers left jobless by the Depression. The Chalet was built in 1932 and the lake in 1938. There are also lots of sculptures surrounding the hillside that leads down to the lake and they are from a major sculpture show that took place in 1964. We explored that hillside and headed down to the lake for a quick walk around as we were running out of time on our metered parking. We were entertained by a dog jumping into the lake after his stick while we walked around the lake. He had a very unique style of jumping into the lake, he would go up on his hind legs before he jumped and entered the water that way. He was pretty funny. The whole edge of the lake is a concrete wall and the dog could not get out on his own, so his owner had to help him out.

Our time was up for our parking and it was getting late so we headed back to the campsite. We took the more direct route this time and were back at camp in about a 1/2 hour. After a late supper, Blake and the kids watched an episode of Corner Gas and I finished my book, Brain on Fire. It was an interesting memoir about her illness. The illness itself lasted for about a month, from when she started to go crazy to diagnosis and effective treatment. However, she was off work for about 8 months as the recovery period was so long. It was an interesting read.

Tomorrow we are going to explore old Montreal.

Sonya