Into Quebec and Beyond

On Monday we left Kingston and started on our way to Quebec.
Not too long after we had started I noticed the sign for the Thousand Islands Parkway which I knew ran right along the St. Lawrence River so I decided to take that for a while to see the sights and then get back on the 401 later.

It turned out to be a very good detour.

There were a series of rest stops/lookouts along the way and we stopped at one a were greeted with just spectacular views. I have posted a bunch of pictures in my gallery so please be sure to check them out.
But the most amazing thing was just how clean the water was! Now anyone in Essex country where I'm from knows that the water is awful all around it. There is not one place where you can see much more than a few inches down. Here, which is supposed to be down stream from all of that mess, the water looks amazingly clean. Like water is supposed to look.

The other amazing thing was just how rocky it got here. It's really cool to see real terrain.
as we got back on the 401 and got closer to Quebec though the rocks petered out and it was back to the flat lands of Essex county all over again.

We headed for Montreal and got stuck in traffic for a while but eventually got through it and continued on to Quebec city.

Now I should note here that we are going to do more in Quebec when we come back on our way west.

Once we got deeper in the terrain returned and we got to see some cool low rolling mountains.
We got to Quebec city and set down for the night but not without a bit of work to figure out the streets here.

The next day we headed out over the bridge and to the east side of the St Lawrence and continued North to get to New Brunswick. The top end of the Appalachian mountain range grew closer and higher to our right and then we turned toward them towards the Provincial border.
The gentle peaks and valleys hid many rivers of all shapes and sizes and we were constantly being surprised by the sights around each twist and turn.
In many places they have cut though the hills to even out the grade and you can see a lot of interesting rock layers. There was an amazing amount of variation in the rocks that make up these mountains. It's like being back in Geology class.

We finally got to the New Brunswick border and loaded up with pamphlets at the information center.

And then we hit an RCMP road block.

They seemed to be looking in cars to make sure there was nobody hidden in them. They must have been after someone in particular as they only just peaked in mine and let me on through.

We followed the St John river route on down to Grand Falls where we were surprised to see that our road led us right to the visitor's center. These were nice and we took a lot of pictures and some video as well.
We had diner and looked for a hotel but did not see much, so we decided to continue on to Fredricton.

Little did we know of the adventure that would await us.

We got to Fredericton and right away got turned around on the streets. After a few laps we found out way to a road with a few hotels on it. It seems however that there was some sort of event and many were full. We wandered around for a bit and finally found a motel just before sunset. With great relief we went to bed. We would plan the next days route tomorrow.