Gaspé

With the news warning people not to be outside exercising for extended periods of time we set out for the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

We drove a few hours to Quebec City and stopped there to check out sights.

From the lower portion of Old QC we walked the narrow streets looking at the historic buildings before we decided that we may as well go up above the cliffs to check out Le Chateau Frontenac.

Old QC was much bigger than we expected and much more impressive.

We entered La Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Quebec to the choir singing above us and the old arcitecture brought both of us back to Europe.

We walked around most of the night just checking out the cool old buil

dings watching street performers and enjoying the atmosphere.

Quebec City was great, wish we could have had more time there but we still needed to get outta the heat so back in the car and on towards GaspÉ.

Joanna slept most of the way, no suprise.

We almost ran out of gas around Rimouski even though we passed

about fifty gas stations that were unfortunately closed for the night.

Finally while running on fumes we found a 24h gas station.

An hour or two more of driving and I too was tired so pulled over and we both tried to sleep for a couple of hours. While only mildly successful it was enough to power us through the rest of the trip.

As we reached Gaspé we began to see wind towers all along the spine of the peninsula and

the terrain became increasingly hilly.

In fact we would go up a steep incline 12 or 13% for a half kilometer around a bit of a point then back down to a small bay with a small village then back up again.

I would have liked to have rode this section but was also happy to not be riding it at the same time.

Most of the time it was socked in and raining so that made it less appealing to be out riding.

We arrived in Gaspé around 12:30pm grabbed a quick campsite and looked to drop off the rental car ASAP since it was due back at 1pm.

Everything worked out great and by two o`clock i was ready for bed.

With little to no sleep the sore throat that had been plaguing me for a couple of d

ays had now taken over.

I was sick, quite sick.

We immediately took a couple of days off to rest, it worked out well as we were in a nice campground in a beautiful area.

After two and a half full days we decided to give riding a try and loaded up in

suspect weather and headed for Percé.

I felt a little weak and at one point after it started to rain and the tempeture dropped about 15 degrees over one small hill(literally instantly) I decided it was time for a break.

In a rest stop washroom I changed into dry warm clothes, rested a bit and even got a nice hot tea from a road side vendor.

We happened to be at a stop call the La tete du Indian, which after a 200m walk turned out to be quite cool.

As we left we asked a local how far it was into Percé to which he replied not far only 10 or 15km.

To be expected about 32km later we rolled into Percé but not before climbing and descending seven or eight large steep hills culminating with the one this sign so elequantly describes.