July 28, 2024 Rivière-du-Loup to Rivière-Ouelle

  We got a late start on a beautiful morning. We usually try to go to church but didn’t find an English service in the town, so we watched our own congregation’s online service from the previous week before leaving.
  We followed Route Verte 1 (designated bicycling route) along the St. Lawrence River. Here the river is many miles across, is salty and has tides. We were often very close to the water and had beautiful views of the islands and the shore, farm fields and barns. The houses are all different sizes and in various condition and include some that looked upscale, but didn’t see huge McMansion types.   
    In a small village, we entered a large Roman Catholic church building, and were awed at the beauty of the sanctuary and the worshipful atmosphere aided by soft music playing, and knelt and prayed for a few minutes.   
    In another village we spotted a poissonerie which specialized in smoked fish. We got a couple of poke bowls, one with smoked salmon and one with smoked sturgeon; both were very good.
   We had a strong head wind which grew stronger as the day went on, and it also got hotter, so that slowed us down quite a bit; we were only traveling between 6 to 9 mph except for steep downhills. Even stopping for ice cream didn’t seem to energize us much.
   We were amazed at all the people out bicycling and all the cars that passed with bicycles on the back, plus all the ones on RVs. Both a father-daughter duo and a husband-wife pair we met mentioned that the campground they stayed at the previous night was very nice and recommended it. So although we had originally planned to go a little farther, we followed their recommendations. It is a very nice park, had a pool to cool off in and we are right across from a rocky picturesque beach.
   A guy named Dan was in the campsite next to us. He has a large jeep with huge tires and a custom-made pop-up camper in the bed of the jeep. He and his two dogs drive all over North America making you-tube videos.
  People gathered at the beach across the road to watch the sunset. But we were able to enjoy it right from our campsite!


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