A Tale of Two Provinces
/Voyageur Provincial Park
10-13 September
We chose Voyageur Provincial Park as one of our fall trips for two reasons - it’s a park that we’d never been to and it’s halfway between our house and Montreal, a few kilometres from the Quebec border, which meant meant we could drive into Montreal in half the time and have a short visit with Jillian! We moved her to her University residence just a week earlier, but there were a few extra things that she wanted us to bring to her. Luckily, Montreal is pretty easy for us to get to!
Chris needed to work a full day, so we left around 5 pm for an easy drive in beautiful, sunny weather. We arrived within an hour and checked in. It was a drive through! So quick and easy - just gave our name and site number, picked up a map and we were done. I love the new advanced check in that we can do at home.
We didn’t need water or to dump our tanks, so we went directly to our site. This is the first park we’ve ever been to where the site numbers aren’t on the posts! We had to do the loop twice to figure out which site was ours.
While I set up and started dinner, Chris took Daisy for a walk and then unhitched so we wouldn’t have to unhitch in the dark - the sun is pretty much done by 7:30 pm at this time of year.
We had BBQ hamburgers - it was so pleasant that we ate outside but went inside to watch Manifest and have some dessert.
While we were watching our show, Daisy started to scratch on the mat. She kept scratching and then jumped up on the bed and continued. We couldn’t figure out what she was doing! It turned out that she needed to go to the bathroom (which was surprising since she and Chris went for a walk right before dinner) and was trying to warn us by scratching at the door first, then the carpet and finally the bed. Unfortunately, she decided that the bed was the best place for her to go. Ack! We had and extra sheet, so we were able to change it and the mattress protector did its job protecting the mattress, but our duvet took the brunt of it. We had an electrical site and were plugged in (or so we thought!), but the hairdryer wouldn’t turn on and we discovered that our power plug in wasn’t working! It was a bit too late to do anything about the power, so we slept with our duvet sideways and the wet spot at the bottom of the bed with a towel around it.
The low for the night was 8 degrees, so we opened the window but didn’t turn on the fan. It was a bit warm in the night, but not bad. We didn’t want to turn the fan on because we weren’t really all that prepared to camp without electricity and didn’t know if we’d be able to get power at the site. We were also under trees and were pretty sure our solar would be a bit useless. So, we wanted to conserve power, just in case.
We woke up around 8:30 am and Chris took daisy out for a walk while I made coffee and did a little bit of work I needed to finish up.
Coffee. Yum.
Chris headed out for a long run (22km!) and I made breakfast. After eating, Daisy and I went for a long walk around the campground - it’s a really large campground with a few different camping areas. I thought we might walk to the beach, but it was pretty far. It was getting hot out and Daisy was getting tired so we headed back to Holly to meet up with Chris.
One of the reasons we chose Voyageur PP on this particular weekend, was so that we could pop into Montreal to visit our youngest, who had just moved there to start her second year of University. We had a few things that she asked us to bring and we decided to make a long weekend and combine a visit to Montreal and camping. Win, win.
We had a late lunch and headed off to the big city. We met up with Jillian right downtown, where she lived and took a walk along Sainte-Catherine Street, popping into a few shops here and there, stopping to listen to some music and watching some buskers. It was so nice to see her even though it had only been two weeks since moving her!
It was dark when we got back to our campsite so we just cozied up to watch a show. Chris was pretty tired from his long run, so we turned out the lights pretty early.
This season, we’ve been experimenting with 3 night booking - so extending our stay into Monday (or sometimes leaving on a Thursday). We’re really enjoying having an extra full day to explore the campground and surrounding area, without having to spend any time packing up. So, we booked our site at Voyageur until Monday!
We got up in the morning and had a leisurely breakfast with our coffee. I read for quite some time while watching all of the other sites pack up. When we arrived, the site across from us was already set up in a pretty private manner. It wasn’t until they left that we found we had a water view! Another camper came into the site later in the day, but her equipment was just a van and she very generously parked off to the side, so as not to obstruct our view (or maybe it was the best spot for her view?). In either event, it was great for us!
We took a very long walk around the campground (which reinforced that we chose well for us!). The other camping areas had larger and more private sites, but they were more open with lots of sun. We love a water view and big tall trees or open vistas. While we definitely don’t want to be on top of our neighbours, we don’t really care if our sites are private enough that we can’t see anyone.
On our walk, we stumbled across the place where trailers go to die, maybe?? It was pretty odd - a bunch of seemingly old trailers in a very unkept area. Maybe it’s storage spaces? We couldn’t quite figure it out, but it looked like some of the trailers were in disrepair and had been abandoned. It was a first for us!
Part way through our walk, Daisy decided she needed a break and lay down on the gravel, not even wanting her water. It had been a busy two days until then, so she was pretty tired!
We relaxed at our site for a bit and then decided to take a drive to nearby Hawksbury, where Chris had run. It’s right on the border of Quebec and, like Ottawa where we live, you just cross the bridge and you’re in Quebec. It was a beautiful day, so we walked around by the water and then found a patio on by the marina for supper.
We returned to the campground and took a drive to see the beach. What a beautiful scene and a great place to see the sunset, which we just caught the end of.
In the morning, we hitched up and headed out before 10 am, saving our dumping responsibilities to be done at our next outing. It was a fun long weekend, with great weather!
Ottawa - Voyageur PP - Montreal - Voyageur PP - Ottawa (with stops in Hawksbury)
Towing: 232 km
Driving: 200 km
Black Tank: 63% full
Fresh water: 40% remaining
Batteries: Once we realized that the breaker needed to be switched on, we plugged in.
