Headed out on a glorious sunny Monday morning with the plan of driving the 612km to Quebec.  Don’t think I’ve ever seen on a sat nav ‘turn left in 570km’ – arghhhhh.

We took Route 2 pretty much all the way out of New Brunswick and into our 4^th Province, Quebec. The road runs parallel with both the St Johns River and the border with the US – Maine on our left!  Beautiful.  I wonder how long it will take to tire of the scenery…

The road surfaces are pretty dire here – pot holes a plenty. So it’s not the quietest of drives and it is very bumpy.  John made a good point though… considering there are only 35 million people in Canada and roads that cover over 9,984,670 km² the government must have a tough time stretching the ‘few’ tax payers money over all these road repairs…  (Compare that with the UK where there are still plenty of shocking roads over our 243,610 km² and 63 million population!).

After our ‘sighting’ a few days ago we are now paranoid about possible moose collisions so we have our eyes peeled at all times. Signs everywhere warning about mooses (what’s the correct term for more than one… mooses? meese?) and in many stretches of the highway there are fences obviously trying to keep them off the roads.

All we saw was a little deer, happily grazing at the side of the road. Obviously they are significantly less reckless than their giant counterparts as he showed no signs of wanting to hurl himself into the path of any moving cars.

Hilariously there are variations on the WARNING MOOSE signs… in some they look very aggressive and huge, like they will leap on your car at any given chance…. others show them with one leg ‘cocked’ very casually as if they are ‘skipping’ across the road… Not sure we really want to encounter either the prancing nor the feisty moose!

Stopped in Hartland to see the worlds longest covered bridge, 1200’ long. There are 61 covered bridges in New Brunswick, built to extend the life expectancy of bridges from 10-15years to nearer 60 years. They look so lovely. Anyway, quick photo opportunity then back on the road.

We stopped for lunch in Great Falls – you guessed it they have some rather lovely waterfalls. William persuaded me that he and I should do the zip wire over the falls, much to Charlie’s horror. Luckily they turned out to be closed – shame! Not sure I’ll get away with that again…

(Great Falls were also preparing for their annual Potato Festival which we were sad to miss?!?!).

They like their ‘claims to fame’ here and we saw a sign for Nackawic – Home of the Worlds Largest Axe. Really?!?

Much hilarity at a town called Saint-Louis-Du-Ha!Ha!…

Hit the St Lawrence River and headed East ‘upstream’ to what we hoped would be a fun kid friendly campsite on the river from which we could spend a day or two kayaking / swimming / biking etc.

Sadly it is still very much ‘under construction’ and the walk to the ‘sandy beach’ involved crossing a builders yard. Not quite what we had in mind. So we have broken our faultless run so far on stunning campsites and feel suitably aggrieved!! We therefore didn’t bother  to unpack and headed out early the very next morning – back along the river towards Quebec City…