Leg 4 - Bathurst, New Brunswick to Quebec City, Quebec
Approx 420 miles (the long way around, of course)


Head out of Bathurst going North on Highway 11, a modern divided 4-laner.  Some idiot in an SUV rides right on my rear fender for 3 or 4 miles before taking an offramp.  Curiously, he smiles and waves at me as he pulls off.  I want to give him the finger, I'm so pissed off at his tailgating, but I realize he just doesn't get it.  He thinks he was being my buddy by riding close up.

Give motorcycle some room you idiot!  And that goes for the rest of you too!  We 're like raging menopausal women - things just work out better if you give us lots of space. 

Pull of the exit to Nash Creek and ride North a few miles to my favorite local swimming hole - at the Benjamin River.  This is a picture perfect little place, with clear deep pool in the woods, and a cliff face to cannonball from.  However, it's early in the season, and the water level is a couple of feet higher than I'm used to and really, really cold!  But hey, I'm not going to waste this visit, so I splash around with my cousin Bev and here daughters Jenna and Kayla.  Kayla could spend all day here, floating down the rapids into the pool.




But... time to hit the road and ride. 

Continue along the picturesque 134, with Heron Island off my right shoulder, and the mountains of Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula looming a few miles across the bay.  Ah, life is good! 


Except for those nasty looking storm clouds coming at me - again!    Get sprinkled near Campbellton, and wait it out at a coffee shop.   A soon as the rain stops, I point west on Route 17, cruising through beautiful wooded countryside, with ominous warning signs of imminent moose attacks every few miles.  I get through unscathed.  Talk to a couple of guys from Vermont on their Ducatis in Saint Quentin - they're headed for the Gaspe.  They tell me a story about getting a ticket  in Maine after being clocked at 105 mph the day before.  What do you expect on a road trip on a Ducati? 

Cross into the US from Saint Leonard, NB, into Van Buren, Maine.  Have never done this route before, and want to explore the Saint John River valley from the US side of the border. I'm rewarded tith great scenery all the way u the valley, until I cross back into Canada at Fort Kent, Maine.

 

Head North (more or less) on the 120 then the 289 in Quebec.  Plenty of trees, plenty of lakes, and although the sighs say there are plenty of moose, I still don't see any.  Great cruising roads, especially now that the sun has come out and the only clouds in the sky are tiny, white, puffy, and far away.




Join the TransCanada Highway (Highway 20) and cruise west along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence, which is several miles wide at this point.  Great scenary, great road, and the traffic is relatively light. 

Roll into to Quebec City and am treated to some of the festivities of the city's big year-long splash, celebrating 400 years since it's founding (yes, it is one of the oldest cities in North or South America - and has the architecture and ambience to prove it).   If you haven't been here - put it on the list. 

I watch an amazing audio/video display - outdoors, projected on the sides of old grain elevators, with thousands of speakers, and a video screen that must be a quarter mile wide - awesome stuff!!!    Wish I had more time to see the other amazing things going on, but ....... the road beckons.

Got a 500+ mile day tomorrow, from Quebec City to Toronto, with a stopover at my former office in Montreal to say hello.