A Movable Earthquake

St. Maxime-du-Mon, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec

We’re parked right on the St. Lawrence Bay, next to a strange statue. The statue is right outside the RV. It gave us a freaky feeling. We kept being surprised by the sense that someone was right outside the door. He isn't doing what you're thinking. He's just assuming a Zen posture which looks like something else from the rear.


It’s about 180 kilometers east to Gaspe on the tip of the peninsula.

The road has been intermittently bad with those cracks in the pavement that go make the RV go Boom! Boom! Boom! Some of the downgrades have been as much a kilometer at 18 degrees which is more than engine braking can handle even in low gear.

The tailpipe fell off the muffler so I got out the big hammer and an assortment of wrenches and whanged it back into place. Fortunately we’re parked on grass rather than gravel, so it was a comfortable work environment. One of the U-bolts had a lot of rust and corrosion from the heat so the nuts were hard to loosen. If it happens again I'll get a new U-bolt or buy some solvent to loosen things up.


Some pots fell out and some of the decorative interior wood trim fell off so I have clamped it all back together with Elmer’s Wood Glue and C-Clamps. My wood shop teacher swore by the stuff. It's never let me down.

There’s a hotspot nearby. I will buy a little time and post something. The sub above is an Oberon class conventional (non-nuclear) submarine parked in Rimouski. This class of submarine was used by both Canada and Australia.

Goodbye, Darkness

Parc National du Bic, Quebec

We’ve made our way past overnight camp stops in Grand Falls, New Brunswick and a small village called St. Georges de Caucuna. This is our third day in the Parc.

We’re up on the Gaspe Peninsula on the south side of the Saint Lawrence bay. Yesterday I had a bad case of what Mrs. Phred daintily and euphemistically calls upset tummy.

I think it might have been the little restaurant we ate in two days ago and the raw lettuce and possible lack of sanitary precautions.

We made a four mile hike here in the Parc. The 12 foot tide is an interesting feature. We are so far North that twilight can be a lovely purple and violet at 3 AM

When I ate raw snake and eels in Okinawa it always took two or three days before my bowels exploded. I never made the connection until an old Major told me that this was a common result of the local raw cuisine.

I’ve been rereading “Goodbye, Darkness” by William Manchester. It’s been 42 years since my last flight into Vietnam. Manchester revisited the sites of a number of WWII Pacific island battles in 1978, 30 years after his experiences there as a Marine Sergeant. He was still a young man, by comparison.

We also drove to a place called Le Canyon des Portes de L’enfer and took a six mile hike. It was mostly up and downhill and I really can feel the unneeded extra forty pounds I’ve put on over the years. The young Lieutenant appears in my dreams and wonders aloud why I can no longer run a seven minute mile or do 50 push-ups...I tell him he was a screwup in his own way and own time.

We (Mrs. Phred and I, not the young Lieutenant) argue about whether chutes are waterfalls and sault means rapids, but we may have those two mixed up. However now that we have the internet we know that the word sault (sue) comes from an archaic spelling of saut (from sauter), which translates most accurately in this usage to the English word, cataract. This in turn derives from the French word for "leap" or "jump" (similar to somersault). Citations dating back to 1600 use the sault spelling to mean a cataract, waterfall or rapids. In modern French, however, the words chutes or rapides are more usual, and sault (sue) survives almost exclusively in geographic names dating from the 17th century.)...so much for Sault (Sue) St. Marie and its rapides.

No internet for four days. My keyboard is really acting up. Certai letters ol respod we I pod o te. It’s very frtatig at ties. …Aha! Somebody has been messing with the control panel keyboard settings….The perils of sharing a laptop. Certain letters were only responding when I pounded on them. It was very frustrating at times.

Today we will visit Rimouski, one of the larger settlements along the Northern coast of the Gaspe Peninsula. We need milk, eggs and more cash.