Day One - East of Montreal

Left home at 3:15 p.m. After a brief stop at Chantry, we picked up the 401 at Brockville and headed east.

The weather was good and it was a nice drive until we left highway 20 to try and bypass Montreal. It was slow and we lost our route twice. Better than the alternative but a good Montreal by-pass would be nice.

While in the car we heard on the radio that striking truckers had blockaded the highways into New Brunswick and were intending to keep them closed for 3 days to protest high gas prices. We called CAA and were patched into their NB office. They didn’t know anything about the blockade and had a `holy cr*p!’ moment when they checked the RCMP web site. They were no help but promised to have more information by tomorrow. Later we heard that the truckers were allowing cars to pass – not trucks. Unless we hear differently we are going to chance it tomorrow.

We stopped at the Alouette Camp site about 15 minutes east of Montreal about 8 pm. We couldn’t get the non-serviced site we had reserved and had to pay extra for a serviced site. It’s an odd place. There are a lot of high priced RVs parked here, apparently for the season. It’s very close to the highway and it’s appeal is lost on us.