New Brunswick Trip - Day 17, Fromagerie, monsoon and pictures of the house.

 We awoke to grey again and "V"s of Snow Geese buzzing the hotel. Everything was good about this hotel except the coffee so first stop was a Tim Hortons. The next thing I was looking for was a "Fromagerie" as Quebec cheese has quite the reputation. Luckily they are signposted, as tourist attractions, off the highway. So we followed signs to

A lovely young lady, behind the counter, spoke English, and described their 5 most popular cheeses, all made on the farm with milk from their own animals, kept in the barn we passed as we drove in..

I bought a small amount of all five.

Their website

http://www.lemoutonblanc.ca/index.php

The weather held off until about 1pm, when Rick took over driving and "the heavens opened", just before we hit Montreal. It was a monsoon for about an hour but luckily it broke so that we could find our way on to the Montreal bypass. We commented that we are not used to driving with this many cars on the road, New Brunswick roads have been almost empty. Because I have no other pictures for this post, the following are some of Rob and Jen's house.

We basically lived on the second floor, that consisted of the kitchen/dining room/

living room. We had a fire in here one night, with the chairs swiveled around to face it, but mostly the weather was too warm to feel like a fire.

Morning coffee and afternoon wine/beer was spent here. It divides the 2 other spaces and there is a deck outside those huge doors with a view of Minister's Island.

The master bedroom is also on this floor

with an ensuite bathroom. The jacuzzi tub was heaven, the shower could hold a family of 6 (though there were only 4 shower heads) and we never used the sauna.

That floor also had a two piece bathroom with washer and dryer.

The groundfloor had the entrance foyer, a huge garage, a 3 piece bathroom and a massive recreation room

outside those doors was a large covered deck with a couch, muskoka chairs and a hot tub.

The third floor had 3 more bedroom, 2 bathrooms and an office area.

The fourth floor was the "belvedere" but unfortunately the chairs were not high enough

to take advantage of that view or I think I would have spent some time up there.

A belvedere /ˈbɛlvɪdɪər/ or belvidere (from Italian for "fair view") is an architectural structure sited to take advantage of a fine or scenic view. from Wikipedia.

There was also a basement that was just for storage and furnaces etc. It was a gorgeous house and I count myself very lucky that Rob and Jen let us use it.

New Brunswick Trip - Day 16, St Andrews, NB, to Riviere du Loup, QC, via Briggs and Little

 Awoke to a grey day and finished up a few things (final clean of bathroom, frig, garbage etc) and then, sadly, drove away from Jen and Rob's lovely home. 

First stop Briggs and Little Yarn Shop

 

Briggs & Little Woolen Mills Ltd. is a manufacturer of wool knitting yarns in York Mills, near Harvey Station, New Brunswick, Canada. A woollen mill has existed on the site since 1857, operating under the current name since 1916.

As the company operating a mill which has been in existence since 1857, Briggs & Little styles itself "Canada's Oldest Woolen Mill".^[5]

The mill has been lost to fire and rebuilt four times: in 1908, 1944, 1956, and 1994. A fire on 1 November 1994 destroyed the mill building and equipment, but the separate office and inventory storage buildings were saved.^[3] It reopened over two years later in the same location.^[6] The rebuilt mill no longer uses water to power any of its machinery, although water from the Magaguadavic River is still used for washing wool.^{[4] from Wikipedia}

As their wool is my preference for whipping and punching rugs, this was a bit of a pilgrimage 

and Rick read patiently in the car, while looking at the view of the mill pond. But I didn't take long and came out with a selection that I may use to make a rug for River.

 

The rest of the drive was on the Trans Canada, not much opportunity for photo taking. We watched for moose (as the signs repeatedly asked us too) but saw none. We noticed that far more trees were totally without leaves, especially at the top of the hills. At Riviere du Loup we drove straight down to the St Lawrence.

We stretched our legs on a pier beside a marina

Fitting, as we were across the river from Tadoussac where we saw the Belugas.

The river estuary was full of Snow Geese

The sky was also full of them.

On their way from the Arctic

to the Carolinas.

We were able to check in to our hotel, early, we had crossed into another time zone, so we went looking for a place to walk.

Well Riviere du Loup has Parc des Chutes. We did the red route (3km)

We started at the hydro electric plant, built in 1928.

A photo showed what it looked like then.

Just a trickle coming over the falls today.

Inside looks updated and modern.

I hadn't stopped to change my shoes

so was glad we weren't walking any further

but it was a pretty walk

and we saw a Grouse, Fox and

Pileated Woodpecker

before strolling through downtown.

 

I just got a look at the pictures that Rick took today and decided to add a few of his to this blog post

Snow Geese getting cosy

and settling in for the night. We could hear them still arriving as we walked from our hotel to St Huberts for supper.

The Pileated Woodpecker was working away at a tree lying on the ground at first

and then flew up into a tree.

New Brunswick Trip - Day 15, Sam Orr Pond Trail, other wise known as Fungi Trail

 The morning was spent in laundry and cleaning. The house has also been infested with lady bugs so Rick spent a lot of time up on chairs vacuuming them off the ceiling. We decided we had time to try another hike from the book Jen left and set off after lunch.

We must have driven past this half a dozen times and never noticed it. We parked one side of the road and walked the section on the other side, around Sam Orr pond.

The pond is fed by a couple of streams and is tidal but a couple of rock sills that act as dams mean that it is less saline than other estuary's in the area and supports a different variety of marine life

We went through a section where the moss was growing in little mounds, like cushions.

In her note to us, Jen had recommended this trail but stated that it was "challenging". We agreed; rocks and roots hidden by fallen leaves

and logs over boggy patches meant that we were spending most of our time looking down,

watching our feet and commenting on

the huge variety

of fungi.

Some as large as my hand

others as small as my little finger nail.

We got to this point and understood where all those boulders littering the path had come from.

The constant climb upwards gave us a lookout.

I heard an unusual bird call and looking up, there was a bald eagle circling over head.

That one circled away and this one came into view. While Rick was getting his camera focused on this one, the other circled back directly overhead. (Photo by Rick). We sat for a while and watched them.

Then a large white, husky type, dog appeared, ran up to us, shook wet, seaweedy smelling water all over us and sat down between us to get stroked. He was followed by a young woman with a baby in a backpack carrier and a toddler. She told us they had disturbed the two eagles from their pine tree just down the trail. I couldn't believe they were going to traverse the "challenging" trail we had just come up.

This was in bedded into the rock at the lookout point. An internet search resulted in the info that he died in Texas from wounds received in a terrorist attack 2 weeks earlier in Saudi Arabia and was from Fredericton.

Down hill and we were to the pond again and could see one of the rock sills that dam the pond.

As the tide was out, water was flowing down in waterfalls and rapids, from the pond to the ocean.

Way down, where the stream met the ocean, we could see a fair sized ketch, at anchor.

There were clam shells in the shallows, sea snails on the rocks and

crabs had been stranded in the marsh grass.

I was OK with this passage across as my hiking boots are waterproof but Rick got a "soaker".

We kept hoping that the eagle pair would return for a picture taking opportunity but the only bird life was this cormorant, drying its wings.

This side of the pond was an easier walk

with occasional views.

I don't know how far we walked but it took us a little over 2 hours.

Got home and it rained for the first time since we drove into New Brunswick.

While I was scrolling through Ricks camera card, looking for the eagle picture, I pilfered a couple of his other photos:

A couple of cormorants preening.

Me doing what I do a lot of (today was a low photo day and I still had 50 to sort through to do this blog)