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.