It was a perfect morning for a bike ride. Good temperature, blue skies and a tailwind. Elaine and I were on the road at 7:00. Within a short time of our departure we were riding alongside the Richelieu River. It was a beautiful morning of riding past farms and lovely little towns.

By the time we got to Tracy we were looking for a spot to stop for coffee but everything seemed to be closed. Finally I spied a Shell Station with a convenience store. As I wheeled in Elaine exclaimed “Don’t tell me we have to settle for a Shell Station”. It caught me kind of funny as a couple of weeks ago in Northern Ontario we would have been happy to see any kind of store. But I had to agree with her that we should be able to do better so we crossed the bridge over the Richelieu River to Sorel. Just as we got off the bridge we stopped at a restaurant for coffee. I wasn’t going to have anything to eat until we saw French Crepes with fresh strawberries on the menu. We both ended up ordering that. It was I credible! The strawberries were so fresh!

Waiting for the ferry

Jacques and his sister

A few blocks from the restaurant was the ferry to St. Ignace. We bought our tickets and went to the head of the line to wait for the next sailing. A few minutes later a large group of our riders arrived. Just after we boarded Jacques got a big surprise when his sister and nephew got out of a car. I’m not sure exactly how she managed to catch the same ferry as Jacques. She had seen Adam apparently at the camp and got our route from him but the ferries run every half hour and he could have been on any one of them. Anyway he was pretty surprised.

Larry, Louise

Gee and Larry

The ferry ride took about 30 minutes and soon we were back on the road. Tree lined roads opened onto farms with big beautiful homes.

The General Store

Around 90 km into our ride we came upon a museum/General Store. It was a bit quirky and a whole lot interesting. We bought fresh squeezed lemonade to go with our PBJ sandwiches (my first PBJ since our ride into Ottawa). As we sat in the porch enjoying our lunch a pack of our riders caught up to us. Soon they too were drinking the lemonade.

Elaine with lemonade

As we left we could see a big black cloud heading our way. We had already ridden through a very brief shower and were hopeful that we might not get hit again. Luck was not on our side and we ended up caught in the rain for about 45 minutes.

On the edge of the storm

Cook shelter

We wanted to get to camp early as we were on cook duty tonight. Beef Bougonione was on the menu and we knew it would take several hours to cook. We arrived in camp near Trois-Rivieres after a 137 km ride and got out tents up before we got hit with a downpour that passed quickly.
Dinner was ready just after 7 pm and seemed to go over well.

Oh yes, the “Three Rivers” are the St-Maurice, the St-Maurice, and the St-Maurice … three branches of the same river!