Day Four - Ashland, Maine to Perce, Quebec (349 miles)
After a cold night of sleep, and no shower we headed east on St.Rt. 163 to Presque Isle, then north on U.S.1 toward Van Buren,ME and the Canadian border. None of the roads in northern Maine were well maintained. The scenery was great, but you had to keep an extra cautious eye on the roads. After changing money at a U.S. bank we went over to New Brunswick. The road in Canada was route 17. It started in bad condition, and we ran into several big logging trucks. But once we past St. Quentin we got into rolling hills, better roads, and fewer trucks. On this road, I was leading, and pushing about 80 mph, when I saw a black bear head into the road. While the Venture is not known for its braking, mine did just fine. We got into some major construction outside of Campellton before we crossed the bridge over into Quebec. Finally; we were on Gaspé peninsula. As we traveled the peninsula in a counter clockwise manner we stopped for lunch at Carleton. This lunch proved very educational, we quickly learned the majority of the natives not only spoke French, but only French. Ordering lunch was a task. We got it to go, and sat on Chaleur Bay to eat it. We continued Rt. 132 toward our final stop at Perce. Rt. 132 is a nice road, sweeping curves dominate sprinkled with an occasional set of twisties. As you approach Perce, you first spot the Ile de Bonaventure. This island is a summer home to a colony of 50,000 gannets, the largest sanctuary of the large white sea birds in North America. The town of Perce is dominated by a 300 foot high monolith of rock that is 1,420 feet long, and estimated to weigh 500 million tons. It sits just offshore of town, and you can walk to it at low tide. The rock was in view on the front porch of our hotel. Low tide was 8:00 that evening, and we walked out to it. Standing out by the rock we wondered why we traveled 2000 miles to see this rock. Of course the pleasure comes in getting there, but we knew we were at the half way point. From here on, we were traveling towards home.
