Travels in Quebec, 2023 Edition

I spent just under four weeks in Canada this round, most of it in Quebec. Here’s a wrap-up, mostly focusing on the campsites, for reasons that will become clear…

After a few nights at Charlottenburgh campground, in Ontario, I moved into the heart of Quebec, just above Trois-Rivieres. I basically picked Camping Paradiso at random, because it was halfway between the Ontario spot and the Quebec City area I was aiming for. And I needed a place to hunker down for Canada Day (July 1), figuring (rightly, as it turns out) that it was a pretty big camping weekend for most people. When I got there a few days before Canada Day, it was me and a big rig, but the park quickly filled up over the next few days with campers ready to celebrate. Oddly enough, no fireworks 🙁 But given the fires raging in Quebec, completely understandable.

I did have the awning up for a while, but I was rarely outside because the air quality was so bad. A few hours outside and my throat would be sore the next day, so I mostly huddled inside with my A/C or did some touristing from my pickup, also with A/C running. I headed out one day to see some of Mauricio National Park, but by the time I got almost there, I realized that any photos I took would just be yellow haze so I turned around and went home, disappointed.

By July 3, this was my view of the campground. It’s still amazing to me how empty campgrounds can be on a Tuesday or Wednesday most weeks, even in the heart of summer.

Next stop: Levís, just south of Quebec City, and about 20 minutes from the Safari Condo showroom. Yes, as in “picking up my screen/shade order” Safari Condo. The only wrinkle was that the spot I was supposed to be in didn’t have enough power to run my A/C. I have an onboard surge protector and it determined that 108 volts wasn’t enough, so every time the A/C compressor cycled on, the surge protector shut it down. After 45 minutes of negotiating in the 90F heat and humidity with the park manager, he finally agreed to move me to a new spot, one where my surge protector and A/C were happy. And then, after I cooled down, so was I.

This was another hot, humid stay, with variable air quality, so instead of going into Quebec City, I took a drive through the countryside. Beautiful rolling hills of green, dotted with family farms and lots of cows. I was driving though, so no photos of that, because there was also nowhere to pull over and frame a shot. So just imagine lovely rolling hills of green, dotted with grain silos and old farmhouses.

After four nights of sweltering heat and, yes, some really bad air quality days, it was time to try my luck a little farther east, at the riverside campground paradise known as Camping La Jolie Rochelle. This was my view when I pulled in on Sunday. (OK, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t do any pulling in or backing in. I let the owner back me down a narrow road past seven sites full of pickups and campers and vans because he and his wife, with walkie-talkies, had clearly done this a lot, and who am I to spoil their teamwork?!).

That was Sunday afternoon. By Sunday night, I had a shiny new weather warning, one I had not seen before. Let’s just say right here that when Quebec weather forecasters say there is going to be a lot of rainfall, they are NOT kidding around. By Monday noon, I couldn’t see any trace of that rock circle you see above. The river was seriously rising, and I was happy that we were at least 4-5 feet above it on a little strip of land. I wasn’t the only one there keeping an eye on how fast the river was rising.

The good thing was I was camping with a lot of other Altos, and their owners. We had all the riverside spots except one (and I’m sure those people felt they needed to buy an Alto before they return!) and it was so fun to see all the Altos lined up in a row. That’s mine on the far left, prior to all the screens and lights work detailed in previous posts.

After five damp nights at La Jolie Rochelle, the Altos packed up, hitched up, dumped tanks, and headed to the Grand Rassemblement in Sainte-Marie, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Safari Condo. Yes, pretty much any excuse for an Alto party will work.

We traversed the back roads, meeting up at a cul-de-sac so that all of us would arrive together at the huge parking lot that would be our campground for three nights. It’s not often I look in my side mirror and see this kind of view. The last time it happened? Five years ago, arriving at the 20th anniversary party!

And when I say parking lot, I seriously meant parking lot. I was camped next to my friends from California, Alissa and Richard, which made it easy to find my trailer in the sea of Altos, that California state flag was easy to spot. We did eventually jerry-rig an awning so that we had some small amount of shade to sit under, and it worked pretty well in the torrential downpour that showed up on the second night. Or was it the third night? Or both? Let’s just say it rained a lot in the night time, making me miss my air conditioner, because parking lot = no hookups.

Here’s a drone’s-eye view of most of the Altos. That Alto in the top left is Alissa and Richard, and mine is right next to it, with only a bit of the front showing.

All too soon, it was time to say goodbye to good friends as we all went our separate ways, some going to explore northern Quebec, some going south, like me, and some west, back to California. The whole parking lot vibe was actually way more fun than you might think – all kinds of camraderie and laughter for three days.

One of the special moments was when Alissa shared a moment with the founder of Safari Condo, Daniel Nadeau, showing him a book of her second Alto being built and its first year of travels. I watched Daniel page through the book, recognizing people in the factory as they built the Alto and then admiring the places that Alto had been. I asked him later how it felt to have started, as he put it, from “one broken down Westfalia” to a parking lot full of his designs made real. His response: Incroyable! I wholeheartedly agree. His genius and persistence opened a door for me to become a vagabond in a beautiful and sturdy little home on wheels.

When going from a parking lot to a campground, it’s great to have full hookups and that’s what I had lined up at Camping St. Joseph de Beauce, a lovely half-hour drive from Sainte-Marie. I’ve stayed here before, five years ago, when the river was a gentle thing you could wade in. Not this time! All that rain in Quebec had to go somewhere!

The Beauce area is lovely, full of farmland and old houses and narrow bridges. There are two near the campground, both requiring you to look ahead and wait if someone is already on the bridge because it’s only wide enough for one vehicle. The good thing is there isn’t much traffic so you don’t have to wait more than a few cars for your turn to cross.

I loved this view of St. Frederic, which was a the end of the one-lande bridge. So many small towns in Quebec feature a church with an elegant steeple like this one.

And I worked hard to get the right angle for this view, three stacks of grain elevators on a farm just north of St. Frederic.

The other reason to stay at Camping St. Joseph is because it’s just 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the Safari Condo service center. And, yes, I made two trips in two days. The first day I went to pick up a part for someone in Florida and get a few things and help a fellow Alto owner get some problems taken care of in their new Alto, but at the end of the day (literally), I realized I had not gotten the part, so I had to go back the next day, a bit embarrassed by my forgetfulness. Never mind, though, the service department person (thanks, Carollan) was kind and took care of it.

This last photo is a sign that just cracks me up – it’s definitely truth in advertising! I saw this at Safari Condo, but spotted a few variations on it at other places around town. It made me smile every time I saw it because it’s such an honest sign and it’s exactly how I feel when I am looking for a bathroom in a place where no one speaks much English and I speak little French. Thankfully, la toilette is pretty easy to remember!

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A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles.

Tim Cahill