100% chance of rain all day. Good day for a road trip. We picked a destination, a vineyard in Dunham and decided to take every back road we could to get there. Only thing is, we never got there.
I think that everyone who wants to live in Quebec is tested in three things:
speaking French
gardening
picking up litter
We've heard about the first item on the list, but the others may be unwritten rules. Everyone is a gardener and there is no litter to be found anywhere. Amazing.
We started the day off pretty well on track. Saint-Benoît-du-Lac abbey was right on the way to where we were headed. Some monk-made blue cheeses made their way into the cooler.
Very near the monastery is the sweetest little bakery in a tiny addition onto the baker's home. Les Herbes Hautes.
This is exactly the spot where our trip went off track. I paid $8.50 for a slice of pizza made with herbs and zucchini grown in their gardens and got far more value than I bargained for.
I got advice.
Where to go.
When the young man behind the counter heard that we liked looking at farms, he insisted that we should go to Mansonville and the Missisquoi Valley. He said that it was just like being in Vermont. There's the rest of what we got for the $8.50. Yum.
Your mouth is watering.
The Knowlton Landing Yacht Club just happens to be down a narrow road when you take the wrong turn on the way to Mansonville. I had to step outside the truck in the rain to take this picture. This was our view as we ate the above pizza.
No.... this was our view. I ate it in the truck.
Back on track again..... hay fields are very different from ones at home They only contain grass. No alfalfa, trefoil, etc. Just beautiful green grass. And, the world kind of comes to an end just above them.
We could see Vermont and its mountains from the Missisquoi Valley road.
Farms were not as productive as we expected, but made up for that in beauty.
We were already far off track from where we had planned to go, so why not pay attention to a sign that says, "Incomparable Potton ➡️"? Potton is a township, one of the Eastern Townships. We turned north and ....... this is what following a random sign gets you.
And this.
And, the cutest gnome house you could ever imagine.
The Incomparable Potton side trip was somewhere around 10 - 15 km of the most charming, hilly, winding countryside we'd ever seen. Some folks grew Christmas trees there. I love that their shape is slightly more curved than ones at home. It's like you could see a random tree in NYC and say, "Oh, that's a Jacques Hebert."
Other folks called themselves farmers by raising a few sheep.
By the time we got near Sutton - no where near Dunham where we'd started out heading for - taking the quick way home seemed in order. The world was still ending on the horizon.
And, it was still raining.
A good day.
Robert Frost lived a few hundred miles south of where we were today. My favourite Robert Frost quote goes like this:
Two roads diverged in wood,
and I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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