We left the Quebec City area this morning, heading east. Dave and Mazie left us before 8:00 a.m., to head to Maine but the rest of us got on the road about 9:00. It was misty and sprinkled just a little, and was pretty hazy all day. We worked our way back to the 132, which follows the coast of the St. Lawrence River. However, this highway is very rough in lots of spots, so it's hard riding/driving. We made two stops in one little artsy town, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, first at an antique store where the owner did iron sculpture and reconditioned the antiques that came in rusty, etc. Then we stopped at a sculpture museum where a craftsman was there working today. This town had a brochure like the island we visited yesterday, with spots marked to identify the different shops. They had some sculptures outside, but there were many more inside.
The first stop was of more interest to the guys, but this sculpture museum was really interesting. We first watched a video of a craftsman actually working on a piece of sculpture that was hung right beside the video screen, so we could see the finished product as we watched him make it.
Here was another nice sculpture.
There was also a reproduction of a Norman Rockwell painting, and another one of a famous Saturday Evening Post photo. All of the work was amazing.
We took several pictures of the artwork, which is called low relief or bas relief. It was totally different than the wood sculptures we save 5 years ago in Chetwynd, British Columbia, which is considered by some as the chainsaw wood carving capital of Canada. Here they use wood chisels, in Chetwynd, they went after the logs with chainsaws.
And of course there was a gift shop. And of course it had lots of really neat things. I found a couple of nativity scenes that I would have bought for Brenda had I won the lottery. But since I didn't, she will just have to look at the pictures.
As we walked back to our vehicles, we passed this big old totem-pole log that looked like it hadn't been worked on in the last 20 years. Too bad Mazie wasn't still with us, she could have taken on that project.
We drove on, back on our bumpy road. We ended the day on the edge of Trois-Pistoles, in a very nice, grassy campground. We drove 165 hard miles today, and got off the road just before 4:00 p.m, all of us really ready to get out of our seats.
On our bumpy road today, a rock hit the windshield, which sounded like a gunshot. We thought maybe it hit the fiberglass on the roof, but we found the spot the next morning. It had "starred" a spot, but as we drove on Monday, it started spreading.
This is our last night in French-speaking Quebec. I'll have to say that I will be glad to get into New Brunswick, which is bilingual. Until this trip, I never even knew where New Brunswick was, and tomorrow we will be there! Amazing.
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