Friday and we are up to get ready to leave on our trip – We
left after the second drop, shortly before 11 – the first part of the trip is
quite mountainous – through the Laurentian Mountains I think – if you look on a
map you will see that you can’t hardly get lost – there is only one road going
up north!! By the time we got to
La Tuque it was less hilly but we did have some 11% grades going down – that
“jake brake” has come in handy on numerous occasions. You know how when you are the passenger everything seems
scarier because you have no control over the driving ? – well I found a way to
have a bit of control………….the jake brake!! When I think we are going downhill too fast I put it on! It’s positioned on the dash almost in
front of me!
We made it up to Lac St. Jean and then headed northwest –
about that time I expected to start seeing signs that would tell us which of
the turn offs from the highway would take us to Saint Methode –(the gps would
only show me the St. Methode way down south and when I spelled it the way it
had it on the map it said “no results found” so the gps was no help at all)
because I wasn’t for sure which dot on the map was the dot that was Saint
Methode- you know how when there are lots of little towns together it’s
difficult to tell which dot is which town?! so I started questioning myself ,
and even more when we had to make a final choice at a Y in the road – I thought
it looked like it was off the Y to the right so we went that way – then no more
signs saying Saint Methode made me more nervous so I asked Randy to pull over
and look at the map to be sure which dot was correct – he looked at the map and
didn’t remember for sure which dot is was but thought we should have gone to
the left at the Y…………I say this calmly in writing it, but the conversation was
not very calm……….. So we turn the
rig around in this medium sized town and go back to the Y- then we see a dog
truck going the way we had just come from – now we are both not sure which way
to go – so we take the left Y and I suggest we stop and ask – so Randy pulls
off at some office and I go in and fortunately the man in there spoke quite
good English (usually it is show the person the map and say the place you want
to go and have them point to it…) and he even drew us a map of where to go – as
we are pulling out of the parking lot we see the Bellerives procession go by and
try to follow them but couldn’t keep up – we follow the guy’s map and it turns
out that both the left and the right legs of the Y make a triangle and so we
could have kept going the way we were on the right leg and ended up in the same
spot!!! We finally get to Saint
Methode and I see why I couldn’t get the gps to work – lots of towns in Quebec
have 2 names – one on the top of the sign and another in parentheses on the
bottom- the top name of Saint Methode is St. Felecien!!!! If I had put that in we wouldn’t have
had any trouble but who knew???!!
There were signs directing you to the dog race in the town
and we had also gotten directions from Claude – we followed the signs and
arrived in a big open field with a spot the size of a football field plowed out
and 2 trailers parked – we were the first ones there and there is nothing, I
mean nothing here. We parked where
the guy told us and settled in for the nite.
This morning Melanie went out 4th and had a good
run but said it was very fast and the last 2 miles of the track were ice where
the field had melted on the warm days and then frozen (oh yeah I forgot to tell
you, it was -32F last nite – the generator only ran out of gas once meaning
Randy had to get up and then worried about it the rest of the nite)
Randy is taking out only 10 dogs – it is a lucky coincidence
that the track is so icy and we only have 10 healthy, unhurt, motivated dogs on
the truck!! Depending on whether
Dee poops before he leaves (she likes to stop the whole team when she has to
poop in a race or training) he will have Sterling and Dee or Beika and Sterling
in lead.
Well I know you are dying to find out…………Dee did poop and
she did lead! Randy had a good
clean run and averaged 17.23mph to come in 17 out of 20! He is happy about how they all did –
some like T-Bone and Blanche that are older dogs can’t really go any faster
than that but the little girls that are 1, Caleb and Trix kept up easy!! And the powerhouse was the point dog
Viper – Randy said that he set the pace better than the leaders did! Claude is 3rd (6 seconds
separte the first 3 teams!) and Hermel had a tangle passing, couldn’t get his
hook out (I know how that feels – that’s why Randy is missing part of a finger
–he had to come and help me get my snow hook out and missed his chute time and
then went out to train on the trail alone and had the trouble) and is in 16th
– Melanie we think said she was in 27th because she held back on the
fast trail. So day one down and
one to go!!
Sunday = much warmer – went to a musher’s banquet in town-
neighbors in another trailer took us in after he offered us Jack Daniels and
gave us some syrup! We had Lac St.
Jean meat pie – it was traditionally made with all wild game but this was with
beef and pork and a very thick crust on the top and botton! Delicious!!!
Used Dee and Sterling in lead again and it went well but
they were still too slow – held on to 17th place, Claude 3rd
and Melanie think 6th!
Claude left the chute a minute late because one of his leaders wouldn’t
go so he had to switch him out and Melanie had problems with a tangle. Took 4 hours to get home – so by 8:30
we were back at Bellerives.
Monday – Renell and Melanie wanted to have one last meal
with us so they took us out to breakfast at the restaurant in town – a very
tearful goodbye………it had been long time since we had been able to spend quality
time with them and this month made us all remember why our relationships are so
good………
Left Charette at 10:30 – one wrong turn going through a very
busy Montreal but Dorothy/gps got us back on track without too much
problem. Stopped and fed the east
side of Toronto and got to the other side of it in 45 minutes – we were just
celebrating how well we were doing when we hit a stopped expressway!!! After 45 minutes found out it was a
overturned semi in the ditch – went a bit farther and found a place in a strip
mall to park in Woodstock (all the rest areas were full) – to bed at 11:30 –
will let you know how the day goes – hope to be home about 3p
Spent over 1/2 hour at the Blue Water Bridge at customs - they checked the inside of the vehicle in front of us and looked in the back of us and at dog food- looks like it will be 4:30 before we make it home - now in Saginaw!!!
.JPG)
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