Day 5 - 2013 East Coast Trip: Quebec City to Sainte Rose du Nord

Start:Quebec City, QC
End: Sainte Rose du Nord
Route: Hwy 175 North; Road was a divided highway in prestine condition.
Distance: 296.5 km Total distance: 1608 km
Gas: Charlesbourg, QC: 17.12 litres @ $1.394; $23.86 total
Chicoutimi,QC: 12.04 litres @ $1.34; total $13.59

Temperature: When we got up, we were a bit surprised to see that it had rained overnight. I guess it was a good call taking a motel room overnight to spare us tenting in the rain. Al had mentioned that he would not mind riding in the rain a bit, just to get away from the extreme heat and sun. Later, the heat and humidity cranked up and we were sweating our butts off. It must have got into the mid- 30's.
We had a nice egg & bacon breakfast and set off to Old Quebec City. We parked along the St. Lawrence River, just outside the old city walls. The city looked magnificent before we even stepped into the historic area.
We started climbing the stairs and steps streets, taking in the old European styled city. Historic monuments, old, well-maintained historical buildings, old cannons that protected the city from and English attack, cobbled stone streets, small cafes that lined the streets, and people in character of centuries past. The city was filling up with tourists. As there were no members of the other gender, we did not have to stop in every shop, so, due to the heat and what seemed as a constant climbing of streets, we decided to head out on our 200k trip along Hwy 175 to Chicoutami.

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The first 40k of the Hwy 175 were uneventful except the terrain was getting more and more rugged, the hills seemed to go on forever, one after the other and the valleys were a very long way down. Just beautiful! The view was very reminiscent of parts of our Alaska trip.
The skies were getting overcast and as we got further along, the hills seemed like mountains and the sky got darker. Al was about to get what he hoped for...a little rain to cool us off. We had thought we would don our rain gear, but the rain was a bit refreshing.
An then the skies blackened and the rain came down in torrents. We pulled over to get our rain gear, but the rain was coming down so hard, we were absolutely drenched by the time we could even stop the bikes. We laughed, soaked to the bone as be put our rain gear over our soaked clothes.
But...we needed our rain gear more than ever, as the skies got even blacker, the rain coming down as a river and at times, we thought it might have been hail (or the rain was hitting so hard and so fast, it felt like hail (we couldn't see for the rain to know if it was rain or hail. We pushed forward but it even got worse. Winds would gust out of no-where, rivers of rain cam e down and we had to stop as did many cars. The temperature dropped down to about 60 degrees...It was an incredible storm that rolled through. It did not last long, except in our memories. We stopped at a gas station about 20k down the road to get a bit of a break.
It rained slightly, the skies started to clear up and the temperature went back up to about 75 degrees.
We got into Chicoutami, got directions for our campsite and went thru Chicoutami to Sainte Rose Du Nord. We got help from a french-speaking harley rider that stirred us in the right direction, that was about 30km on Hwy 70 towards Tadossac.
We got into Sainte Rose Du Nord, set up camp and the night was done.
It was a very memorable day! Safe, wet and laughing about our outdoor experience!