We finally got hit with our first day of less than perfect weather and it came in the form of a huge storm with consistent heavy rainfall. We can’t be mad given the incredible weather this far and luckily this downpour  couldn’t have happened on a better day. 

I really enjoy being in the forest, surrounded by nature and that really is the focus of the summer trip. I do not include many cities and in general Amy likes to remind me how quickly we feel the desire to return to the wilds whenever we spend time in a concrete jungle. This year I have included three cities but today is definitely the largest, Montréal is a proper mega city and we had some big plans to really experience it in quick time but the weather did not cooperate.

Our plan was to park around ten miles outside of town and ride their beautiful bike trail into town and not worry about trying to deal with a bus in a city notorious for being difficult to navigate. Even my most adventurous self could not imagine attempting to bike through this waterfall so we found a suitable backup plan. 

In Montreal there is a complex of museums dedicated solely to Natural History. If I was here for a week I would spend a full day at the Planetarium, the Insectarium, and the Botanical Gardens. With our time we chose the Biodome. Every second of every trip doesn’t have to be smothered in geology there is room for a few hours for the even better science, Biology. As much as I can assume what a Biodome is, we are actually quite uninformed. We have finally reached French Canada and we have to translate everything. Fitz and I have been casually studying French for the past few months in anticipation of today and he embraced trying his Bonjour’s and Merci’s. The Biodome turned out to be an amazing unique type of zoo that is exactly like the one in the Pauli Shore movie except with visitors. The dome is divided into four giant rooms, each with an entirely different Biome. After the polar region we were quick to scamper off to the Tropical Forest to warm up. Each room has a bunch of animals ,all living together, mostly in harmony. Like a zoo but instead of many cages, just one giant cage. There were several smaller exhibits for predators and even one for bats, rats, and cockroaches. 

We spent the day saying, wow what is that? We even learned about several birds we hope to see in the wild when we get further north. If we were going to have to spend the day inside, we found the perfect spot to do it. We hit our city limit and decided to head back to our campsite right outside of town, with rush hour it should take us 45 minutes. I don’t really feel that I got to experience Montreal culturally or completely but I did reach my fill of skyscrapers and ten lane highways and had a lot of fun doing it. 

We drive about 2.5 hours each time we move, we often listen to music, currently we are trying to finish the audiobook “Anne of Green Gables” together before we reach the setting of the book on Prince Edward Island in ten days. We might play a car game together or the kids might read quietly. Amy tried poutine for the first time and fell in love. This morning we decided that we should all try a proper croissant and a proper baguette so we found a proper French bakery and reset our expectations way too high for the future.

Our camp tonight is just a typical, side of the highway campground which are common right outside city limits. We will be in a row between other RVs and campers, the amenities will be non existent, but with the rain we wouldn’t have been able to take advantage anyway. Instead here we will recharge our batteries and our bodies in preparation of the next eight days in nature spanning four new National Parks.I set up the pop up and some chairs and we huddled close to stay dry and took out the iPads for some mindless fun.

I did not take many pictures today. Salut!