Day 1. Parc de la Verendrye

"Papa, are you sure we're not going to have car lag?"

Emmanuelle's question is perfectly hilarious.  We're setting out on a 3 week, 10,000 KM journey.  But as my good friend the Mahatma would have said, a journey of 10,000 KM starts with a single 4 hour drive to La Verendrye.



Our first night will be in the La Verendrye Nature Reserve in Quebec.  The goal is basically to get us on our way, get a first night of camping under our belts, and get through a bit of the Northern Route.

Our trip is going to involve a lot of exploration and discovery of new places, so what better place to start than the La Verendrye reserve?  It's a park that we don't know, and that was named after Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Verendrye, the man who opened up the West, exploring from Lake Superior to what is now the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border.  If we were traveling by canoe our route would be pretty similar to his.

Breakfast 360

Ok it wasn't quite 360 degrees, but this was the scene before we left.

 3 weeks' worth of snacks.  Hopefully.

All smiles so far...  even if they look a bit forced.

All packed with room to spare.

 Here's hoping this isn't the highlight of the trip!

 Car is clean.  We'll see in three weeks.

The reserve was the site of our first SNAFU.  I got a phone call the day before informing me that the campground we were going to stay at had been destroyed by a storm.  They weren't joking!

 A half dozen heavy trucks were parked around the entrance to our campground and they wouldn't let me through the gate - even to snap photos.

 Fortunately, thanks to the warning call, we booked at another campground within the reserve.  About 90 KM further down the road.  While it was RV central, it did have a nice lake that was warm enough for swimming and it got us an hour closer to our next destination - Fushimi - which was where we were planning to start our real camping activities.

Getting some sun before our swim.

Our first supper.  Dogs and corn on the cob.  Nothing could be easier.

The first of the surprises for the kids.  I know that some spots along the way are going to be less exciting than others, so I planned with tactical envelopes.

 Well-received.

 One of the natural surprises was these wild raspberries right at our site.  We added them to our oatmeal in the morning.

And here's our breakfast 360 from Lac Rapide, Laverendrye.