Crystal's Epic Adventures

  Lover's Arch - Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park The Maritimes has been a place on my bucket-list for such a long time.  I had an extra week of vacation this year and wanted to do something special.  My oldest son, Eric had moved east to Ottawa about 12 years ago.  Although I know him as my son, I didn’t really know Eric - the grown-up man super well.  Now that Canada is opening up again, the airlines were offering inexpensive flights. I booked myself a return flight to Ottawa for $126CDN, all in!  The timing was perfect and with such a good deal on the flight, I could not pass it up.   In my usual Crystal-style I got to work as soon as Eric confirmed he could take the time off and had an action-packed itinerary for our 10-day road trip to the Maritimes completely planned within a couple of weeks.  I have to say... it was pretty EPIC!   DAY 1: Vancouver to Ottawa There were rainfall warnings in Vancouver the day I left, so it was an ...

  La Grande Roue de Montréal Today's drive was quick because I pushed through the day before .  It worked out perfectly because not only were we that much closer to Montréal, but the weather was stunning! Montréal is the largest city in Québec so in order to see as much as we could before driving the 2 hours to Ottawa later in the evening, we decided to keep our explorations to the Old Town and historic Port.  Driving into downtown Montréal was crazy and hectic due to so much road construction going on literally everywhere.  I have never seen so much construction all at the same time. We knew that we wanted to go to Reuben's Deli later for their famous smoked meat sandwich, so we used that as our target location to find parking for the day.  Jacques Cartier Bridge Once we were parked, we wandered to the direction of the Old Town and Port, taking in the amazing architecture along the way.  Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral Dorchester Square Old Molson ...

  My original itinerary had us staying in Grand Falls for the night and then pushing through to Ottawa the next day.  However, we decided the day before that we wanted to spend the day exploring Montréal before heading to Ottawa. Therefore today was set as a day to drive as far as I could safely go without getting too tired.  It ended up being a 9+ hour day of driving as we made stops in Grand Falls, NB and Pohénégamook, QC before stopping for the night in Montmagny, QC, almost 3 hours outside of Montréal. Grand Falls, NB Grand Falls Gorge is a spectacle that one must see when in the area. There's a 1.6 km trail that explores the gorge along the Saint John River before connecting to viewing platforms overseeing this beautiful waterfall which drops 25m.  The waterfall claims to be the largest waterfall east of Niagara Falls. When making my plans to visit the area, this sounded amazing! Except I found a live link to view the falls and discovered that the incredible wat...