I had my first visit to a Tim Hortons today, the Starbucks/Dunkin Donuts of Canada. On my way there I passed a sculpture made out of painted chairs. I got a latte (it was fine, nothing to write home about) and a sausage egg croissant, which was good, and I ogled all of the sweets in the display cases, but decided to wait on getting some until another day. I needed to have some protein as I was headed to the Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook, a beautiful forested area with hiking and biking trails and the world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge.
The Parc was a beautiful place to hike, the trees are starting to change into their fall colors, and most of the hike is right next to the river. At nighttime you can experience the walk as the Forests Lumina, where the path is lit up and magical creatures appear. I was happy to enjoy the natural beauty during the daytime (and pay $10 instead of $25). There was a small part of the forest that was lit up in the daytime, a small cave and stone sculptures. The views of the surrounding area and river were incredible.
Downtown Coaticook carries on the light theme by bunching dozens of lanterns together all along the main drag. There were also adorable houses.
I drove through some beautiful (and tiny!) covered bridges, saw a colorful free little library and a sign for sweetcorn (mais sucré). I passed a truck redoing the yellow divider line on the road. They must use a very fast drying paint as not 30 seconds after I passed him somebody crossed over the yellow line when making a turn and the paint didn’t smear. I also had to stop for road work. There were two vans at either end of the construction zone, each with a flag sticking out and a light. If the flag was down and the light was red you waited, once the light turned yellow and the flag went up it was your turn to go. I’m assuming there was somebody sitting in one of the vans looking and deciding when to change the signals, but there definitely wasn’t anybody standing outside.
I got home and spent some time chatting with Lysanne and Nina. Lysanne had spent the day volunteering at an organic veggie farm and brought back some beautiful produce. Later I talked with Val and a local sheep farmer who sells his sheep milk to the fromagerie. We had an interesting conversation about kids and school, then he asked me if I was worried about the political situation in the US. I said that it wasn’t really different than how it’s been for the last half a dozen years or so, and he asked if I was not concerned that the person who was acting as president wasn’t actually Joe Biden, it was someone pretending to be Joe Biden since he wasn’t flying on Air Force One. Oh boy. I decided it was time to move on so I headed to the deck of the fromagerie loft where I saw several huge flocks of Canadian geese go past, the sunlight glimmering on the aspen leaves and later gorgeous cloud formations.
