Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 39

Sous Vide

My sous vide cooker broke yesterday.

In the process of figuring out what happened to it, I realized that I should have been dismantling it and cleaning it on a regular basis. It sits in clean water, so it didn’t even occur to me to take it apart, but over the course of the time that I’d owned it, enough hair and dog fur had gotten caught in the fan blades that they jammed and then, I think, effectively burned out the motor. I was very sad, but thought positively, “Oh, well, this will give me a chance to break out of my cooking rut and make some different meals.”

That lasted exactly eighteen hours. While I was walking the dog this morning, on an absolutely beautiful gray gloomy beach, I was considering my food options and choices, and when I came back to the van, I went straight to Amazon, and bought myself a new sous vide device, specifically this one: Malaha Sous Vide. It was reasonably cheap at $77, with Prime shipping and a number of nice reviews with verified purchase tags that read like they were written by real people. I haven’t tried it yet, obviously, so I can’t say that it’s as good as the Anova, but I liked the price and the reviews.

Here’s the thing about sous vide cooking: it’s easy, it’s extremely low-mess, you can prep food for several meals in one batch of cooking, it’s cost-efficient, and it’s delicious. I can’t imagine cooking chicken breast or steak any other way now, and it lets me do things like buy a bundle of asparagus and actually stretch out the eating of the asparagus over ten days to two weeks, instead of needing to eat it all within a couple days. I divide the asparagus — or whatever vegetable — into smaller quantities, vacuum pack them, and then take my time about eating them. It’s possible to wait too long — specifically, I’ve ruined asparagus by cooking it and then not opening it for a week. That was a bad ida. But generally, I’m throwing away less produce that I didn’t manage to eat before it wilted. Also, my chicken is always delicious with so little effort from me. It’s the laziest method of cooking ever. And because when I’m cooking for myself I don’t worry about browning my meat, the clean-up is basically pouring some clean water down the drain. Usually, I use the warm water to wash my bowl and plate and silverware and cutting board first, but there’s no messy frying pans involved.

So, yeah, I thought, “Oh, I will break the quinoa bowl/sous vide habit,” and then I actually considered that more seriously, and thought, “Nope, absolutely not.” I’m going to have to live without my sous vide cooker until I get back to my brother’s house, but frankly, this is going to make me hurry to my brother’s house, because it’s not a thing I want to live without. I don’t use it daily or anywhere close, but I use it weekly and eat the food that I’ve cooked with it pretty much every day.

So my two pieces of advice to you this morning are: 1) if you own a sous vide device, make sure you’re cleaning it! And 2) if you don’t own a sous vide device, but you cook meals, seriously consider getting one. It’s not the kind of cooking tool where you come home from a long day of work and think, “Oh, I’m going to pull out the sous vide tonight,” but it is very much the kind of cooking tool where you can take a Sunday afternoon and prep food for healthy interesting lunches all week long.

Moving on… tomorrow I will literally move on from what I think is my favorite campsite ever. If I didn’t have reservations in Acadia this weekend and plans with friends and a need for a sous vide cooker, I’d probably stay until the weather drove me away or the campground closed for the winter.

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Can’t beat the view

I’m trying to remind myself that the campground in Prince Edward Island was my previous favorite ever and the only way to find my next favorite ever is to keep moving. But this place is seriously lovely and it will be hard to say good-bye.

Glooscap Campground, Parrsboro, Nova Scotia

I have a zillion pictures of this campground. And I would google zillion right now, to see just how hyperbolic I’m being (pretty darn hyperbolic, I have to admit) but my internet is down to super-slow speeds so I’m not going to. I think Verizon might be hinting that it’s time to stop using the Canadian cell towers, sigh. My super-slow internet also means that I’m not going to post my zillion pictures. Instead, I’m going to have to decide on one or maybe two that I will watch upload in painfully slow motion. It’s not an easy decision, made more difficult by the fact that none of them are good enough.

None of them capture the sound of the water. It changes, and I’m not sure I’ve ever actually spent enough time sitting by a beach to realize how much the sound of the waves varies over the course of the day. Or maybe it’s just this beach. The tide goes way, way out — in the middle of the day, there’s half a desert between me and the water, but in the morning, it’s more of a wide rocky strip. Sometimes the water is very quiet, gently brushing against the shore, so still that even listening hard I can barely hear it, and then sometimes it’s lapping at the shore so loudly that I’m reminded that yes, I am sitting next to the ocean. (Sort of the ocean, anyway. I’m on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.)

And no photo can capture the feel of the air. The weather has been lovely — sometimes sunny enough that it actually does feel hot, although I doubt the temperature has broken 75, and sometimes foggy enough that it definitely feels chilly, but mostly hovering in the mid-60s. But it’s just not the temperature — it’s the perfect level of humidity. It feels like there’s always just a light breeze, carrying a little bit of moisture.

And for some reason, none of my photos are getting the colors right. There’s an incredible number of wildflowers blooming right now. I’m looking outside the van window as I write at an expanse of yellow-gold and green, but the pictures capture the blue of the ocean behind the gold and turn the gold into a dull yellow that doesn’t come anywhere close to looking right.

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Not the right gold at all, but this is the view from Serenity’s door. The flowers are so much brighter than they look here.

And, of course, it’s impossible to take a photo of the moon and the stars, but I’ve watching them every night from my window as I go to sleep. Here’s a thing that made me feel stupid: over two years of living in the van, and I never realized that the tinted windows were distorting the brightness level of the stars. I’ve been sleeping with the window open and they’re so much more beautiful that way.

It would be nice to see the stars without the screens, too, but that’s never going to happen because the one thing about Nova Scotia that is really not working for me are the voracious mosquitoes. They’re not as bad as they were at the farm on Prince Edward Island, but I keep needing to tell myself that to tolerate them. Almost every walk on the beach ends when the mosquitoes find me and I wind up needing to escape from the ones that are dive-bombing my face. Still, they’re not constant — they’re worst at dusk and dawn, and in the middle of the day, I’ve been sitting outside perfectly happily. So excuse the whining!

I do really love this campground, love that is definitely helped by the fact that I have a perfect site. I started out last week at a pull-through spot, sort of in the middle of the campground, and it was still nice. I had a good view of the ocean, although a better view of my neighbors’ campers, and the beach was still a very easy walk away. The campground’s not too big, with both seasonal and tent spots, and it’s not too busy either, this time of year. They have a “stay three, get one free” deal, so I was going to stay four nights.

But after two nights, a spot opened up right next to the cliff that overlooks that water and I thought, “hmm…” so I wandered back up to the office and asked if I could have it. Yep. I paid for another three (four) nights after that, so when I leave here on Wednesday, I will have been here for eight nights! Eight! It’s close to my longest stay at any campground, and if I didn’t have reservations and plans for later in the month, I think I’d probably be aiming to stay even longer.

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Another view from the door.

Yesterday, I ate blueberry pancakes with tiny wild Canadian blueberries and Vermont maple syrup, plus Berkshire bacon from the organic farm, while sitting at a picnic table watching horseback riders on the beach. I wondered whose life was more perfect at that moment, the horseback riders splashing through the water or me, and concluded that I won because my pancakes were crazily delicious (gluten-free) and they were probably surrounded by mosquitoes. But it did feel unreal in a most lovely sort of way.

One month, post Grace

Grace released a month ago.

I thought I had thoughts about that, but now I’ve been staring at a blank screen for twenty minutes, so maybe I don’t. But if you’ve read Grace, and you want to read an extra scene from it, I hid one up in the Scribbles section. Click the link or check the menu at the top of the site.

I try not to read reviews, because I don’t need other people’s critical voices in my head — my own critical voice is loud enough. But I glanced at Goodreads and was pleased to see some of the more negative (but thoughtful) reviews there. I really liked the one that said Grace gets short-changed in her own romance. So true, so true! I’m also really glad that there are more positive reviews than negative, of course.

Hideaway Campground & Oyster Market, Dingwall, NS

When I last wrote, I was in a state of indecision: whether to stay or whether to go? I suspect that the people who know me well never shared my doubt. My answer always seems to be Go. It’s true that sometimes what’s around the bend is not as nice as what you’re leaving behind, but curiosity is either my besetting sin or my defining virtue. Maybe both!

So I left.

My state of indecision continued and continued and continued, though. I was going to stop in New Glasgow, because of the name, but I drove straight through, almost without realizing. I’d never changed the time on the van dashboard, so I was there sooner than I expected to be. Since I’d already passed it, I decided to keep going and stop at a campground called Whycocomagh, because that name was even better. I did stop there, but the self-registration process was completely frustrating and I finally gave up. It was still early enough in the day that I could go farther. I decided on another place, then changed my mind, then another and did the same, then finally, exasperated, called the place that I was really aiming for but didn’t think I could get to in a single day, and asked if I could arrive late. I could, so I did.

It was a long day.

But the drive was pretty spectacular. Cape Breton National Park reminded me enormously of a prettier, greener Northern California. No offense to Northern California, which is a remarkably beautiful place, and I’m sure has better weather, but Cape Breton is stunning. The road curves and winds, one side dropping off cliffs into the ocean, the other side hills, covered with trees, mostly a mix of pine and birch. I bet in another month, when the birch leaves are changing color, it’s even more beautiful.

And the Hideaway Campground is lovely. Small and hilly, with a mix of sites, some set into the trees, some lined up facing the ocean. At the front, there’s a little restaurant where you can get a lobster dinner or oysters. As far as I can tell, that’s the complete menu, but who would want anything more? The paid showers look reasonably nice, there’s a beach about a kilometer and a half away, and a dirt trail that leads into the woods. And a fantastic view of the ocean, the kind of view that is so big that it’s impossible to do it justice with a cell phone camera.

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This doesn’t even come close to capturing the view. The colors are more intense, the expanse much deeper and richer… but it’s the best I’ve got!

Unfortunately, the Hideaway has two problems for me. The first is that it’s still quite busy. I had one night in my site and then had to move to a different site. Today I’ll have to move again. There’s an open site that I could take, but a big German Shepard right behind that spot lunged and barked at us when we were out walking. For obvious reasons, I don’t feel like I would be comfortable there. I’m trying to avoid developing a total dog phobia, but I don’t want to exist in a level of constant tension, waiting for an aggressive dog to appear.

The other problem is that I am so incredibly allergic that it’s ridiculous. Obviously, that’s not the Hideaway’s fault. I think my allergies got kickstarted with the Queen Anne’s lace at the farm a few days ago, but I woke up yesterday in a state of misery and can’t kick it. If this was a house, I would be sealing the windows, vacuuming everything, changing the air filters, and staying absolutely inside, but that’s pretty hard to do in a van. I’m hoping that if I get out of the forest, I can escape from whatever it is that I’m reacting to. I haven’t even owned an inhaler since I left California, but I was wishing for one last night. Alas.

So today I’m heading on. Unfortunately, there’s a severe weather alert on for Nova Scotia today — rain from Gordon hitting the area — so I have no idea how far I’ll get, but I’ll be moving inland, out of the storm’s way, I hope. But definitely not headed south, because I’d like to stay out of Florence’s way, too. Speaking of which, I hope those of you in Florence’s way have your emergency kits ready. More bottled water never hurts!

Cabot Beach Provincial Park

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The walk to the beach at Cabot Beach Provincial Park, PEI.

I’ve had three days of enormous efficiency and I’m exhausted. Although I think the exhaustion is because for the very first time, I’ve got awful neighbors. Oh, wait, I just remembered some bad neighbors in New York a couple of years ago. But those neighbors were bad because I had to eavesdrop on their complaining; these neighbors are bad because I had to eavesdrop on their late-night fun.

And by late night, I mean that sometime close to 3AM, security showed up and yelled at them, saying that he could hear them all the way down by the security gate, half a mile away. Given that my van is parked about three feet away from their RV… yeah, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.

I did entertain myself thinking of polite revenge fantasies. My favorite was to set off my smoke alarm at 7AM. I could even do it legitimately — it goes off pretty much every time I use the stove, so I wouldn’t have to burn anything. And I could be very slow to make it stop. And then maybe I could cook something else half an hour later and do it again. I did wind up washing all the dishes at 1:30 AM, because hey, I was awake, why not be productive? so it would have been easy to cook something first thing in the morning. Didn’t do it, however, because I am not really a revenge person. However, if they keep me up all night again — and their music is already playing — all bets are off.

So yesterday’s efficiency was all van related: oil changed, tires rotated, brake fluid topped up. I was finished at the service place around 3, so I looked around for a nearby campground and decided Cabot Beach Provincial Park sounded worth a try. Its selling point was that there was a seafood market/restaurant within easy walking distance.

It’s an interesting place — big green empty fields, sprinkled with pine trees. Apparently there are 163 sites. I’m guessing in summer, it’s bouncing with people. At the moment, there are a half dozen of us in one row near some cliffs overlooking the water and probably another twenty or thirty campers in the section that has full hook-ups. But we’re lined up like parking lots, no separation between sites at all, and that is very much not my favorite type of campground. And the mosquitoes are fierce enough that I’m avoiding the outside and that’s also not my favorite. Not the campground’s fault, of course, but not conducive to feelings of delighted enchantment.

Zelda and I have had several nice walks, though. It’s a reasonably short hike to a nice beach, and there’s also a great walk through fields of wildflowers along the cliffs by the ocean. The walk to the fish market is less appealing — it’s along a road and through a parking lot. And sadly, the market’s on winter hours (4PM – 9PM), so it was closed when we went there at lunch time.

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Walking the dog through a field with an ocean view.

I thought about going back when it opened in the afternoon, but after a long beach walk in the morning, Z seemed to be limping before we reached the market. Not a ton, just sometimes skipping a step or two. I don’t want to make her do a third long walk in one day, so I’d have to pack up the van and drive to go to the market. And before I do that, I’d have to clean up from today’s cooking projects.

And today was a day of many cooking projects. This morning I made oatmeal for breakfast, and ate it topped it with yogurt and honey. And then I baked some granola. And then I made some quinoa. And then I decided that there was no possible way I’d be able to eat all the potatoes I had before they went bad, so I should probably vacuum seal and sous vide cook them. Seven packages of potatoes later, I realized I should do the same thing with the corn and the beans. So basically I’ve been cooking vegetables all day long. I’ve realized that I can’t make the squash soup I wanted to make — there’s absolutely no room in my fridge to store home-made soup. But I definitely have enough vegetables prepped for a whole lot of meals.

Tonight’s quinoa bowl was not as interesting as whatever fresh seafood I might have gotten, but it was tomatoes, fresh corn, spicy garlic wax beans, avocado, cilantro, turkey, a Greek yogurt-lime-garlic dressing, plus mixed greens and quinoa, and it was quite delicious. I ate it outside until I’d decided I’d donated enough blood to the mosquitoes and then I came inside, looked at all the clean-up I should do, and decided writing a blog post would feel productive without requiring me to keep standing over the kitchen sink.

Tomorrow, I’m moving on. I generally like to stay a minimum of three nights at campgrounds, but when I got here and saw the rows of campers, I decided two nights sounded fine. And that does feel like it was the right decision. Good walks do not make up for bad neighbors. But I’m not sure where I’m headed tomorrow, whether it’s back to Campbell’s Cove, which I liked so much, or whether I’m leaving the island. Decisions, decisions. One way or another, though, I’ll need to have the van cleaned up. I guess I should have done that instead of writing this post!

Harvest Hosts

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I heard roosters crowing when I took Zelda for her morning walk, and saw cows in a distant field, plus lots of forest, and a beautiful red dirt road. Also a patch of sunflowers and a lovely expanse of Queen Anne’s lace, which I am sadly quite allergic to. I’ve retreated inside the van with my congestion and itchy eyes, but it’s another beautiful day on Prince Edward Island. Tons of mosquitoes, though — I hope my immunity to them kicks in again soon, because they’re ferocious here.

Yesterday I took the van to an RV service place in Charlottetown and got the leaking toilet fixed. Yay! The guy doing the job grumbled about the last repair — I think the guy in Montana didn’t fix the leak, just put a clamp over it — but my plastic parts have now been replaced with brass parts and so that should hold me for a while. I hope, anyway. Today I’m headed off to get the oil changed, the brake fluid levels checked (the light has flickered on a couple of times), and the tires rotated. Yes, dealing with the practicalities of van life!

The farm — and I can’t remember whether we’re allowed to be specific when it’s a Harvest Hosts spot, but if you’re a Harvest Hosts member, you’ll know which farm it is, because it’s the only one on Prince Edward Island — doesn’t have a store, so I handed S., the farmer, some money and said, “Feed me.” LOL. More or less, anyway. He gave me bacon, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and a zucchini and I really feel like I should pull out the frying pan and do a giant UK-style fry-up. (Harvest Hosts, for those who don’t know it, is an annual membership service that connects users with farms, wineries, museums, and an assortment of other places where you can park for free for the night. The expectation is that you pay by shopping in their stores.)

We had a great conversation about cooking, too. S teaches cooking classes, specifically (today at least) slow cooker classes where you prep the food ahead of time for a week’s worth of meals. It made me want to cook some complicated things in my slow-cooker, instead of just a week’s worth of quinoa. But the weather is supposed to be colder for the next couple of days, so I’m hoping to grab the opportunity to use my oven a few times: roasted vegetables, granola, etc.

Hmm, this is turning out to be a food-driven post, which is probably because I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. I should get on that! I was going to write about writing — or not writing, as the case has been for a couple of days — but I’ll hold that thought until later.

But in a comment on another blog, I described myself as “flailing.” I worked on Grace for such a long time that I sort of feel like Sisyphus, having reached the top of the hill and having the boulder NOT roll back down again. I’ve been appreciating life without the boulder, but every time I start writing, I start to fall into the trap of treating the words like a boulder instead of the beach ball they ought to be. And that’s a metaphor that might not make sense to anyone but me, but I’m leaving it because it’s a perfect reminder to me of what I’m striving for. Words like beach balls, light and bouncy and playful!

Another sunrise

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Honestly, this place…

I leave this morning to go into “town”* to try to get my leaking toilet fixed. Tomorrow, I’m driving about an hour away from “town” in the other direction to get the oil changed and the brake fluid levels checked in the van. The need to get this stuff done was motivating me to get moving, with some idea that the right place to take care of such things is “home”. But I was chatting with one of my neighbors yesterday and realized that there should be places to take care of such things here and that once they were done, the nagging sense of obligation to get going would probably fade away. And once that nagging sense fades away… well, maybe I’ll be back at this campground on Saturday. Or maybe I’ll feel inspired to go explore some of Nova Scotia. I’m honestly not sure which.

But if this morning’s sunrise was my last sunrise here, I’m glad I got out on the beach while it was still rising and got to feel the wind and listen to the birds and see Zelda jumping off the rocks like her leg never bothered her at all.

*”Town” is Charlottetown. It’s over an hour away, but when people say “town”, that’s what they mean.

A sunrise in three parts at Campbell’s Cove Campground, Prince Edward Island

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So early that Zelda was still sleeping.

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So gorgeous that I ran out of the van in bare feet and pajamas to take a better picture.

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Still gorgeous when walking Zelda on the beach, at least an hour or maybe two later.

I have so many beautiful pictures from this campground. I was only planning to be here for three days, but on Sunday, I decided to stay a few more. Today is Wednesday. I did laundry, filled my fresh-water tank, started stowing stuff to get ready to leave tomorrow morning. And I am going to leave tomorrow morning, because I need groceries, including dog food. But every day has gotten nicer, and it’s going to be hard to say good-bye.

Eh, words don’t do it justice. Have a few more pictures instead.

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Birds on the beach

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The farm at the top of the hill

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Wildflowers at sunset

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The other end of the beach

Best of August 2018

On August 31, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise in a Walmart parking lot on Prince Edward Island. The air was fresh and cool, a hint of chill, and I walked Zelda in a big patch of grass while trying to smell ocean. (I failed, but it was easy enough to smell later.)

We went to a grocery store, Atlantic Superstore, and for the first time in Canada, I found ALL the things — the dog food that Zelda is most likely to eat, gluten-free oats so I can make granola again, even Greek yogurt with the fat. (Fat-free Greek yogurt is the most pointlessly unpleasant food — I don’t understand how people can eat it. But apparently that’s what they do in Canada. Not on PEI, though!)

Then I headed off to Green Gables. I wound up paying to drive through the Prince Edward Island National Park, which would have been silly except that it was a stunningly beautiful drive on a gorgeous day, well worth $4. At Green Gables, I joined the throng of early bird tourists to admire the historic house and beautiful gardens, then escaped from them entirely for a solo walk through the Haunted Woods. Not very haunted, but I’m sure my imagination could have conjured up ghosts on a dimly-lit evening. And they were probably fantastic in the days when the paths weren’t lined with logs and well-trodden by thousands of feet.

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The Haunted Woods

Next I drove to the north of the island, admiring the scenery at every turn. I once told R, I think, that my first trip to England disappointed me, because I’d expected it to be some kind of incandescent green that it just wasn’t. It was green and lovely and I had a great time once I’d gotten over my expectations, and I’ve enjoyed other visits over the years, but it wasn’t the brilliant green that my imagination had generated from years of reading. Prince Edward Island, on the other hand, is exactly that color green.

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Green Gables

It was past lunch time and I was hungry, so I thought about stopping and making myself a salad, like a good van-lifer. Instead, I stopped and read TripAdvisor for a bit, then went to The Lobster Shack and bought myself a cold lobster, and a half dozen oysters. I ate the oysters on their patio overlooking the ocean, each one with a different hot sauce, while Zelda napped at my feet. I brought the lobster with me to the campground.

At the campground, my neighbors were using my fire pit — they apologized, but I didn’t mind, I didn’t plan on using it myself — so I got to smell campfire mixed with ocean spray. Zelda and I immediately went walking, taking the steps directly in front of my site down to a lovely empty beach. When she hit the sand, she ran like a puppy. She got her feet wet and yelped with surprise at how cold the water was, but we had the nicest walk we’ve had since she got hurt, out to the end of the curve of sand and onto red rocks, and then back again.

Back at the van, I read some more of the Anne of Green Gables series, eventually ate cold lobster dipped in melted butter with lime, admired the sunset, appreciated the smell of campfire smoke, and listened to the ocean.

It was a most amazing day.

And it wasn’t the best day of August. It was nice, definitely, really nice, and I love this campground so much that I’m thinking about staying longer. But for the best of the month, I have to pick August 10th. I spent that day on Grand Isle, Vermont, with R. Z had her first reasonable walk after getting hurt, and we saw chipmunks and squirrels and rabbits. I made bacon and potatoes and eggs over-easy for breakfast, sat outside, read books, appreciated the sunshine. In the evening, my cousin came and we built a campfire, grilled sausages, ate outside at the picnic table and talked for hours. That day wins because of the wonderful company.

That said, September 1st has a darn good shot at September’s title. Yesterday was beach, beach, more beach, interspersed with good words on the story I’m working on. There was a beautiful sunrise in a cloudy sky, and then a gray rainy morning, with the sound of rain on the van roof, the sight of dark ocean ahead of me. And then the sky cleared and the afternoon was sunny and golden. The evening was the smell of smoke and an absolutely fantastic night sky, scattered with so many stars that if I knew anything about stars, I bet I could have found all the constellations ever named. (Except the ones that can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, of course.)

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Yesterday’s sunrise

The Ocean Time Zone

I am in the ocean time zone.

I have no idea what the real name for the ocean time zone is. In fact, I didn’t even realize I would enter it. Last night, I was actually extremely confused when some of my clocks changed time.

“How did it get so late?” I wondered. “What was I doing for the past hour?”

It felt so truly mystifying that I actually turned the van back on and checked the time on the dashboard, because the dashboard clock has to be changed manually. I was relieved when I got that hour back. The over-active imagination was conjuring up alien abductions and trauma-induced fugue states before looking at a map and discovering that sure, it was highly likely that there was another time zone in eastern Canada, because I believe I am as far east as I’ve ever been in the continental Americas.

But let me backtrack for a day. On Tuesday, I went to visit a reader in Quebec City. (Hi, Mireille!) I’ll admit that I was kind of nervous, but I only told one friend that if I disappeared it would be an internet serial killer plot. It would have had to be very long-laid plot, because when Mireille invited me to stay in her driveway, I recognized her name from years back. I thought maybe she was even in the Eureka fanfiction community, that was how long ago the familiarity was from, but she was actually from arghink.com, Jennifer Cruisie’s blog. (If that link doesn’t work, it’s because I’m writing this without internet and will post it via my cell phone, so can’t test the link, but the name should be right. I hope so, anyway.) At any rate, Mireille invited me to stay, I was a little anxious but mostly excited about the idea, and so I did.

It was lovely. She and her beautiful look-alike daughter live in a terrific neighborhood in Quebec City. I obviously am never going to live in Quebec City (there’s a citizenship problem), but if I could dream up my fantasy semi-urban neighborhood, it would be much the same. I wish I’d taken more pictures, although I probably wouldn’t post them even if I had, because I have no bandwidth today.

The three of us and Zelda went off to Montmorency Falls, a waterfall that’s taller than Niagara, with a walking bridge over it. The truly ambitious could climb down (and then up, or vice versa) a steep and very long flight of stairs, to see it from the bottom (or top, depending on where you parked), but I didn’t think Zelda’s leg was up for that much yet. I suspect our six-year-old companion would also have complained, but it was such a hot day that such complaints would have been justified. But we admired the falls and then drove a small way around the tip of Ile d’Orleans, the nearby island.

Gorgeous island, with beautiful houses. It would definitely be a fantasy place to live, except probably not so much in winter. It’s like admiring Vermont, so beautiful, but winter is always coming. Quebec, in general, has been notably beautiful. It’s sort of a surprise, because it’s not in my head as a gorgeous landscape, but I think that’s because I think of it as a winter place and I am not a winter fan. My mental picture of it is barren trees and bleak landscapes, but at this time of year, it’s pine forests and rolling hills. (Yes, the one other time I was in Quebec, it was in January.)

Back at Mireille’s house, I used her washer & dryer, her internet, and eventually her shower. (Thank you, Mireille!) I would really be hard-pressed to decide which of these luxuries I loved the best. I have clean sheets! Her internet was high-speed! I conditioned my hair!