5/30/2015 Trois Rivieres, Canada Genealogy

The white building is a 1600's House Museum in 3R

Following the Saint Lawrence River Southwest to Three Rivers, we camp at Lac Saint-Michel which is located on the banks of the VERY FAST moving Saint-Maurice River.  Although Three Rivers

 ("3R" as the locals refer to it) is a good size city, you can see by the "Ma Bell" telephone booth in our campground that Canada is charmingly rural both in landscape and technology.  

As in most cities, major fires in the 1700/1800's destroyed much, but many original buildings still remain.  Numerous historical markers and tourist maps make it easy to navigate this small city on your own and it's so nice to hear church bells ringing on the hour. Surprisingly, a tour of the early 20th century Borealis Water Treatment Center for the Pulp and Paper Plant was quite interesting in understanding the role 
lumber played in Canada's development.  However, Debra found the vibes walking through the underground water cisterns (pictured above) to be really really creepy but way cool too.  

Walking around downtown on Sunday morning, we come upon a large yoga/spiritual service beside the St. Lawrence River. I wish we had known about this as it would  have been wonderful to participate. So great to see the flourishing of New Thought. 

The purpose and highlight of this visit was the Centre d'archives de la Mauricie and Quebec.  This FREE archive is one of nine in Quebec offering research on the history of families and regions. Our wonderful archivist spent three hours researching and printing off dozens of pages of John's genealogy based on this one piece of information about Johns great (to the 5th) grandfather -  "James Richmond, born in England 1775, married Elisabeth Savard 9/26/1802 at Saint James Anglican Church, Trois-Rivieres".    St. James Church is abandoned now but still standing as you can see in the picture with John.

St. James Church where the town surrendered to British rule

He was able to trace this ancestor's wife back to one of the first Canadian settlers from France in the early 1600's!!! We then drove a half hour east to the hamlet of Baie-du-Febvre where James Richmond emigrated (via Boston Mass), and met a local girl named  Elisabeth. Wonder why he went there in the first place?

Synchronicity #1:  Although James and Elisabeth signed the church's marriage log with an "x"; one of the church employees who witnessed the signing was a George (our last name)!  However, the (our last name)'s from Ireland, didn't get into this family tree until many generations later in Winona, Minnesota.  

The Baie-du-Febvre cemetery has headstones dating back to the mid 1700's through today, with their ancestors names everywhere. We ran out of time or would have stopped at the town store to see if we could find some living relatives.  Will need to brush up on our French before our next trip as few speak English here.  We found a sign saying that this farming town of about 1,000 people, is a well known Spring and Fall snow geese migration site.  

A main street in Baie-du-Febvre

Synchronicity #2:  Debra remembers her first visit to Three Rivers when she was 18 and on her honeymoon visiting first husband, Jim's relatives.  Jim's mother was French Canadian and was born in 3R.  How weird is it that both husband's families are from 3R???

5/28/2015 Quebec City Spring (#5)

Spring Flowers at Montmorency Falls

John's genealogy work (see next blog from Trois Rivieres) brings us farther north to Canada and our Spring #5.  We park at Camping Juneau-Chalets, about 10 miles outside Quebec City on Lac Saint-Augustine.  French and English are both official languages in Canada and most signs and people in the cities speak both.  Quebec, however, voted to keep French as their primary language.   The campground hosts get great practice using English to help us set up tours, some of which pick us up at the campground.  A morning walking tour of Old Quebec City took us among buildings from the French era (1650-1750), the Parliament and lavish Chateau Frontenac Hotel built by the English railroad barons in late 1800's (English Era 1750-1850). Quebec City is know as one of the best examples of a walled, fortified colonial town.

Parliament and Statue Are Huge 

Early French Era

The 'upper town', built on a cliff at the narrowest point of the Saint Lawrence River is the administrative, religious and military center which contains the largely intact Citadel.  This fort is still used today, with a fantastic museum, tour and daily  

Citadel Overlooking Saint Lawrence River

      changing of the guard ceremony (like at Buckingham Palace) during July and August.  Outside the city walls, the 'lower town' developed around the Royal Palace and the harbor.  It too has wonderful shops, restaurants and a fantastic farmers/local goods market.    55% of the buildings in Old Quebec City date between 1600-1800 which helps qualify it as a World Heritage UNESCO City.  (Lunenburg, Nova Scotia is another fabulous UNESCO city we visited in August 2014.)  When traveling around the world make it a point to visit any UNESCO designated cities as they are historical treasures.    We took an afternoon bus tour of the surrounding countryside to the rural Island of Orlenes, the Montmorency Falls (taller than 

HUGE Quebec History Mural on side of building

Niagara Falls), a 1600's French home where we ate homemade bread and maple butter (YUM) and the magnificent Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre Cathedral.   A tour of  the Canadian's

Montmorencey Falls

native "First People" (the Mendake Indians) museum and long house was very interesting.  On another day we parked by the Aquarium and rode a bike trail about 8 miles into the city along the Saint Lawrence River. Tours and biking is a great way to avoid Quebec drivers and traffic.  DRIVING TIP - traffic lights are mere suggestions and they flat out ignore stop signs if nobody is nearby (even the tour bus driver)!  We are pretty sure that Old Quebec City will be on our Top 10 Best Places we visited.  

Gate To The Walled City Of Old Quebec

5/23/2015 Bar Harbor Spring (#4) and our 34th Wedding Anniversary

Distant View of Sand Beach (right) from Great Point Trail

Tending to John's bucket list, it's Memorial Day weekend and we head further north as Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine experiences Spring (our #4).   This place is right up there near the top of our best places we have visited. The Park's ocean side  

Our Blackrock Campsite

Blackrock Campground is a spectacular microcosm of the Mount Desert Island landscape which is covered in trees and rocks.  The first few days greet us with temperature in the low 40's at night, foggy mornings, and windy 50's during the day.  The weather reminds John of his recent trip to Ireland.   Most people are in tents or pop up campers with little protection from the cold and wind. No thank you, I will stick to "glamping" as Zoe calls it.  Warmer sunny days arrive later in the week. The campground is full but so spread out and wooded that it feels roomy and peaceful.  Campground utilities include only bathrooms and a few water spigots here and there, so we are dry camping. 

Evening Meditation Site

This means we live off our fresh water tank, run the generator every day to charge the RV batteries for electricity, and collect waste water in our "gray and black water" tanks to be dumped as we exit the park.  We love the smell of campfires burning most of the day for warmth and cooking, waking each morning to the sound of lobster boats motoring down the coast checking their traps and our after dinner 5 minute walk to the rocky shoreline to take in it's serene magnificence.
Like many of our national parks, Acadia National Park is a result of wealthy citizens buying and then donating, hundreds of thousands of acreage to the government for the sole purpose of protecting magnificent landscapes and ecosystems. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his heirs donated much of the land for Acadia National Park.  His son, David Rockefeller celebrated his 100th birthday while we were here and just made public many more tracts of land in this area.  In the mid 1800's, Rockefeller and other industrial titans of the day

Bar Harbor early 1800's

including the Astor's, Ford's, Vanderbilt's, Pulitzer's,  and Morgan's, built "summer cottages" along the rocky shore of Bar Harbor.  Unfortunately, a massive wild fire in 1947 burned thousands of acres including much of the town and these cottages.   Hotels and restaurants are now built on some of their foundations.  These aristocrats didn't like the noise and smell of the newly invented automobile as they ambled down the 45 miles of carriage trails so Rockefeller build separate roads for the cars, showcasing numerous stone bridges which we are driving on today.  These wonderful carriage trails through the forests, around ponds and along the shoreline are still used for buggy rides in the Fall, and for hiking, biking and cross country skiing. 

Sunrise Over Bar Harbor from Cadillac Mt

One morning we get up at 4 a.m., put coffee in a thermos, packed hard boiled eggs and bacon we cooked the day before on the campfire, and head out to watch the sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain (tallest mountain on the Atlantic coast north of Brazil).  They say this spot is the first piece of land in the U.S. touched by the morning sun. A thousand other early risers beat us to it and we had to fight through a traffic jam.  But oh was it worth it. Next time we will arrive at least a half hour before sunrise to see more of the color changes.  And yes, there will be a next time!  After sunrise we stop by a peregrine falcon nesting area along Precipice Peak and take a walking tour of lovely downtown Bar Harbor.  Since the 12 foot tide is out, we walk across the sandbar to Bar Island and hike to it's peak for a fabulous view of the town.  And it's only 9 a.m......

Sand Beach From Hiking Trail

There is so much to do we pack our days with biking around Eagle Lake, hiking around Bubble Lake and the rocky cliffs above Sand Beach where ocean temperatures rarely get above 55 degrees. A relaxing picnic on Little Long Pond is much appreciated after rigorous kayaking in Seal Harbor.  In town we enjoy quaint shops, Victorian B&B's, and Mexican spiced hot chocolate at the Choco-Latte.  We see loons, a bald eagle and  peregrine falcon, beaver, beaver damns, and a deer and fox family encounter just off the Ocean Path which runs along Bar Harbor.  So much more to do and see, next time instead of 6 days we need a couple weeks!



Lobstah and Blueberry Martini Anniversary Celebration

 What a great way to celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary!

5/20/2015 Westerly, Rhode Island Spring (#3) and Ireland

Sligo, Ireland

At the end of April we follow Spring up the Atlantic Coast and settle at Ashaway RV Park near Westerly RI for a couple of months. This nice new park is sparsely settled with weekenders at this time of year so besides the staff during the day, we are often the only ones here.  Something Debra has to get used to as Saint John heads off to Ireland with his sister, cousin and aunt for 10 days.   Their mission is to find their ancestral homestead before the families emigrated to the U.S. in 1835. 

Dominican Friary of Sligo, circa 1253

In the northwest coastal town of Sligo,  the Genealogy Society provided great information and introduced them to some locals who helped even more. People in the countryside stopped their daily routines to share stories and even went with them to help find the old homestead using very few clues from a postcard of an uncle's long ago visit.  Forays into this beautiful countryside helped to get a good idea of where and how John's ancestors lived.

Remnants of John's Ancestral Homestead from early 1800's

New England Spring

While John was in Ireland, Debra is enjoying Spring #3 as she ping pongs between flooring stores, plumbing suppliers, kitchen designers, granite providers, appliance stores, etc. while designing our new condo. Even though construction on our building is not expected to be done until Fall 2016, the contractor wants us to have a good idea of what we want before we head West for a year. Good News!! Debra shows John her design ideas, and we are on the same page :) We get to go into the first building and check out the rough design of what our unit will look like AND we get to see our future view!  It will be worth the wait.

Our Future View Overlooking Winnapaug Pond and Misquamicut Beach

Upon his return from Ireland, John commutes to the Naval War College in Newport to continue work on his project. Debra works on a project for her old employer, visits family and helps out with her beautiful new great nephew, Bronson. 

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Not far from the campground, we take the kayak fishing on the Pawcatuck River. It was 60 degrees, breezy and grey and my first cast gets hung up in one of the many tree branches hanging over the river.  I let out more line so it doesn't break (a no no I soon find out) and end up with a massive tangle.  My fishing is done for the day and John's luck isn't much better.  As the swift current takes us down river, my job now is to maneuver the  kayak so he can cast into the river side among the tree branches and weeds.  After about an hour or so of his constant (albeit patient) instruction; during which he spends half the time getting us out of the weeds and untangling his line....nothing is biting and I am freezing.  I said I was done.  As we we paddle back he mumbles...."and that's why you don't take women fishing".  Good thing he was behind me and not in front of me where I could reach him with my paddle! To add insult to injury, as I pull in the freezing, wet anchor line (which has been dragging to slow us down while we "fished"), it wraps around my paddle's safety cord, pulling it out of the boat.  John grabs for it as the hook on his pole embeds into the back of my life jacket.  Oh yeah, this was real fun.....