Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
You mean that it explains how come I'm familiar enough with this road in winter? Sure  I didn't think it was a secret.
As chance has it, my mom is also from the Gaspé, like my gf (that's pure happenstance though, we met in Southern Quebec). The difference is that my gf is from Gaspé (the town; in English the peninsula has the same name which can be somewhat confusing) to which there's only one possible road, while my mom's family is from the south coast, and there's three roughly equivalent ways to get there, each of which we've done countless times over the years.
(Now that A-85 is almost all twinned, the NB path has taken a clear edge though.) |
I am familiar with it too because as a child we'd always travel from our home in Ontario across Quebec to spend Christmas with family in the Maritimes. It happened a few times that we almost missed Christmas due to the A-20 being closed between Lévis and Rivière-du-Loup. As a kid I was very familiar with all the motels on Boulevard Kennedy in Lévis and also Le Martinet in La Pocatière.
That stretch of A-20 is a great example of the impact of clear-cutting forest (for agriculture in this case) on blowing snow conditions. They've planted rows of trees as windbreaks in some places but much of the highway is still wide open all the way to the edge of the St. Lawrence.
You also have a similarly deforested stretch of plain north of Cobalt in NE Ontario along Highway 11. Again they've planted rows of trees here and there as windbreaks but it's not everywhere that is covered. Nor is it as effective as a full old-growth forest.
I almost never travel these roads in winter anymore. These days we don't visit my wife's family or my family in winter unless it's for a funeral. If we go by choice it's in the summer.