Rude Reentry

Monday, 15th April 2013

Map: Saint-Zotique, Quebec to Webster, New York---264 miles

Dawn at Saint-Zotique, Quebec

A ruddy winter's dawning glowed through the unshaded windows of our fifty dollar once DeLuxe room at the Motel Rive du Lac.  I got up and went into the dingy kitchenette and inspected the stained Mr. Coffee before brewing a pot.  I handed a cup to my husband still in bed, and we sat and watched the colors warm and the waterfowl troll for breakfast.  Eventually the sun peeked over, and an orange glow spread westward over the dock.  I ran out in my nightshirt to photograph the scene and then darted back in, thankful that the heat had finally dropped out of space above the suspended ceiling and warmed our room.

Sunrise at the dock on the Fleuve St. Laurent.

The water was hot and shaving with the light behind me wasn't as annoying as I expected.  We packed Patsy Prius and headed out, passing a number of cars parked in front of the lesser rooms.  I wondered about their condition, and the price the guests had paid for them.

We planned to drive for awhile and then stop for breakfast, but not atypically we drove a lot farther than we expected before we found a cafe to stop at.  The border with Ontario was quickly reached, and then the mailboxes along Highway 138 slowly switched from French to English names.  Lancaster seemed as likely a place as any to find a meal, but despite a rather busy early morning appearance we saw nothing open at that hour.

The view from Summerstown, Ontario

Highway 138 returned to the edge of the St. Lawerence, swaying by retirement and summer homes.  The restaurants were still closed for the season in Summerstown, but the views were pleasing.  The water was so clear you could see the rocks on the bottom, and the lavender gray light painted the land and waterscape a nostalgic, bittersweet shade.

The name of the highway changes to Montreal Road as one nears Cornwall, so it was not surprising when we found ourselves in a neighborhood reminiscent of the French-infused cities in the state of Maine.  Twenty-four percent of the city's population claim French as their first language, although the commercial signage rarely reflects that.  It's a very bilingual way of life, where the public tongue is English and the private is French.

Prom Dresses: Babydoll drag or future mother-in-law's Dreamcicle chiffon.

My husband pointed out the King George Restaurant, a venerable eatery with its name awkwardly spelled out in gold face-brick, but I drove on---looking for something more interesting.  We never found it, but enjoyed circling back around and looking at the many old concrete block homes along the way.  The food at the King George was satisfactory but unmemorable, the view amusing from our booth.  We spent most of the meal commenting on the tacky dress shop across the street.

Unbeknown to us, the landscape west of Cornwall and continuing for some thirty miles to Iroquois was greatly altered by the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958---but I did notice the whole stretch looks like a tidy, well planned rural roadside commercial and residential district, circa 1960.  Towns were wholly or partially submerged by the project, and relocation efforts were conducted by an international design competition.  Historic buildings were moved to a site called Upper Canada Village, a living museum.  Now the consolidated villages of South Dundas has a museum quality themselves---removed from through traffic by the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway to the north, they sleep until summer.  In the 1990s Ontario removed the provincial highway designation from the main road we drove on, providing an even deeper sense of isolation to the the low forest and islands.

The ubiquitous McIntosh apple was discovered in 1811 at nearby Williamsburg, Ontario---growing midst a thicket of second growth forest at an old farm.

The Iroquois Locks on the St. Lawrence Seaway

At Iroquois my husband wanted to detour to see one of the seaway locks on Harkness Island.  An adjacent park and huge parking lot suggested it was once a popular tourist stop, but the rough asphalt and the fact that the gift shop was for sale indicate it is now low on the scale of interest.  We stood there for awhile, I recalling learning about the Erie Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway in high school---wondering if that kind of history of commerce and transportation is even covered anymore.  Nothing happened while we were there---I suppose that shipping also has a season, just like tourists.

The countryside returns to a full sense of history west of Iroquois.  Old farms nestle close to mid century modern homes along the St. Lawrence, and the towns of Cardinal and Prescott seem livelier. Perhaps this is because they're close to Brockville, an old and long upscale city once home to lumber and transportation titans.  Driving into town, the St. Lawerence is lined with magnificent old homes---turrets putting on airs in a reception line.

The dowager queens of Brockville, Ontario

Brockville was also our last chance to visit Canada's top tourist destination, Bulk Barn.  Since Patsy Prius's GPS is largely indifferent in Canada, we had to stop and ask a woman at a gas station for directions.  My studies of the store locator map that morning proved helpful---we were only a block away from the store.  Being that we were now in a British-esque province, I could find those delicious wine gums in the candy section---as well as other curious items, such as coconut flour.  However, I'd soon be lamenting the fact that I didn't buy enough of their high quality flavored black teas.

We were so intrigued by the glacially groomed, granite studded landscape on the old highway west of Brockville that we failed to see the short and easy connection back to the freeway and the border crossing into New York.  So with irritation as the waste of time and the trepidation of impending annoyances, we continued almost to Ganonoque before making the connection and then headed back to the Thousand Islands port of entry.  This border crossing is very touristy---a plus at that time of the year, since there are no tourists.  Only one car was ahead of us, and they soon passed through.  Of course this meant the agent would be on the rather bored side and may pull out all the stops on interrogation.  Our passports were handed over, our relationship lied about.  One is never sure how to answer that question when your country doesn't recognize your marriage but your state does; however an agent has never countered our assertion of being friends, either.  I'm under no delusion of privacy.  Someone that spends more time looking at a computer screen than your face has much more information on you could ever give him off your cuff.  He typed and read a little more and then said:

"So you're telling me that you drove all the way across the country just to spend two days and nights in Quebec..."

If I was in the driver's seat I would have given him a Zsa Zsa Gabor bitch slap, but I only glared off into space as my husband once again went into even more details of who we visited along the way.  This kind of government mandated insolence is just disgusting.  If I was trained for violence, do you think I'd crumble under such obvious machinations?  Eventually he and/or the computer was satisfied, and he handed back our passports and lifted the gate.

"Welcome home," he said a bit too cheerily.

Oh, fuck off.

My husband drove on for another grumpy twenty miles through the most unwelcoming part of upstate New York.  The farms along New York 180 have gone feral; the old homes imploding and the mobile homes exploding from either social or chemical disaster.  Tourist services were weed choked.  It was a shock after being in Canada for several days, where the countryside always displays a veneer of respectability, if not good taste.

We switched drivers down at the old mill stream in La Fargeville and continued south southwest through an improving landscape on New York 3 and 104.  Unfortunately there's no through roads along or very near the shores of Lake Ontario, and there's a distinct feeling of missing out on something when the lake is occasionally seen from afar.

At Webster we splurged on accommodations at the Hampton Inn---mainly because there was nothing cheaper that didn't have a bad reputation.  I find this kind of generic luxury interesting---I can see the appeal of the predictability of it all, and at the same time how it isolates the guest even more from the community they're staying in.  It would be easy to stay in such places every night and drive the Interstates all day and have nothing to say for yourself except that you slept very well.  Which, of course, we did.

We had family diversions on my husband's side in Webster, though---nieces and nephews grand and otherwise, not to mention their better halves---half of whom I only had acquaintance with via Facebook.  We met at one's rented farmhouse---a virtual time capsule of a post war remodel of a circa 1900 house, save for some Carol Brady wallpaper in the kitchen.  Via my postings on Facebook they knew I'd be enthralled and chatty about the details---right down to the wall tile in the bathroom, which I declared looked like the advanced stages of colitis.  The ceiling was ultra-coved into a tunnel effect and covered with gray subway tile---essentially giving the feeling of going under the Hudson or walking into some Automat shrine.  The basement was a maze of storage and somewhat sinister prep areas for the turkey operation the farm once was.

Nieces and nephews---grand and otherwise---and their significant others.

We carried on our revelry and frank observations down the street to the local Red Robin, where I considered a cocktail but settled for caffeine.  It was a thankfully quiet night there, so we could hear one another and mostly just disturb the staff.   Our ginormous fresh salads pleased both me and my husband---he so much so that he thought it was a worthy stop four days later.

But that's another story.