Last minute ferry ride!

We were up and on the road at 6:00am Saturday morning!

Why up so early? Well, we knew that we wanted to take the ferry from Matane that goes across to the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. We've done the south shore drive several times, but have never been on the north shore.

And, I hadn't made a reservation. I actually didn't think I would have to at this time of year, and that turned out to be true. Their website allows you to book online, but only for normal size vehicles, and anything out of the ordinary (including motorhomes) have to be booked by telephone only, and the phone lines closed at 5:00pm Friday.

It's not a regular ferry... the schedule showed only two crossings this weekend... one on Saturday morning at 8:00am, and one Sunday afternoon at 2:00pm. The website showed the regular vehicle bookings were 79% full.

So we figured that we would arrive at the ferry port at 7:15am and see if we could get on last minute for the 8:00am crossing.

And we got lucky!

We had to wait in the "no reservation" line.

But after the RV's on the left of the photo were loaded, we were able to bypass the vehicles in front of us and there was even room for a few more behind us. 

Driving onto the ferry.

The boat is much larger than I expected. It also has a full restaurant and lots of seating in a lot of different areas.

It's a two hour crossing, and it cost $59 CAD for Igor (the same price a car pays because we are under 6 meters) and $20 for each adult. So, total of $99 CAD ($73 USD).

View of the port at Matane.

The ferry loading dock.

And we're off... at 8:03am.

Freighter on the St. Lawrence River.

Unloading at 10:20am.

Our ferry.

In port at Godbout.

An hour later, it was loaded up and heading back the other way.

We headed west on the north shore.

We stopped at a viewpoint and did a short hike.

Lots of lakes up here.

We ended up at a really nice free overnight spot overlooking the St. Lawrence River.

GPS 48.740005, -69.050904

Yesterday's drive.

We need to start putting on some miles though. We want to be in Ottawa by the 18th, which is only four driving days away and we still need to do almost 800 kms (500 miles). So, 200 kms a day, which is about the maximum that we like!

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