September 28th

Another nice day.  Two nice days in a row, holy I can’t believe my eyes batman.  Today’s excursion is to Quebec, Canada.  Quebec is only about 15 miles from where we are camping.  Diane found a French Canadian brewery, La Memphre in Magog, Quebec.  It was about an hour drive from our campground and off we went.  We drove up to Newport then US Interstate 91 to the Canadian border.  This was our third trip across the Canadian border on this trip and we haven’t had any trouble.

I told the border agent that we were going to Montreal for the day.  Montreal was about an 1 ½ hours from the border and that immediately made us eligible for having our van searched.  No problem we didn’t have anything to hide.  Two Canadian Border Agents searched the van for about 10 minutes then complimented us on the van design and we were off to La Memphre brewery.

Magog is on the northern edge of Memphremagog Lake, at the opposite end of Newport Vermont.  As I said before 75% of the watershed for Lake Memphremagog comes from Vermont so we were basically going downhill most of the way to Magog.  The drive was beautiful and the signs were in French which was new for me.

We got to La Memphre just after the lunch rush and grabbed two seats at the bar.  French is the primary language in Quebec but luckily our bartender spoke English as well.  We ordered two of their IPA’s and a bowl of broccoli/squash soup that we shared followed by two of their veggie burgers.  Let me put it this way, if this brewery was in my neighborhood I would frequent it very regularly.  The food and beer was fantastic, the staff was great and the entire vibe of the place was cool.

We finished lunch all too soon.  Before we left Diane asked the bartender if there was a place that overlooked the lake that was good for taking photos.  She told us we should see the St. Benedict Abbey.  There was a bit of misunderstanding what Diane was asking because when we drove up to the Abbey there were no views of the lake.  So we went into the St. Benedict Abbey.  It was beautiful and interesting.

After visiting the abbey Google Maps let us know that we could continue on the road that brought us up to the abbey and that would take us around the lake and we would re-enter the U.S. at a different spot.  It was also a beautiful drive.

At the U.S. border they asked how long we had been in Canada.  I said just for the day.  That automatically made us eligible for another search of the van.  I’m a slow learner.  This time the bored border agent took only 5 minutes to search the van and with a muffled grunt gave us our passports back and we were on our way back to the campground.  A very fun day.