Built To Roam: Traveling in America's Hat.

What is it about Canada? How come no one really goes there? The truth, for most New Englanders at least, is that Canada is no more than a 4 or 5 hour drive away from us at most. Yet for some reason, generally speaking, no one really ever goes there. Yes you can give the passport excuse, and while valid, it doesn't exactly account for why you didn't go there before you needed one. And honestly it's really not that hard to get a passport nowadays. If you've got $100 and an hour you can get one, and you probably should. But I'm not quite sure why no one thinks to go to Canada. It's a whole different country, in fact Quebec which is directly north of us, speaks French as a national language. It's the closest you're going to get to Europe without actually going, to well, Europe. Most of us either know someone, or have ourselves been to Montreal before. After all the drinking age is 18 which is reason enough to have taken a trip there to spend $18 on a pitcher of Bud Light because you didn't know any better. But there are a lot of other places within a reasonable driving distance worth traveling to in Canada, and last weekend I had the opportunity to visit one such place, Quebec City. I'll admit it was one of the hardest times I've had convincing anyone to come on a trip before, mostly because no one had ever herd of the place and partially because I didn't really have much of a plan going into it, and "just trust me" wasn't cutting it.
I don't know if any of you follow Red Bull, but they are a pretty amazing company. Not only do they give you wings but they also sponsor some of the coolest events on the planet. I'm sure most of you are familiar with last years Red Bull Stratos, which broke the world record for the longest freefall, BUT they also host a multitude of other extreme and downright badass events including cliff diving, Skiing, BMX, Stunt Plane, and an almost never ending list of other competitions. It just so happened that one of these, Red Bull Crashed Ice, was taking place in Quebec City this month, so the opportunity to knock off a bucket list item (attend a Red Bull event) and explore a new city, was too good to pass up. And luckily once again I've got some kick-ass friends who helped turn this idea into a reality (Patrick and Mark). So we rocketed 6 1/2 hours up to Quebec on a Friday morning to begin what was to be quite an interesting trip.
Everyone really does speak French there and it wasn't long before our twenty-something male brains were in an immature paradise filled with comical french accents and hilarious words. But to be fair, a country who's most popular gas station store is called Couche-Tard, is asking for it.
Canada largely isn't exactly known for their food and beer superiority, but if you take the time to do some research before you go, you can find some pretty decent places. Yelp and Trip Adviser are great resources for any trip and you should be able to get some good suggestions just by typing in your destination. Its quite challenging to find good places when everything is in French but we were able to find some good breweries in the area and a few decent spots to eat, Mainly La Korrigane, La Pape Georges, and Pub Le Mitan.
Along with the Crashed Ice event, which if I can sum it up into one sentence would be: A gigantic party filled with boose, neon lights, Dubstep, 100,000 people, and one awesome downhill Ice Skating track full of dudes cruising at no-tomorrowish speeds though a glorified castle town. The short version: It. Was. Awesome. I also got the opportunity to put the boots to good use and went on a frozen hike to Montmorency Falls, an 84 meter (or for us normal people 275ft) tall waterfall. That's roughly 100ft taller than Niagara Falls. It was a great hike that culminated with us sitting a few feet away from the base on a dome formed by the freezing of mist crashing off of the falls. Quite a spectacular view in which we were completely dwarfed by the falling water.
All and all a great trip, and Canada has yet again surprised me. Go visit. Besides being our hat, Canada has a lot to offer. Enough so that I might even be able to forgive them for Justin Bieber.

I also did another moderate hike at Ravenswood Park, in Gloucester MA. Pretty standard hike, nothing much to report. Cheers!

Milage: 8 Miles