Mont-Tremblant – Day 7 – St-Jovite, Montebello, and Ottawa

We packed everything up, loaded the car, drove to the sister resort to return our keys, and then parked in a the shady spot in Mont-Tremblant Village.

It was already 25° and we were driving to Ottawa today so, we decided to just ride back to St-Jovite for a coffee, and to experience an enjoyable section of the trail, again.

We had only explored the tiny bit of St-Jovite that can be seen from the P’Tit Train du Nord Trail. So we decided to ride a couple extra kilometres to explore the town and get three more Statshunters tiles.

This is City Hall.

It was already baking hot so when we came to the splash pad, Cindy went into the mist, and I took off my jersey, and held it in the stream of water until it was completely soaked, then put it back on. It was dry again within 15 or 20 minutes, but felt fabulous while it was drying.

On the main commercial street of St-Jovite we found one of the most beautiful P’Tit Train du Nord station, we have seen. I’m not sure how the station connected to the main trail we have been riding because it is a couple kilometres away, but it did have an old abandoned rail down the side.

We decided to get ice cream before leaving town.

We are heading back to the car.

We stopped at grocery store next to the parking lot to buy some watermelon, but it looked like it had been cut a couple days ago so we got a litre of chocolate milk to split instead. The heat was absolutely intense.

Neither of us had ever been to Le Château Montebello. It is part of the Fairmont chain of hotels. It is the world’s largest log cabin and has 210 guest rooms and two restaurants. It opened in 1930 and was originally owned by the Canadian pacific railway company. It is considered one of Canada’s grand Railway hotels. It is took 3500 workers only four months to complete the building.

We walked around the three-story lobby centred on a 20 m fireplace. The smell of wood smoke lingered in the air.

We then walked around the grounds.

Adjacent to the main buildings is the Papineau Manor, a national historic site of Canada. It was home to the Papineau family from 1850 to 1929.

There is an oak tree next to the house, which is over 300 years old. Louis Papineau consciously insured, the tree, which was estimated to be over 100 years old at the time of the building of his manor was preserved. He wrote a letter to his wife making this observation, “How wonderful it is to have trees more than a century old close to the house built yesterday in the garden that was designed yesterday.”

Parks Canada has made efforts to try to extend its life and has also planted 80 of its seedlings from its acorns around Canada.

We are staying at a residence of the University of Ottawa. I stayed here along with six other people BikeBrampton on my first cycle tourism trip in 2017. We are in a two bedroom one bathroom, one kitchenette and dining area apartment. I forgot that they don’t have a stove. So we asked if there was a Common Kitchen Area with stoves, and we’re pleased to discover there is, but it isn’t stocked with cutlery, dishes, pots, and pans, and neither are the apartments. Upon closer investigation, we managed to find a left-behind spatula and a couple frying pans so we were able to fry up the package of bacon we had, and make a couple omelets for our dinner.

After dinner, we went out for a walk around the campus and the local area. Here’s a couple images from the campus.

As we’ve left the campus, we spotted this building which wasn’t here five years ago when I was last here. It turned out. It was a municipal art gallery with free entry. We had enough time to explore one floor and will try to make time to go back again.