Quebec trip—part 2
After a few days in Quebec City, we went about 30 miles outside of the city to the Station Touristique Duchesnay, an outdoor sports and recreation area. We were in one of the smaller lodges, so it felt sort of like a winter camp. Outside our lodge was an ice skating rink, and it was empty when we got there, so we thought it was a perfect opportunity to try skating again. I had only been once before and E not much more, so we aren’t very good. But out there by ourselves, we started to feel like we were figuring it out a bit. Hopefully we’ll remember what we learned next time we try. We were just glad no one was watching, since it seemed like the Canadians were all born knowing how to ice skate.
The next day, we decided to try cross country skiing. We did one 5k trail and were feeling pretty confident (even though we were being passed by lots of old people), so we decided to do another 5k trail.We manged to get going pretty good, but we forgot to ask anyone how to slow down when going downhill in the cross country ski tracks. I ended up falling down to stop a few times. By the end of the second trail, we were feeling pretty worn out and sore. I had heard that cross country skiing is great exercise, so I assumed that would mean we’d be really sore the next day. Unfortunately, I was right about that and we were pretty sore the rest of our trip.
We had gone out to Duchesnay primarily to spend a night at the Ice Hotel, a hotel built entirely of snow and ice. The walls are built of packed snow, supported by pillars of ice blocks. The inside is full of ice sculptures and many of the rooms and suites had themed sculptures. We bundled up and spent the evening exploring the ice hotel. The bar inside serves drinks in glasses that are blocks of ice and we had some tasty maple whiskey while talking to the bartender, who had actually been on one of the crazy canoe race teams. We got in the hot tubs to warm up and then headed for our icy bed. Too keep the guests warm at night, they put everyone in expedition weight mummy bags. Not too surprisingly, neither of us slept that well. E managed to get cold in his mummy bag. I was warm enough, but I got tangled up in it and couldn’t find a comfortable position.
The next day we were pretty groggy until we headed out to the dogsledding kennels. We were both pretty excited about dogsledding and it turned out to be the highlight of our trip. When we got there, all the dogs were freaking out—they were ready to go run. We had a team of 6 dogs on our sled, following two other teams. We were pretty nervous about driving at first, but it wasn’t as hard as it had seemed. E took the hardest part, driving at the beginning while the dogs were all worked up. They took off pretty fast and whenever we had to stop, they’d start fighting each other and the guide had to come untangle them. By the time I took my turn, the dogs had settled down and were much calmer and slower. The two women with the team in front of us had more trouble, unfortunately, and took a header into a tree. After our ride, we went back to the kennel and got to play with the puppies. They were super cute, with very warm fuzzy coats.
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