Hello from Quebec (Magog) - 1

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

So I am sitting here at the Club Vacances Magog with the wind
howling outside at 45+ km per hour and temperatures of about -15
to -20 degrees Celsius, windchill factor not included.

We drove up from Toronto last Saturday and it only took us about
6 hours to get to the town of Magog in Quebec's Eastern
Townships. This area, l'Estrie, is located about 1 hour
southeast of Montreal and very close to the Quebec - Vermont
border. There are several fairly large lakes in the area: Lake
Memphremagog being the largest, there is Lake Magog and there is
also Lake Massawippi.

We had a pretty nice dinner Saturday night at a local restaurant
in Magog called Jacko's. Sunday we took a nice drive around to
places like North Hatley (a picturesque pioneer village),
Lennoxville and we took a quick drive through the major city of
the area, Sherbrooke.

Monday we went skiing at Mount Orford which is just outside the
town of Magog. It is the largest one of the ski mountains in the
area with an altitude of 986 meters and a vertical drop of 1770
feet. It was quite a nice mountain to ski on, but the top was
covered in fog the whole day and it was very windy. We had to
retreat mid-afternoonish because it got too cold.

Yesterday we went skiing at Owl's Head, towards the southern end
of Lake Mephremagog. It also has a vertical of 1770 feet.
Actually we enjoyed Owl's Head better than Orford and on
Tuesdays and Wednesdays they offer incredible deals: $15
(Canadian!) for a whole day of skiing, apparently the best value
for skiing in Eastern North America.

No skiing today though. It is simply too darn cold. The wind is
howling and snow occasionally blows horizontally across the
landscape. I had romantic notions of driving into Montreal
today, but the cold weather would have ruined such an outing.

So we hope to catch a bit more skiing and maybe some sightseeing
in the next 3 days. Winter arrived late here in the Eastern
Townships of Quebec this year, but it arrived with a vengeance.