A winter driving trip from Asheville to the Gaspe Peninsula

Monitoring the weather and with a flexible schedule, we found a window of opportunity for what looked like three days of good weather to make the long drive north to Canada. All packed and ready to go the night before, we left Asheville on Saturday morning 5 December at 7 am. Within a couple of hours we were cruising up Hwy 81 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, first in western North Carolina, then Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, reaching Wilkes Barre, PA that first night, about 600 miles from home. The next morning, we drove just a few more miles on 81, before taking 84 east for a short distance, then turning north on Hwy 87 through Pennsylvania and New York State, passing through the Adirondacks with a stretch of rain but no snow. In fact, until the Adirondacks, the only snow we'd seen in the landscape was in western North Carolina, about 45 minutes from our house in Asheville. Not having snow on the ground in Pennsylvania in early January apparently is quite unusual.
Making good time, we passed through upstate NY and the Canadian border just south of Montreal, bedding down just outside Quebec City in a hotel in the town of Levis, where in several previous summers we had visited Lisa's father (Terry) and his wife Nancy, at a summer cottage along the Saint Lawrence River. It was these visits that sparked our interest in the Gaspe Peninsula.
Levis was cold with snow and ice on the ground and a stiff wind. Starting the car the next morning, the dashboard thermometer read just 3 F. No matter, we were soon driving up Hwy 20 towards our house in Le Bic, just 3 hours away. The ground was covered with a foot or more of snow but the highway was clear and mostly dry with relatively easy driving.
After nearly 1400 miles of driving, we pulled into our driveway before noon on our third day of travel, happy to be at our Quebec home. Thankfully, all was well in the house. A neighbor had cleared our parking area of snow, another had kept an eye on the house, including periodically checking to make sure the electric wall heaters were keeping the inside temperature at about 50 F.
On our first winter night, we watched Clemson beat Alabama to win the National Championship in college football. Amazing!  Below are a few photos of our first winter day in our Bic home.

Arriving at the house. Our neighbor had kindly cleared the
driveway and the walkway to the front door of snow.

Here's the side and back of our house with white birch and quacking aspen trees
and a  foot or two of snow.

Lisa in front of the out buildings at our house minutes after arriving at the house.
Our first day in Bic was a crisp sunny day with  a high of about 10 F.



Once out of the car, Woody immediately began rolling around in the snow.

These are one of our neighbors horses. We were a bit surprised
to see them spending much of their time  outdoors in the cold.

The now leafless trees dramatically alter the landscape
as compared to the lush green ofsummer.

A winter view looking out from one of the living room windows.

Shortly after arriving at the house, we cranked up the wood stove
as a supplemental heat source for the house.

We saw several of these big tour buses on the highway in Quebec Province.
Perhaps some of them travel to Florida in winter?