The trains running by our house

We love our old house, large (one-acre) garden, and four small outbuildings, as well as our neighbors, the horse ranch, adjoining hayfields, and big barns. It's a lovely setting. But it takes some getting used to the trains that travel along the single rail line just below our house. A freight train typically goes by the house twice a day, once in the morning, just past 9, returning in the afternoon, about 3. The freight train is often long and noisy. The heavier ones can cause the house to shake a bit. The most piercing sound is the train's engineer tooting the horn 3-4 times as it approaches an ungated railway crossing just west of our house. While the freight train runs daily, the passenger train runs only three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), but it passes by our house in the early morning hours, the first one about 2:30 with a second train about 3:30. If you're wondering about its route, the passenger train travels between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montreal with many stops along the way. I don't know where the freight trains originate and end but it's kind of fun to watch the kinds of cargo they carry.

Unknown cargo on train running by our house

Train crossing road road just west of our house

Our House on the Gaspe Peninsula

Just this month my partner and I purchased the house pictured below in Le Bic, on the Gaspe Peninsula, about 3 hours drive east of Quebec City. The house was a small (one classroom) school in the 1900s, renovated in 2002 as a family home. The forested ridge in the background is part of Le Bic National Park which has a wonderful mix of boreal forest and shoreline along the Saint Lawrence River, where harbor seals seals can often be seen basking on the rocks. Over the next couple of months, I will be blogging about our experiences in this beautiful part of Canada where French is spoken. We plan to divide our time between Le Bic, in the Quebec Province in the far northern Appalachian Mountains, and Asheville, North Carolina, in the southern Appalachians.