And I thought typing English was hard.
Today’s French-Canadian blog post title translates to English as: “Québec in a Flash (Part One).”
We have a lot of pictures to share with you from our very busy five days in the French-Canadian province of Québec. I’ll jump around quickly so fasten your seatbelt and let’s dive into Part One of our Québec Adventure!
Our biggest concern in visiting Québec was the language barrier as neither of us speaks even remedial French. We read that only 2% of Québécois speak English.
Thankfully, communication wasn’t a problem as the 2% of Anglophones must be in the tourist areas (which is where we concentrated our visit).
And what was the first thing we saw when we pulled into the campground on a hot summer’s day in July? A giant, blow-up Santa of course!
Soon after we arrived and tucked Tink in, we jumped in Leap and headed over to our first appointment: a tour of the Prevost Headquarters facility in Sainte-Claire, Québec.
Earlier in the year, on a whim, I sent an email to Prevost to see if they offered tours of their manufacturing plant near Prevost Headquarters, which was just 30 minutes south of our campground.
Tinkerbell is a conversion motorcoach built on a Prevost chassis. Nothing beats a Prevost bus in terms of ride, safety, and performance on the road. The buses are built to last literally millions of miles.
Prevost offers 24/7 customer service in support of their products. There are only 5,000 or so Prevost conversion motorcoaches on the road today. Each conversion coach is a one-off in terms of the conversion (ours is a Country Coach), butt the bus chassis remains the same. This enables Prevost to provide top-notch customer care for any issue related to the chassis, regardless of the age of the bus.
Most of the repairs we’ve had to do on Tinkerbell have been with the “house” side of things, not the chassis. The one big ($$$) repair we did on the chassis was to replace the slide bearings and bladder. That is something most Prevost slide conversions have to do nearing the 20-year mark.
We did the repair at a Prevost facility outside of Los Angeles this past summer. Rumor has it Prevost is looking to build a facility closer to Phoenix in the next year or two (that would be awesome!!!!)
Our tour conductor greeted us with a big, welcoming smile outside of Prevost Headquarters.
Eugene Prevost was an enterprising carpenter. In 1924, he built his first wooden coach body and mounted it on a truck chassis.
After touring the manufacturing facility (we weren’t allowed to take pictures due to proprietary parts and processes), Marco took us to the house where Clarisse and Eugene raised their family. The house is now a Prevost Museum.
In 1957, the company began building comfortable and reliable buses for intercity travel. Today, Prevost is owned by Volvo Bus Corporation.
Later, we drove to the Prevost repair facility, which is close to the campground. Tink needed some minor body work done on her front bumper.
While camping in Quebec, I did a morning Ziggywalk almost every day. I just followed the roads, most of which had nice walking/cycling paths adjacent to the traffic lanes. The homes I saw on my walk were nothing short of magnificent. I’ll share a few with you:
Most homes lining the St. Lawrence River were traditional with a French castle-like flair. Occasionally, I’d see contemporary or modern homes, which were equally stunning.
While Ziggy and I walked and looked at HGTV-worthy houses, Jay explored a different kind of house inside the campground:
A plaque in front of the Shack says (in French of course) the original building was built in 1863.
Naturally, Jay became good friends with the campground owner, Martine. Jay asked him about the little Sugar Shack cabin near the River.
Martine invited us to join him this winter to make the 2025 batch of maple syrup. Jay seriously considered the opportunity. I told him since it inevitably would involve copious amounts of snow and strong winds, that would be one adventure he would be doing without me 😉
When Ziggy and I returned from our walk and when Jay returned from his Sugar Shack tour, we opened the door to Tinkerbell.
Frankie greeted us with the new yoga pose he had been practicing all morning:
Coming Up: Deuxiéme Partie – Ville de Québec!
Tinkerbell's Travels 
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