Day 185: We wake up to the watch alarm and get ready and leave by 6:00. We want to check the bridge for sidewalks, so we drive out Notre Dame to Hwy 138 South. It is an industrial area and the roads are in really terrible shape. We find the bridge and drive across it. There are, in fact, sidewalks. But there is no way to access them on the on-ramps. Also the bridge is clearly posted ‘No Walking’. We turn around in the Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve, and drive back into Montreal.
We drive to our start and stop at Tim Hortons for coffee and ‘Timatins’, the breakfast sandwich. We sit and map out our revised route. We will cross the St. Lawrence on the Jacques Cartier Bridge. Suzanne has told us we can definitely walk across that one. Bob starts walking at 8:50. It is a very late start but we are glad we checked out the other bridge before walking towards it. We have a route that takes Bob down Cote de Neiges. We travel down a steep hill past some fantastic real estate. There are some very old historical buildings and Bob is walking steeply downhill for some time. I get parked eventually after taking a number of scenic one way streets.
The day is sunny and cool. Bob has decided to go ahead across the bridge and we will have lunch on the far side. I drive across and take Hwy 138 west. I pull off and Bob calls to let me know where he is when he is across. We meet up and find out where he can get on Taschereau Blvd. The bridge crossed over Jean Drapeau Park, the site of Expo 67. La Ronde, the amusement park, is still running. We have lunch in Longueuil and carry on. At Hwy 104, we turn west and then south on Hwy 217. We will follow this highway to the border tomorrow. I stop at 40 km at St. Philippe. I know Bob is tired and hurting today. It has been a long one. He arrives at 5:30 and we head back to Suzanne’s house for the last night.
We go in and head straight for the shower. After a refreshing dinner, I do one final load of laundry and we say goodbye. We choose some photos for a news article that Suzanne will translate for the French paper. We set the alarm for 5:40 and we go to sleep.