What is all the fuss about Poutine?

Last night we spent a horrific night in a campground in Lancaster Ontario. If you read the blog entry about the trains in Montana, that was nothing in comparison to last night's adventures.  When we booked in the lady at the desk asked if we would like a pull through directly across from the beach.  She said that it was also close to the showers, laundry and restaurant.  She also said that the restaurant had a bar in it.  We told that is sounded great.  We would be able to go and relax in a bar after setting up.  She did say that there was going to be a dart tournament banquet. There was also free wifi if you sat on the patio of the bar. So at a mere $50 for the night we took the site. 

First of all, it was not a pull through in fact the roadway around the site was cutoff with huge boulders to keep cars off the roadway.  So Ray backed in the trailer in and we got it nicely set up.  Inside, there was broken glass all over the place!  Two of the cupboards had bounced open one being the cupboard with the dishes in it.  The plates were sitting on the edge, just teetering waiting for one more jolt!  The roads had been a bit rough in places!

As we need fuel, we unhooked and drove back to the cut off for the highway where we had seen the gas stations.  We drove into the Village of Lancaster to an RV store as Ray needed to buy a teflon disc (goes on the nose of the hitch which fits into the hitch,,,,, or something like that).  After coming back to the site, we had a quick bite to eat and then took the laptop over to the Bar.  Inside they were setting up for what appeared to be a small banquet, so we went directly out to the patio where the wifi was.  It really was beautiful sitting there looking out at the sandy beach of the Lake St Francis.  We did what we had to do on the laptop and headed back to our site.  We were tired so decided to pack it in early and were in bed by 9:30

I am not sure at what point the music started but it all of a sudden seemed to be awfully loud.  We listened to Shania Twain, Madonna and many more tunes for awhile.  By 11:00 I got up and took a gravol and turned on the bathroom fan hoping to drown out the music.  At about 0100 Ray woke me up cursing at the noise level.  I had been asleep but was now fully awake.  Ray had not slept a wink!  The music was so loud and the bass was unbelievable.  Ray decides that he is going to into the bar and ask them how much longer they were going to keep it up.  He waited until 0200 and then went over.  He did not go in, but spoke to some "drunk" people outside who it was shutting down.  We listened to the thumping of the bass until just about 0300!  Needless to say there was no one sleeping in our fifth wheel!!!  Who would put a bar in a campground?  I mean really!!!!

We were on the road again by 0800.  Lancaster is about 40 minutes from the Ontario Quebec border, so we quickly found ourselves in Quebec.  For the first few miles the roads were incredibly nice!  Once we hit Montreal that soon changed.  I am not sure if you recall hearing on the news the story about some of the overpasses in Montreal that had chunks of cement falling onto the roadway.  Well we did not see anything fall, but there were so many places that had steel netting holding pieces of cement in place.  At one point Ray saw a section where pieces of cement were gone right down to the rusted out rebarr!  Montreal has one very big job to fix their road structure before it falls apart!

While travelling in Ontario all the road signs are in both English and French, especially areas close to the Quebec border.  But on entering into Quebec, you leave the English behind you.  All signage was in French only.  Most of the signs we had no trouble figuring out what they were.  The saddest thing that we saw was the lack of reference to Canada.  The Fleurdelise was proudly flying, but no Canadian flags flying anywhere!  There appeared to be no issue with the American flag.

While driving in small town Ontario, we noticed "Chip" trucks set up everywhere.  Roadsides, parking lots just everywhere!  You could buy chips there and also poutine.  But as poutine is a French Canadian dish, we had decided that when we got into Quebec we would try some poutine from the province where it actually came from. 

We pulled off the highway and went into the little town of Magnamy.  We were on a Mission to find some poutine.  We spotted a burger joint called Le Volu Cafe.  So we pulled into their somewhat small parking lot which was a bit of a feat considering we are pulling an extra 26 feet.  We managed to get parked.  There was a Tim Hortons across the street from this little cafe, so if there was no poutine, then we would just settle on a healthy bowl of soup.  We went into the cafe and with some difficulty reading the menu we spotted Poutine.  We put in an order to share and then took our seats.  This is what arrived at our table:

 

Look at the size of those curds!!!  Just to give you the correct view of how big this is,,,here is another picture of the biggest cheese curd that I have ever seen!

 



 

 

Is that not disgusting!!??  With 46 grams of fat and 2020 mg of sodium, it is a heart attack in a bowl.  so my question is.... What is all the fuss about Poutine anyway?