Waking up in Trois-Rivières, I discovered that there's also a Fromagerie Victoria here and not just in Victoriaville. This is the place I was very excited to visit last year, where you can watch them make cheese as you wait for your breakfast involving said cheese.

They may not make the cheese in-house in Trois-Rivières, but stopping at the Fromagerie Victoria was still an easy decision.

Following breakfast, we drove for an hour to Victoriaville and their indoor skatepark. Isy still had some schoolwork to do, so I played the role of the youngster, yelling up to her so she could check out my new grind as she worked away on the 2nd floor balcony that overlooks Local Skateparc.

Afterwards we headed south to the American border.

Now growing up where I grew up, Montreal and Vermont seemed like two places far apart. In recent years, I was shocked to learn that Burlington Vermont and Montreal are only 90 minutes apart. Can you imagine having exciting, new cities so accessible?

And so we drove south and a tiny bit west, for 2.5 hours from Victoriaville and over to St. Albans Town, Vermont. I fully expected to come across at least one abandoned house as we drove through the farmland of Quebec's Eastern Townships - but once again, there was a dearth of abandoned houses in this area and I only found the above barn about 3 minutes before the border crossing. It didn't seem worth fighting through the deep snow to check out in the fading light.

I then violated one of my cardinal life rules by crossing into America at a tiny backwoods crossing. This was especially egregious this evening, because we would drive right on to I-89 about 20 minutes later.

The reason I have this rule is because the other time I went to a backwoods border crossing was upstate New York in 2011, where two border guards pulled me inside to look through my camera, ask me about my work, talk to me about the paper industry, ask me about Corner Brook - basically anything they could do to kill time, while no one else went through the crossing as I stood at the counter for 30 minutes.

Returning to today and pulling up to the Alburg Springs crossing which was just a brick house and a guy leaning on a windowsill, one of the first questions was why we were out here instead of on the interstate. Hoo boy, here we go. I explained to the guy that we were road tripping around and wanted to see the countryside instead of the interstate and simply ended up here by chance.

Thankfully this seemed satisfactory. The guy had a few more questions but he was nice and overall, Alburg Springs went a lot better than that one near Plattsburgh.

Of course we celebrated with some Vermont Taco Bell in St. Albans Town. Fun fact: this would be the Taco Bell Bernie Sanders would hit if he needed some while at his lake house.

There may not be a lot of Taco Bells in northern Vermont, but that's not the sole reason we came to St. Albans Town. St. Johnsbury also has a Taco Bell, but that seemed a bit too far - except that now looking at Google, I see that the much bigger and notable St. Johnsbury is closer to Victoriaville than St. Albans Town. Whoops!

Oh well. I've been to St. Johnsbury if only for a few minutes back in 2014, so it was cool to see somewhere completely new and St. Albans Town would provide that in a small town north of Burlington. Checking out new things up here was important, because if I were to ever leave Newfoundland, I certainly wouldn't find myself in northern Vermont as often. (Unless of course, I live out the dream of learning French and getting season tickets for the Victoriaville Tigres.)

So sticking to towns just across the border in Vermont because we didn't want to spend all of our time driving, the three shire towns (county seats) up here included a drive-thru village, the smallish Newport where they unimpressively demolished an entire downtown block, and the county seat of St. Albans Town which looked big enough for an overnight stay.

Now that we were here and had taken in some of St. Albans Town, I was happy to sit back in the living room of our basement AirBNB with a refreshing citrus beverage and Children of Men on the TV.

Oh yeah, the liquor store we stopped at had Zima. Score!

We eventually decided to go out for a late night snack, but the restaurants were already closing even though it wasn't very late (it was like 9pm). We clearly weren't in Burlington or St. Johnsbury anymore.

While asking at the restaurant about food, we were also interested in a drink and the waitress pointed us towards Kingman Street, aka the local bar district.

Doing a little pub tour here in St. Albans Town, we had a pretty good time at Shooter's, J.W. Ryan's & Nelly's. Most of them even had the hockey game on!

I guess that's the benefits of only being 22km from the Canadian border? Ha.

The next morning we drove to the top of a downtown parking garage to get a better view over the city. In the above picture you can see Shooter's Saloon and their patio on the left, along with a good example of the gorgeous stone and brick buildings that lined the other side of Kingman Street.

The red brick building you see is the old St. Albans Fire Hall, built in 1896, and eventually renovated into the main office of the Peoples Trust Company.

After the parking garage, we headed around the town's central Taylor Park and towards the Franklin County Courthouse. Taylor Park used to be the town commons, where the major stagecoach route stretched from Burlington, along Taylor Park's west side, and up to Montreal.

Across Church Street stood the Franklin County Courthouse, built in 1874 at a cost of $75,000. Previous courthouse proceedings were held in Hathaway's Tavern between 1795 and 1803, but I don't think I need to count Hathaway's in terms of visiting courthouses since it was more of an informal courthouse space.

From 1800 to 1803, a courthouse was erected on a property gifted to the town by Hathaway and Colonel Halloway Taylor. A simple wooden structure built for $5000, the town would obviously outgrow the structure in due time.

After serving for nearly 70 years, the old courthouse was replaced with the 1872 version. The book History of Franklin & Grand Isle Counties by Lewis Cass Aldrich states that, "This structure while not absolutely devoid of ornamentation is nevertheless an exceeding plain building. It is of brick, with granite foundations and sanded trimmings. At the front corners are towers extending not far above the roof. The interior presents a more attractive appearance than the outside, from the fact that convenience, comfort and the entire safety of public records seem to have controlled the mind of its architect rather than a desire to produce something beautiful."

St. Albans Town actually has an impressive collection of buildings from different architectural styles, attributed to the fact that the town suffered numerous extensive fires which flattened buildings and left the prosperous and prominent St. Albans Town rebuilding with newer architectural styles.

I thought maybe the old courthouse burned in one of these fires, but now I know the town simply outgrew it.

We didn't go into Taylor Park because of the snow, so instead here's one of the many fine homes which line the main thoroughfare into St. Albans Town.

As we left and headed back towards Canada, I knew this visit had bumped up my opinion of Vermont even more. We even found a plaza where there was only a closed flooring store, where the front curb was dry and I was able to bust out some manuals on my bike. What a great trip to Vermont.

The other day someone tweeted about ranking the New England states and I think it goes: Massachusetts (1), Maine (2), Vermont (3), Connecticut (4), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (6).

Today we were headed up to Drummondville, a 2 hour drive from St. Albans Town. I would have been happy to stay at the Motel Blanchette that I stayed at 9 years ago, but as always, I did my due diligence and checked out the other options.

It's there on Booking.com that I noticed the Hotel-Motel Drummond offered a series of suites for only about $25 more than a normal room. Clicking through the pictures and descriptions, how could I not get the room with the wavy mirrors and heart-shaped tub?? This was going to be a hilarious surprise.

And so, Isy stayed in the car when we arrived, while I went inside to retrieve the key. Pulling around back, we fished out all of our luggage and made for the stairs. Just as we crested the top and I struggled with the bags, Isy offered up, "you know, we should go to one of those cheesy roadside motels with cement cherubs and vibrating beds down in New Mexico or Arizona or wherever in the Southwest. Do those still exist?"

Turning my whole upper body as if I was blown away by this idea, I was actually using my shoulders to block our room's nameplate which read Honeymoon Suite inside the shape of a heart. This was just too perfect and I mentally told myself to calm down and carefully not fumble the keys and screw up this moment.

"Oh yeah, yeah, we should do that sometime..."

With impeccable timing, I pushed open the motel door and it wasn't one of those heavy ones that automatically closes. As it swung open, before us was the heart-shaped tub, the wavy mirrors, the fake roses, the frosted glass, the sliding bathroom door.

It was everything you could ever want in a Drummondville motel room. Or even a motel room in Santa Fe, Tucson or Tucumcari!

Isy couldn't believe that I somehow answered her New Mexico/Arizona request in a matter of 4 seconds, lol.

Oh yeah, there was also a pink crystal chandelier, haha.

I got Isy to take a sweet picture of me lounging naked in this tub and I can now assure you that y'all are going to be psyched when you receive your 2021 Christmas cards.

Don't forget to get your addresses send over to me!

We were up in Drummondville this afternoon because the Voltiguers were taking on the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada in one of my favourite arenas. In addition, the Voltiguers had an exciting roster consisting of a whole bunch of drafted NHLers and future NHLers.

With poutine and glass seats, could my birthday weekend get any better?

Tonight was a teddy bear toss game, where everyone brings stuffed animals and throws them on the ice after the first goal (the bears go to charity). We'd went out of our way to grab a stuffed animal from the Rite-Aid in St. Albans Town before it closed at 8pm last night, but showing up just 1 minute into the game, Nicolas Guay had already scored for the home Voltiguers at 0:27.

The Voltiguers ended up winning 10-3 versus the overmatched Armada, with Isy and I loving Dawson Mercer scoring two and Maxime Comtois scoring another.

We sat around for a while after the game had concluded, lamenting that this was the last game of the trip and how we might not find ourselves in Drummondville again anytime soon. Not to mention I also had a good amount of beer left.

"Why don't you just take it with you?" Isy inquired & soon enough, my Drummondville branded Le Bockale Voltiguers tallboy was walking along Rue Cockburn outside the Centre Marcel Dionne. It was comically easy to leave with the beer and such a better option than chugging it down.

You may think we met our poutine quota by this point, but we had to have one at the game since Drummondville's arena does them so well. That left us not too hungry afterwards, but we remained interested in having some more drinks since the Chiefs and Raiders were still playing at this early, 6 o'clock hour.

The one Drummondville bar we knew about was quite fancy to sit around and watch football, so we instead went for an exploratory stroll down Rue Heriot. Along the way we came across Drummondville's handsome, stone Anglican Church. Not having explored Drummondville very much on foot, I felt like I was in a strange and new part of town.

(Looking at a map now, I see that the St-Georges Anglican Church is 150 metres from the Catholic church I photographed on my first visit to Drummondville, lol.)

Just as I was starting to argue for one or two more streets while things were looking bleak, dark and closed, we finally came to a plaza with lights and the words Resto-Bar Billiards in the upstairs windows.

We'd arrived at the Salon de Billard Heriot (Heriot Pool Hall), even if we struggled with the locked-up downstairs and finally determining that the funky, elaborate stairs led up to where we wanted to be.

The inside was a huge space, with pillars and ceilings that made it seem like this bar had been here a while. And while I thought it might simply be that 90s decor of high ceilings and poles like East Side Mario's or Johnny Shotz, this was actually an old factory where they made stockings and leggings.

Following the post-war wealth boom in America, a lot of Canadian cities worked to entice American companies into building factories by offering them free land or huge tax breaks.

Butterfly Hosiery likely had a lot of suitors since it was the largest stocking manufacturer in the world, with 30 active mills in the US, producing 30000 socks daily, with annual sales of $25 million. Drummondville was able to seduce them into building a factory here by offering them 20 tax-free years.

I didn't even have to ask for the Chiefs-Raiders game to be put on, it was just on, so we took two seats at a poker table below one of the televisions. I then got too loud as I excitedly explained things about football and the Oakland Coliseum and Dawson Mercer and whatever other nonsense I was carrying on about. Eventually some men would come over, but it was only because they had reserved the poker table for their weekly tournament. They told me I was free to join them, but you know what they say about a poker table where you can't spot the fish. I politely declined the invitation of the main guy with his sly smile.

Anyway, the Chiefs beat the Raiders (as they do), and then we headed back to our motel. The next day we had to return the rental car in Montreal by noon and our flight wasn't until 5 o'clock, but we also had a lot of luggage and were pretty beat, so we didn't dawdle around in the city.

We ended up taking the bus shuttle out to the airport soon after, before chilling at Montreal Trudeau, then heading to Toronto, then finally up to Deer Lake.

Fantastic birthday times in Quebec.