Alps' Roads Special - Montréal Road Meet

Montréal Road Meet, May 28, 2011

My route went up quickly and came back... well, it actually kept going up after the meet before coming back down. I headed into New York via NJ 23, Clinton Rd., Warwick Tpk., NY 94, and NY 17A to NY 17. My route to Québec was then NY 30. Just 30. Okay, there was a slight detour via NY 421 for an easy clinch. 30 turned into QC 138 at the border, which I followed to QC 132 to Delson and the meet the next day at Como Pizzeria. The meet went east to A-15, straight north onto A-20, and exited at QC 112 and Pont Victoria for our first stop and the meet photo:


From left to right: Oscar Voss, Alexandre Bourcier, Carl Tessier, moi (I'm all French-like, see?), Félix, Maxime Lesperance, Send Help Sign, Doug Kerr, and Anthony Costanzo.

The meet continued over the bridge into Montréal, then up to A-10 west, A-720 north, and the once-proposed route of 720 along Blvd. Notre-Dame to Ave. Souligny. The next stop was north across the new A-25 toll bridge, finally completing the Autoroute. We then headed back west on A-440, south on A-15 and the depressed section of Autoroute Décarie, and west on the reversed-roadway section of A-20 to QC 138 and Pont Honoré-Mercier. We followed QC 132 east to newly christened A-730, up to the new A-30 St-Constant/Ste-Catherine bypass, and east to A-15 NB (the temporary continuation of A-30 until the last piece was opened to the east) to drop a few people off. For those who remained, the after-meet festivities headed west and visited A-30 construction along QC 132, QC 205, QC 236, and other crossroads. We stopped briefly at the Beauharnois Dam on the west side of the QC 132 bridge, and continued west through the tunnel to check out construction along A-530 (formerly part of 30, but that was rerouted across the river to end at the former A-540). The route back was up QC 201 (with a detour via old 132 and 201 through Salaberry-de-Valleyfield), east on A-20 (with a detour along the water to see more A-30 construction), and into Montréal to see old signs on Blvd. Newman. We ate there and parted ways; I went north on A-15 to clinch QC 134 and stayed up that way.
The next day, I went to Québec City on A-20, then circled around on QC 132 to QC 175 and over the old Pont de Québec. I tooled around Québec City, picking up A-573, the eastern A-540, A-740, and around A-40 and A-73 to both halves of A-440. From there, I followed QC 138 EB to QC 381 all the way up to La Baie, Saguenay, for La Pyramide des Ha! Ha!. It's as funny as it sounds and a must-see. I then headed west on QC 372 to Chicoutimi, also part of Saguenay, for the old Pont Sainte-Anne. I finished up with a few bridges in Jonquière (guess what city it's now a part of) and came back on QC 170 to A-70. I headed back west on QC 170 and dropped down QC 175 back into Québec City, picking up A-973 in the process. Stopping for a bridge on Rue de la Pointe-aux-Lièvres, I pivoted east on QC 138, back west from the beginning of A-40, and across the St. Lawrence River on A-73 back toward home.
But before going home, I had to get my short-lived clinch of the Autoroute system. (It's constantly being added to with construction.) So I went east on A-20 until it ended, then east some more until it began again, until it finally ended for the last time in Mont-Joli. Since I just traveled all of 20, I came back using only QC 132, with a loop around former QC 185 to pick up what has been built of A-85. The next morning, returning to Québec City, I came south on A-73, marking my system clinch when I reached the end and jogged over to QC 173. It was back across the border to Maine on US 201, clinching that and US 201A, then heading west on US 2 through Maine and New Hampshire into Vermont, also clinching that route and VT 214 along the way. I headed south on VT 12 until it became NH 12, all the way down to NH 32, then west on NH 119 into Vermont. Out of daylight, my route home was simply US 5, I-91 through MA to CT, I-84 to NY, I-684, and I-287 into NJ. All I'll say is, it's hard not to have fun when you clinch a large, far-flung freeway system and see a pyramid made of nearly 3,000 identical road signs along the way.

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