Eight years, day three

There was much for me to be excited about for day three.  Ever since I was small, I have loved sleigh rides (even though once, for my birthday I was chasing after it and tripped in a hoof print and smashed my nose on the wagon).  I had wanted one for our wedding, but we just couldn't make it work, and in the end it was just as well because the temperature with the wind chill had been in the -40C area.

Brilliant Julien (from the hotel) helped me find a place for the ride, and we chose Ferme Duquette near Val-David.   Martin asked what we were doing, and I tossed out that we were zip-lining, but I am not sure he heard me say that I was totally lying, so I suspect he was a wee bit nervous as I made him drive 45 minutes away from the hotel.   The weather could not have been more perfect but I made sure that we had warm (if somewhat mismatched) clothes.

The two horses were gorgeous (Belgians I think), and oh how beautifully they were trained!  A click or a whisper from the driver was all it took for them to do his bidding.   Bundled up in the back, we drove right past the amusing WOAH sign, and into the forest.  The horses were so familiar with the 5 km sleigh-only trail and seemed to know instinctively when to speed up in order to crest the hill.   Consequently, the ride was smooth as  chocolate mousse. The swoosh of the runners was accompanied by the delicate clicks and trills of chickadees.  The gang of flirty woodpeckers were a surprise because I always thought they were solitary birds.   It was bright and crisp, but we were warm enough under the blankets.  We smiled, the whole way.

We got a bit lost on the drive home because the instructions I printed from google for the back roads had street names that didn't match, and the GPS couldn't pick up a signal.  It was all part of the adventure, but that is when I started to get cold.  With only a half tank of gas, in a rural area of Quebec where it can be a bit more difficult to understand the colloquial French, we did not want to get truly lost.    So we backtracked a bit, picked up the highway again and returned to the hotel.  It didn't take long to get warmed through with the massage tub and the fireplace!  We followed that up by more reading out loud (get that book, please).

A more perfect day cannot be imagined!