And so it came to pass that after a day and a half in Quebec City, Nina and I felt the need to meander. Gourmet fruit cakes and lovely old village landmarks notwithstanding, Quebec is a small place with small things in mind, and we are big-spirited people with square glasses. And so I braved the -20 degree Celsius, and weathered the snow nine blocks (all the way) to the Hertz rental car office on Le Grande-Allée, a relatively wide, beautifully shoveled approach to the center of town, ignoring entirely the historic plains across the street that were once the scene of a decisive battle in the Seven Years’ War that ultimately led to the establishment of Canada as a British colony, despite its French history.

After a minute of conversing in French, the Hertz rental officer and I complicitly completed the rental transaction of a gigantic mini van in heavily accented English. And so it was that on the third day of our restful stay in Quebec City, Nina and I pumped up the heat in the front two of a 7-seated white minivan and departed for an epic twenty minute journey to Île d’Orléans, a large, but sparsely populated island in the St. Lawrence river, where I had arranged for a dog sledding expedition that afternoon.

Just on the mainland side of the bridge to Île d’Orléans lie Montmorency Falls, the largest falls in Quebec Province and taller than Niagra Falls by 30 meters. After a brief sojourn in the visitors’ center restrooms (with the obligatory iPhone email check on the freely accessible wifi – a Quebec standard amenity), we continued the crossing to the island.

Soon after fording the St. Lawrence to the island, Nina decided that it was time to eat. And when Nina says it’s time to eat, we eat. After inquiring in the local boucherie, the only open establishment in the area near the bridge, manned entirely by young girls, the single meaty butcher girl who spoke the “very well English” told us in well broken English that there was a restaurant, La Goéliche, in Sainte-Pétronille, a town down the road. We bought some of the oldest cheese in North America but none of the raw meats, and carried on with hopes high of an impending authentic, rural, Quebecois island meal.

Entering Sainte-Pétronille meant pulling into the parking lot of the tourist chocolate shop, the only establishment in town. There we discovered that we were not the only tourists on the island – a strange older single man and a mainlander-looking couple were loitering inside. We joined them briefly perusing imported Swiss and Belgian chocolates at reasonable prices as if discovering hidden treasures of a long lost island peoples. The cash register was efficiently manned by a small-town goth girl who I don’t think was honestly that depressed. I made the obligatory inspection of the wifi situation in the toilet and we returned to the giant minivan.

Driving a few dozen meters down the road, we came upon La Goéliche, a charming waterfront hotel proudly overlooking its vast separation from the city of Quebec. The hotel was home to the restaurant where the butcher girl had said we could find a meal. After a few moments of purporting to admire the view, in spite of the -20 degree Celsius, I began a lively conversation in French with the hotel manager about the possibility of us working out a mutually-agreeable feeding arrangement. The hotel manager did not for a second make me feel as if my french was less than perfectly fluent, and I at once acknowledged that despite the inconspicuous setting, we had finally found someone who knows how to treat guests.

The hotel manager was clearly very sorry that the kitchen had just closed until later that evening. He began to call the other restaurants on the island in search on our behalf for a nice place to eat. With the formality and courteousness of his telephone demeanor as he pushed forth our case to the other restaurateurs on the island, one would never have supposed that we were on the tip of a desolate island with nary a village with more than ten houses.

As I was fully enamored of the man, perfectly combed hair included, Nina unbeknownst to me, was dangerously eying the fixed-price 9-course gourmet local-celebrity-chef New Years Eve dinner menu advertised by a printout on the front desk. After several moments, the hotel manager succeeded, as did Nina, and we left La Goéliche with a lunch reservation at a restaurant in Saint-Laurent-de-l’Ile-d’Orleans, the next town over, as well as a New Years Eve dinner reservation at La Goéliche.

En route to Saint-Laurent-de-l’Ile-d’Orleans, we passed an open grocery store. Following explicit instructions from my travel companion, I reversed the giant minivan into the parking lot, locking the doors with the wireless keychain out of ingrained paranoia. Based on our delays in finding a meal, in correlation to the imminent dog sledding reservation, we decided to buy some fodder in the grocery shop and skip he restaurant meal. Picking up a mysterious hand-wrapped sandwich for me, some stale bread crackers for Nina, and water for the car, we continued on to the dog sledding site, biting and munching along the way.

At long last, we found the signs for the dog sledding expeditions. The hill up to the expedition location was blocked by an SUV skidding in place. Using city person intimidation techniques, I drove halfway up the hill, and pulled the car behind them, waiting and watching in silence…. Eventually, the driver voluntarily let the SUV slip backwards into the side of the road, thereby giving me room to continue up the hill, and guaranteeing a more difficult time getting himself out of his predicament.

However, by stopping the car halfway up the hill, I had lost momentum. We were also skidding in place. So I backed the giant minivan down the hill, giving enough room for a throttled head-start, and gained enough momentum and traction to get us up the hill, past the looks of desperation from the passengers of the other car, and onward and upwards to a place where motors weren’t necessary and where the transportation mechanism of choice, optimized by generations for such suboptimal conditions, would lick the snow while trotting over it handily.