August 20, 2019
After stopping in Saint-Jacques to see the church I decided to make a slight alteration to my route. I wasn’t making very good time on Route 158 and decided to make a right turn on Route 125 and start driving northwest towards Parc National du Mont Tremblant.
Shortly after getting on Route 125 I noticed a low-flying aircraft. I turned around to go back and see it if had landed in a nearby field and this is what I found. Welcome to Parachute Montréal!
These are photos which were on the outside of the building:
I went inside to ask if I could walk around the outside of the facility. I was told that so long as I followed the directions on signs stating where I could NOT go, that was fine. It turns out that I didn’t have to go very far away from the building. Once I was back outside I saw a few people looking up and realized that the airplane I had seen was taking off, not landing and the action was just about to begin.
I sat on the steps of the outside deck, leaned back and spent the next few minutes looking up and snapping photos:
About a dozen parachutes appeared in the sky – some carrying single parachutists and some carrying tandem groups of experienced parachutists with people “along for the ride”.
After everyone was safely on the ground and accounted for the plane which had carried them aloft landed and taxied to a point near where I had parked:
This would be the first of two surprises I would experience today, both the result of last minutes changes in direction of travel.