Unexpectedly today was about the drive. The drive from Andorra to Toulouse was only about 180 kilometers but google had it at nearly 3 hours in a car so I had an idea that it might be an interesting 3 hours. We were not in a big hurry to get going because as we reenter France we have to deal with the French lunch. Many campgrounds close for 2 to 3 hours mid-day, the one we were aiming at was closed from noon to 2:30 according to their website.
We spent about 30 minutes steadily climbing out of the valley we had been in towards the ski resort part of Andorra which is closer to France. The roads were pretty good. After we passed thru the ski-resorts the road began to climb even more. When we first saw the snow in front of us I told Ton we probably wouldn’t get that high but we nearly did.
We would have climbed up to the snow but we instead opted to take an expensive tunnel that kept us from continuing to climb. We were in the minority as most traffic opted to take a long series of switchbacks over the mountain we drove thru. As we were pulling into the toll booth the light rain we had been driving in was starting to turn into snow flurries so I felt ok with our choice to be wimps.
As soon as we exited the tunnel we entered France, though we did go thru an unmanned border crossing a couple of kilometers later. The drive down was on steep roads with a fair amount of switchbacks, for a few kilometers it was quite foggy which had our speeds down to a crawl. After the fog it rained most of the way down into Toulouse.
Despite the weather and the steep road we were still ahead of our 2:30 arrival so I pulled into a SuperU grocery to allow Ton some recreational shopping. After about 45 minutes we left with a handful of things including some white Asparagus that Ton wants to try her hand at cooking.
We finally arrived at the campground about 3pm only to find that it was still closed. I found a place on the road to park and walked up to the gate to see if I could see anyone. I finally located a maintenance guy who opened the gate and showed us to a spot and told me to go pay at 5pm.