Roadside Stands - by Dmitry

In North America will little exceptions everything is build for drivers: all drive-through restaurants, motels and all those cool little places where you can not get without a car. This huge world of miles of highways is mostly occupied by chain restaurants, gas station and motels with almost no space for small local buisinesses and anything cozy. I am sorry to say that, but Canada is not that much different from the US in terms of highways. The names of the chains would be different. Somewhere the "Exit" signs will be replaced with "Sortie", but in general highways are the same everywhere.

To make a roadtrip special one can always take local roads (or ask his wife to do that). For the significant loss of time he will be well awarded with a better landscapes and a possibility to take pictures going less than 120 km/h. It is still hard to observe much of the local life even on a smaller roads.

One thing that makes a place special even when you only drive through it is roadside stands. Aside of being a way to get locally grown food those stands could be very interesting as a way to learn more about the place and people who put them up.  

For example, this stand we found in the Amish Country in Pennsylvania.

You can weight tomatoes and leave money. It seems that people trust each other there. 

This one just has a cool neon sign.

Actually, roadside stands in America make me think about ones I have seen back in Russia.  

In central Russia one can find a lot of locally grown vegetabels or wild berries and mushrooms.

You can see eggs on this stand. When they sell milk they usually put white paper in a jar taht looks like milk from a distance so they don't need to have a jar of milk exposed to sun for all day.

In Siberia they sell pine nuts. 

On Ile'd'Orleans in Quebec where they grow a lot of berries, they try to atract your attention with hand made signs.

But the most interesting roadside busines was found looking through old Quebec postcards. 

It seems that roadside ovens to bake bread used to be very popular in Gaspe (a north-eastern part of Quebec). These images look very warm to me. 

This one looks a little fake.

Only one thing about roadside stands is that they don't have them in the winter.