It was an early start, however, because Darren and Rachel had things to do, places to go and people to see prior to setting off to work and of course they would want to make sure that the house was properly locked up before leaving.

That’s not a problem to me. I went off in search of a car wash as the Dodge was rather dirty.

I didn’t think to take a photo of it before I washed it, but this is what it was like at Paradise River in Labrador after 500kms of dirt road. There was another 1400kms to travel after this photo so that you can work out for yourselves how the Dodge ended up.

That little search took me to Perth Andover where for just $3:00 I gave the Dodge the works and it looks a little more respectable now.

From there, I found a little spot by the Saint John River to write up my notes and do some work on the laptop before finding a convenient Tim Horton’s by the Trans Canada Highway to upload everything.

On the way back to Centreville I went for an explore down a couple of old sectors of “Trans Canada 1”, the first go at the Trans-Canada Highway before the road was widened and realigned.

There was a church there in Lahue Road, an old cut-off sector, that caught my eye and so I went for a prowl around the cemetery. It seemed that everyone in there was called Pierce. That’s hardly surprising – these areas were opened up after the resolution of the border issues with the USA in 1847 and it would be quite common for just one pioneer family to open up the first farmstead and as the sons came of age and married, the surrounding forest would be cut down and the area of farming land would expand to provide work and produce for the new families.

What had caught my eye however were the foundations of an old bridge. There was a railway line up the Saint John valley I remember reading somewhere that it came to grief when the railway bridge was swept away by a huge ice floe.

Of course, I have no evidence to suggest that this might have been it, but I can always make further enquiries at a later date.

And I almost bought a vehicle to day, and I bitterly regret that I didn’t because apart from one small thing, it would have been perfect for me. When I tell you what it costs me to hire a vehicle every time that I come over, you would die of shock, as I regularly do. In the 5 years that I’ve been coming here I could have bought several new ones.

But a local garage owner, whom I know, phoned me to tell me of a vehicle that he had just taken in part exchange. It’s a 2008 GMC Canyon extended-cab pickup, 4-wheel drive with off-road pack, underguards and side fenders and all of this kind of thing, and a 6-foot pickup bed. It would have been mine for something like $6,000 or so, and so I immediately dashed round.

But there’s an issue with these vehicles. A straight-6 engine wouldn’t fit in the wheelbase so they had to chop off a cylinder to make a straight-5, and this causes the oil pump to be off-centre. Consequently, there’s not enough oil reaching one of the end cylinders and so they are notorious for burning out a valve after about 160,000 kms and this manifests itself in a chronic misfire that costs thousands of dollars to fix (it’s a waste of time rebuilding a standard cylinder head and even a bigger waste of time buying a second-hand head).

So Darren started it up and, sure enough, it has a misfire and 167,000 kms on the clock.

You’ve no idea how disappointed I am because this would have been exactly the vehicle that would have done me for all around Labrador and places like this, and with a pop-up camper on the pick-up bed it would have been perfect. Apart from the misfire it was in perfect condition and a credit to its previous owner.

Still, if it’s a suspect vehicle, it’s a suspect vehicle and that is that.

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