… my quest for a slide-in camper.

This is how I shall be spending a good deal of the remainder of my stay here in Canada – in a tent. The cost of the tent, the mat, the sleeping bag and the fees for the campsite for tonight in the hills of Vermont came in total to less than the cost of a night’s stay in that motel at Auburn the other night. Based on the average of $70 for a reasonable motel and $30 for a campsite, I’ll get my money back in two nights. It’s not quite the camp camp of 2007 and 2008, but it’s good enough.

But it’s only going to be like this for a week or so because I have found a plan C and I’ve put that into effect, based on the plan that what I want will be made and installed on my truck in just 6 days’ time (unexpected delays excepted) and cost me just $1650 installed on the truck and out of the door, taxes included.

This afternoon I found a manufacturer of truck caps in Burlington, Vermont, and they will make me a fibreglass camper back truck cap specially designed for living in, complete with anti-condensation, heat and noise insulation. There’s one window on the passenger side, a sliding window that opens as you like it, and also a sliding window at the front through which you can feed your electrical cables and the like.

What has made me take this step was that I finally found a place with a slide-in camper that would have fitted on Strider. And at $11600 it would have been a good deal. But it wasn’t a pop-up and so the centre of gravity would be all wrong. They could have supplied a pop-up camper if I could wait until Spring, or also a very mini slide-in camper even smaller than a standard slide-in, and that price was unbeatable at $6100

But then comes the rub.

On top of this there’s sales tax. Not quite the 20% VAT but sales tax all the same. And then there’s the fittings and electrics. All in all, we were talking $9500 on the road – $3400 over the list price. And that makes me feel that the deal that I was offered by Harveys RV (a 2004 model for $2750 fastened on the truck and out of the gate) was a pure red herring.

But reviewing weights, fuel consumption and all kinds of things like that, a slide-in camper is not the way to go. With a fibreglass truck cap, I can sleep in that when I’m out in the wilderness, and camp in the tent when I’m near a camp site and the weather permits.

And so there we are.

On the subject of motels, this is my room from last night.

The motel is another one which is these days run by Indians (those Indians, not “those” Indians) but it’s clear from the room that its previous owners must have had some very unusual and interesting ideas about their establishment. I did notice somewhere a reference to the “Garden Room” and so I suppose that I must have been in the “Railway Room”.

As for the reference to the “Railway Room”, there’s a good reason for this.

This area was quite an important railway centre at one time (long long ago), being a junction of two major railway lines, one of which was the famous railway line that connected Montreal to the sea coast in the days before icebreakers could keep the port of Montreal free of ice in winter.

Over there where the kiddies’ park is today was formerly the site of a huge roundhouse with tracks for about 15 or so locomotives and a repair and maintenance depot.

Apart from that, we still have a railway station, which is now a gift and novelty shop (and not connected at all to the railway), and also the remains of the platforms and some rails still in situ.

I was half-expecting to find an old steam locomotive on a plinth somewhere but we have to be content with an old disaffected caboose, which everyone knows is a baby Indian. Although that’s not quite true. If a female Indian is a squaw, then a baby Indian is a squawker.

Another thing for which this place is famous is its double-decker bridge. The railway passed over here and over the Connecticut River at something of a height, whereas the road was on a lower level, having wound its way down the banks a little way.

And so when the railway was built, they built a double-decker bridge with the railway above and the road below. I had a good wander around and came across this bridge, and it is quite a good candidate for my bridge, I reckon, although the road bed is no longer there.

I hot the road and headed further north on my way to my final New Hampshire destination but I didn’t go very far before shuddering to a halt again. I had been following a railway line for a while and coming around a bend in the road just outside East Barnet, I came across this extraordinary sight.

There was some kind of circular railway line loop and it was full of old wagons in all kinds of condition, a couple of derelict diesel shunters, but nothing quite as astonishing as the very rusty remains of this steam locomotive.

There are no driving wheels on it so that I can’t say what it is, but it has two four-wheel bogies, one front and one rear and from the distance that I took this photo, I couldn’t tell if they were the original ones.

I would ordinarily have gone to make further enquiries but there were signs all over the place “Keep Out” – “Strictly No Trespassing” and the like and knowing how trigger-happy these paranoid and frightened Americans are these days, the days when you could knock on the door of the average American and engage them in casual conversation are long-gone and the USA is turning into a very unpleasant place.

But abandoning yet another really good rant for the moment, I’ve visited half a dozen more RV dealers, met some friendly and helpful people and yet more unfriendly and unhelpful ones, and some more completely useless salespersons who were completely uninterested in their work.

And hence my decision, which is probably the wrong one and one that I shall come to regret in due course, But I’ve made it and that’s that.

And now that I’ve bought a tent, we’ve had the first rain for about a fortnight.