I was not supposed to make much progress today towards going back south again. The idea is that I would drive the short trip to Godbout, hopefully using some of the available time to wash the car, take the ferry to Matane, which would put me there at about 4:15 pm, allowing a couple of hours of driving before settling down at a motel.

How the best laid plans go awry! First, no suitable car wash place, open on Saturday, was found. After an uneventful trip in which my GPS found the ferry sinking from a departure height of 45 ft above sea level to 30 ft below, excellent roads were driven, but motel rooms proved unavailable. At least in all of New Brunswick. Apparently it was some sort of special day in Canada. My weekly planner does not show anything at this time, but I seem to have a vague memory of something being up anyway.

There was a kind lady in Saint Quentin, (not in a baggy striped suit, no, but in a quite short skirt and horn-rimmed glasses,) who had a friend who might be able to rent me her three-room apartment for the day. When that did not work out, she found someone who was renting cottages and was willing to let me have one for comparatively little money. Unfortunately, I had a heck of a time finding the dirt road on which the said cottages would be, and when I finally did, the first house on the road had a loose rather big dog who apparently felt his domain was being invaded and was trying to climb into Bozo. The dog's house did not seem to be the one, since I did not see any cottages and there were two trailer tractors in the lot. But the other lots on the dirt road did not have cottages either, as far as I saw, and after nearly stranding Bozo in ditch in a stranger's yard, I decided I had had enough of exploring dirt roads by night in a lowered Miata.

So I kept going, hoping that an isolated place on the major highways might be removed enough from the revelry to have some rooms. Fat chance. After the lady of the second Best Western tonight thought the best bet for me might be to try Fredericton, if there was a best bet, I decided to stop listening to ladies and instead escape back over the border. Beyond the border, the single available motel was still booked solid; apparently these Canadians do not miss such a trick either. But continuing down I 95, for a long stretch, there was a second motel, and it had a vacancy sign out! I had to ring the lady out of bed (it said 24 hour service - ring bell on the door), but I probably saved someone's life there. Heck, probably mine.

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