A mad rush home

Storyline:  Unfinished Roadtrip

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As I dash down the promenade by the river, clouds drawing a curtain over it, I hear music. There seems to be a party next to the Information Centre. People are dancing. No masks!

Feels like I am on a different planet. Can’t see the stage but there is life music and a singer. Someone’s 90^th birthday! What a joy! My eyes fill with tears.

“When was the last time we danced Love?”, I ask Alex back in the van. Perhaps in Morocco, Jan 2020, just before Covid happened and another health issue was revealed to Alex. The pandemic has taken almost 2 years of our lives. What else is around the corner coming at us?

I had crossed under the bridge toward the town in a quest to find a pharmacy. The campground’s receptionist told me there was a shopping mall just after the bridge and a pharmacy inside it. In the dusk, I don’t see a mall. It is Saturday evening and chances to find anything open within walking distance are slim.

I turn back to the campground, sun setting over the mountains on the Quebec side, colouring the clouds with a yellowish brush and connecting the river banks with a golden and reddish path.

Men walking with their fishing rods. Some have already taken the strategic position casting their bait into the waters.

Later, when we ask Mr. Google, it disclosed to us that the pharmacy was in the opposite direction, somewhere up the hill from the campground. Alex has not been feeling well for two days now and I wanted to find some lozenges for his sore throat.

We are in Campbellton, a small New Brunswick (NB) city on the south bank of the Restigouche River opposite Pointe-à-la-Croix, Quebec. The provincial border in the middle of the bridge was a sign welcoming us to NB.

Our fond memories of the only officially bilingual Canadian province date back to 2010.  We left Manoir St. Andre, QC after breakfast with no idea about our next stop. It would be somewhere in NB. There was information centre right at the provincial border. We were greeted by a beaming, genteel lady. They had all kinds of suggestions for us.

There was a good discount they’d give us for the Delta Hotel, Fredericton. Why not! We had time to reach Fredericton. We used the highways then. They were almost empty between the few and far between populated areas. I remember trying a secondary road parallel to the highway just to discover that their smaller roads were not maintained and were hazardous for our then nine-year-old car.

Time spent in the hotel, enjoying the views of the St. John River, sipping wine on the restaurant patio facing the waters, waiters popping behind the glass fence from time to time and snipping a nasturtium flower which they used as decoration to their dishes.

It was then when I discovered these beautiful colourful and edible plants (leaves and flowers). I’d use them in my garden and in my kitchen for years after.

We visited the recommended museums and art galleries and continued to Halifax. The hotel and the service were really great at the time, so much so, that we called them on our way back to see if we still could have the discount. We could and we stayed another 3 nights there, sampling Fredericton restaurants and browsing the shopping malls.

Alas it wasn’t meant to be this time.

We left Percé, Alex still unwell but hoping he’d be better as the day progressed. I led Doranya through another long day of driving the winding roads of the Gaspé Peninsula. Alex was mostly asleep in the reclined passenger seat. Our plans to visit Miguasha National Park with the fossilized fish and plants was shelved for another time.

We settled in the campground and he even managed to hook up the van before disappearing again into bed. I spent the night staring through the window at the lights twinkling over the river. Let’s hope the morning is wiser.

Waking up next morning Alex says “Take me to emergency.” Hmmm, this doesn’t sound good at all. We talk. We are in a small city in the middle of nowhere. There is a small hospital, but they won’t be able to do much.

And although I don’t think it is Covid, still could it be that with his weak immune system he had a break through? If they test him for Covid we’d have to wait and self-isolate in the small space of our campervan. The campground will probably have sites, but will they allow us stay? Travelling during Covid has its own unique challenges. We decided to head for home the fastest way possible.

By now you all know that I hate driving on the speedy highways. But we had to get home as soon as possible. Alex manages to disconnect the utilities, sets his iPhone navigation system and once I drive out of the city he dozes off. The shortest and fastest way cutting through NB on HWY 17 to Trans-Canada HWY 2. The nav system estimate is about 13 hours and about 13K km.

I drive without stops, except for bio-breaks, and hope to reach home in the evening. It is Sunday. The first part of the drive is relatively fast and not too busy. However, once we reached Rivière-du-Loup things slowed down. With construction and heavy traffic, it was almost at a full stop in places. We approached Montreal late in the afternoon.

I still had hopes to get home even if after midnight. Around 10PM we crossed the provincial border and Alex found a Flying J truck stop near Lancaster. At least we are in Ontario. He insists we overnight there. I park behind the store, buy him a set of lozenges and off we went to sleep. Not that I slept much, but it was good that we stopped there. We took off for Toronto early in the morning of August 30^th.  It will take me until afternoon to reach the GTA. I dropped him off at North York General Hospital emergency department around 3pm. What followed is a mystery still to be solved. It is like a horror movie in slow motion. But we still hope for a positive outcome.