Larocque and Roll

Days 12 thru 14 September 10, 2008

The original plan was that my parents were going to drive my sister to the airport (a 6-hour round trip) on the Monday and that my cousin and I would head back to Saint John on the day after the holiday [1]. However, because the weather had been miserable up to that point, we decided to leave a day early and drop my sister at the airport and save my parents the trip.

We had ample time to get there, and in fact, managed to stop for lunch in Bouctouche [2]; unfortunately, we didn’t have time to stop in Shediac and have our pictures taken at the giant lobster. It also didn’t help that the exit for the airport is not well-marked and ended up doubling back.

After that, my cousin and I went on our merry way, stopping for really, really good ice cream in the middle of nowhere [3]. When the proprietor found out I was from North Bay, he gave me a reproduction of an advertisement featuring the Dionne Quints. Because we weren’t hungry when we got back to Saint John, we stopped at the video store and rented season 1 of Rome, which we stayed up watching until 5am.

My last official day in the Maritimes got off to a very late start, and we ended up going back downtown to hit a couple of used book stores. I haven’t mentioned in my recap how desperately close I came to running out of reading material - usually, I have too much but this time I had far, far too little. I did find a couple of things to throw in my purse, and managed to offload a few of the books I’d picked up in used bookstores in Halifax. Went home, had dinner, watched a documentary about crossword puzzles, and called it a night.

The next morning, for the last time, I threw all my stuff into my suitcase, and what wouldn’t fit into the suitcase went into a cloth bag I’d brought for that very purpose. I got dropped off at the airport, flew to Toronto, and then flew back to North Bay.

And thus ended my vacation. That, and coming home to find my neighbour’s tree had fallen into my backyard. There’s no place like home, right?

[1] Because by this point in the narrative, we’re up to the first weekend in August, which is a long weekend.
[2] Although not at Le Pays de la Sagouine because their restaurant was closed.
[3] I have the postcard from the place, but it’s upstairs and I’m too lazy to go get it.