It's quite a beautiful day here at RDL, providing me with plenty of opportunity to think about my options, although my thinking may be a little foggy since I got very little sleep due to some loud band music that started playing at midnight and went on until three. It was not clear if it was coming from another camper or an in-town concert, but it did not matter. That's the second night of a disturbed sleep I had here, the first being from the two women camped next to me in my previous site who started belting down the wine at 3pm and continued until midnight. Now you know why "solitude" is one of the four attractions for me on these trips. I would rather sleep among bears and wolves than inebriated or musically-inclined humans.
Getting back to my options, here's my plan.
If the Defender is not ready to go by Monday, I will have to decide whether to wait it out here or have it towed on Tuesday to the Land Rover dealer in Québec City, 120 miles to the south. It all depends on Shaun's confidence that he will solve the problem. I am confident he will.
If it is towed to Québec, I will drop it off there with all my gear at the Land River dealer and take a taxi to the airport, where I will rent a car from Hertz, return to the Land Rover dealer to retrieve my gear, and then drive to Camping Canadian and American on route 138 in Saint Augustin de Desmaures, where I will bide by time until the next decision point.
If the Defender is on the road soon and I have confidence in it for the rest of the trip, I will get on my way as described below
If it appears that the Defender will not be ready anytime soon, I will leave my gear either in the defender or in storage, take Donner to a vet for a certification to fly, buy a kennel for him, return to the airport, return home, buy a new vehicle, eventually return to Québec to pick up my gear and the Defender, put the Defender up for sale there, camp there till it sells, and after it does, do some camping on the way home in a number of the state, provincial and national parks in the east.
In any event, it appears that Defender has seen its last long road trip. It has served me well for 23 years and seven of these long road trips, but I think it is time to retire it. It was a fantastic vehicle, and it is unfortunate that they do not make them anymore, but since I am not mechanically inclined, it is better in the hands of someone else who does not prefer long road trips.
Assuming that the Defender is ready and that I am confident it can take what we can salvage of the original trip, here are the schedule constraints I'm faced with.
With the original trip, which had me leaving on June 23, there were six discretionary loops built into the trip, Labrador, Bay James, Chibagamou-Fushimi, Inuvik, Prudhoe Bay and Denali. By the time we got on the road on August 9th, Inuvik was out, and so was Labrador. Bay James was still a little a possibility, but as soon as the Defender broke down, it no longer was.
If the Defender is not on the road by Tuesday the 23rd, the Prudhoe Bay Alaska loop is probably out, unless I want to sacrifice one or two days at Denali.
If we are not back on the road by Friday the 27th, we will not be able to make the first day of our Denali Drive, and if it is not on the road by the 30th, Denali will be out entirely, so why drive all the way to Alaska just to make the ferry at Skagway on September 25th, although I just might do that to experience some of the camps and towns I northern British Columbia and the Yukon.
If the Defender Is not ready to go by next Friday the 27th, the Chibagamou-Fushimi Provincial Park circuit will be out because the campsites will all closing up there on September 1.
Regardless of when the Defender is ready, if I have no confidence it can make the rest of the trip, I will turn it south and head for home by way of the number of campgrounds along the way, taking my time getting home. And then sell it back home.
Planning completed, on our busy agenda for this beautiful day are the following: learn how to operate the satellite phone because I fear I might need it on this trip if we continue with the Defender; read a few more pages of one of the two books I brought along, the New York Times's The Stone Reader, a collection of 133 essays on modern ethics, perhaps one essay for each night we might be here at RDL or in Quebec; write in the journal; and most important, hunt for dinner and treats with Donner.
By the way, for the mathematically gifted among my readers, the average amount of free time in minutes I have on these trips is easily measured by the formula P/30/D*60, where P equals the number pages read so far and D equals the day number. I am on page 7 of The Stone Reader, so you do the math.
In the meantime, mysterious things continue to happen. I brought along three battery rechargers, including a red solar recharged device which I left out on the picnic table yesterday when we went for our hunt. Well, it seems that I searched everywhere and that is not to be found. The probability of my having misplaced it or lost it is as close to zero as it can get. Perhaps one of the chipmunks around the campsite walked off with it.
The below photos are of our new campsite 62A here at Riviere du Loup and the narrow steps leading to it. I hope you can appreciate the variety in the photos from here as much as I do. Perhaps later I'll send photos of our dinner courses.
Ed and Donner, from on the road
Ed and Donner, from off the road
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