July 3
End: Matapedia, QC
Miles: 0.0
Total: 4210.3
I woke up again in “Beautiful Downtown Nictau”, as Bill says when he makes phone calls outside the town limits. This is half a joke since, although Nictau is beautiful, only eleven people live there.
We had a great breakfast with some jam Bill had made himself. We hung out at the house until it was time to go to town. Town is Plaster Rock, which has a few stores, a post office, and a pharmacy. It is none too close to Nictau, but nothing is close to Nictau.
I filled my prescription at the pharmacy and Bill mailed off weather samples which he is paid to collect. We got some food from the grocery store, then headed back to the house. I expected to spend the rest of the day there, and was just about to take a nap when Bill offered to drive me to Mt. Carleton, where a park employee could drive me farther north.
This sounded like a good plan to me. I had seen the trail in New Brunswick from the inside of a truck, and it didn’t look like a lot of fun to walk. It would be an extensive road walk through a thinly populated area. I also had to get to Montreal to take a flight to California to attend a wedding on my father’s side of the family.
I agreed, packed up, and Bill drove me to Mt. Carleton. It was also not too close to Nictau. There, the park manager, Louie, agreed to take me as far as Kedgewick, which is quite far. We were now in the portion of New Brunswick which spoke primarily French.
I got to see St. Quentin on the way, which was setting up for a rodeo. Of course the town itself is not too large, but it might have been the biggest I had seen in the province so far, or at least comparable to Perth-Andover. We drove on and he dropped me off at a campground on the North side of Kedgwick. I decided to walk North along the highway and try to hitch.
I knew that hitching was not likely to be too successful, but I had plenty of food and could walk the road all the way to Quebec if needed. There was a man named Andre who could possibly give me a ride North, as he picked up and dropped off canoe-renters, but I had no way to contact him.
I walked for a couple of hours, then found an ATV trail with the dread SIA/IAT blaze crossing the highway. I stepped onto it and the Mosquitos were instantly all over me. I got back on the road and continued to walk.
I had not gone a hundred yards when a car with canoes on top pulled over. Could it be Andre? It was not, but it was his daughter Matty and her boyfriend Rafael, headed to Matapedia for some canoeing! I couldn’t believe my luck.
We went to Campbellton, a town with a Walmart(!) for groceries and a meal at an A&W, then went to Matapedia. I learned that Rafael went to college in Newfoundland and talked with him about that. I learned more about Screech and the Newfoundlanders, as well as Labrador, which I had been quite fascinated in.
After meeting briefly with their friends in Matapedia, we drove to a spot on a river and camped. I was introduced to the “No-See-Um’s”, incredibly annoying, tiny flies. We talked around a fire into the night, then I went to bed. I couldn’t believe I was in Quebec.