Looks like it may not be in the cards.

 I was up early this morning. I woke up rested but anxious to hear from the GM dealer.  Today was eventful, as it promised to be – just to keep us on our toes! 

Early this morning, Wade MacIntyre called us to say he had good news and bad news. The good news was he had our vehicle in his lot – the bad news was – we neglected to tell him it was a hybrid vehicle and he did not have anyone who could work on it. He suggested we call GM Roadside assistance and have them tow it to the nearest repair facility (in Halifax/Dartmouth).

We tried calling GM Roadside Assistance but the hour time difference was working against us – they did not open until 9 a.m. our time. It was almost 9:30 when we finally got through to someone – again – many long distance minutes used on our costly cell phone plan. We discovered late last night it is costing us $0.30 per minute to make local calls and $0.70 per minute to receive calls - as they are all considered long distance because our home number is Ottawa based. Time to look into a new plan as soon as we get home. 

The person we spoke to at GM Roadside Assistance felt that 400 km (door to door) was a very long distance to have our vehicle towed – as if we didn’t know that. We agreed – and were anxious to know what was going to happen.  Do we head to Sydney, hook up the car and tow it ourselves to Halifax, or will they send a tow truck and do we drive to Halifax to meet it? By this time we have determined that the GM dealer in Dartmouth is a former Saturn Dealer and can actually do the repair work, if we can get our car to them by tomorrow morning. At this point Marcel is still hopeful we can make it to the ferry on Monday. I am not so positive, but told him not to cancel our Friday ferry yet – not sure why I said that.

Well, we arranged the 400 km tow with GM Roadside assistance and shortly after got a call from Wade MacIntyre at MacIntryre Chev  in Sydney and he said they found a bird's nest inside our air filter and they think that might be the problem.  If it is - everything may still be a "go"!  We put the tow company on hold for a bit and stayed put to hear the results of a test drive.  We finally heard back from Wade that the car was working perfectly, so we packed up and headed to Sydney to pick up our toad.

When we arrived (a little after 1 p.m.), we were shocked at the price of the bill - >$400, but happy we were able to continue our trip and it had not been anything major. We looked at the nest and it looked to us like either a mouse or chipmunk nest – not a bird nest. We had been chasing a little chippie out of our garage recently before we left, now we suspect that little chippie had been busy!  We drove both the car and the motorhome to a local mall, parked it and then drove the car around to get a few things before heading to Newfoundland. We arrived at Arm of Gold Campground in Little Bras D’Or  about 3:30 p.m. The wi-fi there was excellent and we were level (for the first time in a week). The view of the lake is lovely and I don’t even mind that it is quite open.