Sunday 14 June 2026--Up and out early. Pop down to the local Tim's and find it closed--the lot is taped off. Don't know what that's about...no big deal, I'll get breakfast on the ferry. First, there is the long wait in the queue, and the slow process of boarding. The drawn-out departure only gives me more time to wish I wasn't leaving. I don't have much of the sense of regret over things left undone that I often do; six days was enough to touch the bases that I wanted to touch. Still, I wish I had more time to spend here. Maybe two weeks, next time. I hope there will be a next time...it won't be fourteen years, if I can help it.

I watch Cap-aux-Meules recede, then get in line for breakfast. It's another gray day, so I won't miss much snoozing in a lounge chair for a few hours.

Disembarkation at Souris takes the better part of an hour. Once off, I hightail it for the Confederation Bridge, skirting the sprawling conurbation of Charlottetown. (It's really not that bad.) Across the bridge, I exit the highway and drive down route 960, along the coast. I want to stop at the Upper Cape Cemetery to look for any family clues I might have overlooked the last time. Not a lot...I know now that Ephraim Allen was Benjamin Allen's first-born. Shy Ben may have been a bit slow in finding a wife, but he didn't waste any time thereafter: Ephraim was born in 1771, the same year Ben and Sarah Somers were married. There's a marker here, too, for Ephraim's grandson Isaac Allen and his wife Miranda, his first cousin once removed. I suppose that didn't raise any eyebrows in a rural colonial community where options were not so plentiful. Poor Miranda died at 39, after bearing seven or eight children, who were their own second cousins once removed, or something like that.

I cut through Moncton, fill up the tank at an Irving station in Hillsborough, and roll into Alma late in the afternoon. Check in at the Parkland Village Inn, where the lady at the desk tells me it's good to see me again. She told me that in 2022, too, when she'd never seen me before. I have a very nice room with a balcony looking over the harbor. Stroll up the street to Holy Whale for a couple of pints, then back to the Inn for dinner. I'm staying two nights here, the third time I've done so, each time wondering if it's worth more than a quick pass through. It is to me, but I'd be careful about recommending it to someone else.