The first time I went camping I was seven years old. My parents packed everything we’d need for a week into the very small family car, tied the rowboat that my father had made on top and off we went. I remember sitting on top of a pile of lifejackets with my head almost touching the roof!  I also remember looking back and seeing my grandmother, with my baby brother in her arms, waving good-bye.

We weren’t in the car very long. Arriving at Okeover Arm, a long inlet near our hometown of Powell River on the BC coast, we piled out of the car and into the boat.  Dad rowed us across the water to the rocky point that would be our campsite.  My mother, my older brother, my younger sister and I waited in anticipation as Dad rowed back across the inlet to get all of our gear. What an adventure!  There was nothing but the ocean, the rock, the forest and us.  There wasn’t even a bathroom!

I learned to row the boat and caught my first fish that summer.  I also slept in a tent for the first time. In fact, this was the first of many tenting trips.  We had such a good time at Okeover Arm that we returned to the very same spot the next year.  Later, as we children grew older, the trips took us further from home.  Twice we went to California at Christmas and one summer we drove all the way to Alaska. We wandered many of the backroads of British Columbia and camped in all sorts of out of the way places. On one of my favourite holidays, we chartered a small plane and flew into Garibaldi Lake with all our camping gear. We hiked out a week later. I climbed my first mountain on that trip.

The heavy canvas tent that first went with us to Okeover Arm continued to be our home away from home until the Yellowknife years when my father built a cabin on a small lake 27 miles from town. When Richard and I married, we bought a tent of our own. An experienced wilderness camper, Richard didn’t think we needed a camp stove but on our first trip, after a night of heavy rain, we couldn’t get a fire started. We had to go to a restaurant for breakfast! After that, we traveled with a Coleman stove.

We camped that way for several years. I clearly remember our first trip with our daughter, Janina. She was just a year old.  The first night out, we tucked her into her miniature sleeping bag, said good night and left the tent. A few minutes later, we heard the zipper open and out popped her smiling face! After putting her back to bed several times, we decided to join her in the tent.  Richard lay in front of the door to keep her from escaping and she happily crawled over us and played for what seemed like hours before finally falling asleep!

By the time our youngest child was born, we’d purchased our first tent trailer. Though it had a stove, we continued to carry the Coleman and do most of our cooking outdoors. We’d moved up in the camping world, however.  Now we had a fridge!

The old trailer took us to many places including the northern tip of Newfoundland where, even in August, it was very cold at night. The canvas, which had been repaired many times, was wearing out and we began to think that the next trailer ought to have a furnace. It was then that we began to look for the ‘gypsy wagon’ which served us until this summer.

Now, we’re pulling a full sized trailer! It seems a long way from the canvas tent on a rocky point overlooking Okeover Arm. It has a queen size bed and better kitchen facilities than we had for the entire year that we lived in Japan! The main reason we decided to upgrade, however, was the bathroom. We no longer camp in the wilderness and use the bush to do our business. We don’t have a problem using campground bathrooms during the day but we’re both in our 50s and getting up during the night is becoming the norm. Those nocturnal walks across dark campgrounds were taking the fun out of camping. So, the way I look at it, our new trailer is a bathroom on wheels that just happens to have a kitchen and bedroom attached!

Though the trailer looks big sitting in our yard, it looked small next to the many larger units on the RV lot.  I don’t foresee us ever wanting or needing anything more, however.  While we were trailer shopping, I looked into a few of the bigger units just for fun. Believe it or not, one of them had an indoor gas fireplace! Our trailer may have a fridge, a stove, a microwave, a furnace, an air conditioner and a three piece bathroom but our campfires will always be outdoors!

Have you ever slept in a back alley?  We did!  Of course, I should mention that we were snuggled into the queen size bed in our new trailer which was parked in the alley behind our daughter’s home in Calgary! We were on the way home from the DeBock family reunion which took place over the August long weekend at Richard’s cousin’s place near Beaverdell, BC.

Beaverdell is located in the Kettle Valley south of Kelowna. We were far enough away from the forest fires to be out of danger but there was plenty of smoke and ash in the air on Sunday.

This was our first trip with the new trailer.  We enjoyed it thoroughly and were delighted to find that the Trailblazer had no difficulty pulling it over the steep mountain passes of southern BC. It was also our first road trip with our grandson, Drew.  At 15 months old, he proved to be a good little traveler. Considering the fact that we spent more time in the car getting there & back than we did at the reunion itself, he did very well with only a few really fussy moments. He clearly enjoyed stopping at the beach at Christina Lake, a favourite spot of ours, on the way to the reunion and again on the way home.

The reunion itself was a fun time of relaxing, visiting, and catching up on family news.  Four generations of DeBocks were represented with Drew being the youngest one there and Richard’s aunt, his father’s last surviving sibling, being the eldest.  While most of the family lives in BC and Alberta, there were also relatives from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Wyoming in attendance. Highlights of the weekend included Sunday’s potluck dinner and the wild and crazy auction that followed.  A wide variety of donated items were auctioned off to raise money to cover the expenses of the next reunion which will take place four years from now at Richard’s brother’s place near Barrhead.

Personally, however, the biggest thrill of all was when Drew began to call me Am.  We decided before he was born that I would be called Gram as his other grandmother already had several grandchildren who call her Grandma. Although he didn’t say it while we were together, Melaina tells us that he also started asking for Pa (Grandpa) after we left them in Calgary. Definitely a thrill for grandparents who missed most of his first year while we were in Japan!

Three years ago, I lost a very dear friend to inflammatory breast cancer. Joan and I were in high school when we first met and were roommates for one year in college.  We saw one another through times of heartache and times of great joy.  When we married, our husbands also became friends and eventually we became Auntie and Uncle to one another’s children. Though, for most of our adult lives we lived a long day’s drive from one another, our families got together at least once a year.  Our oldest sons are six weeks apart in age and our next children are almost as close.  In fact, Joan used to jokingly tell people that we planned our pregnancies together!  At the time of her death, we had been friends for 37 years.  I still miss her a lot but life goes on.

After Joan’s death, we continued to visit her husband, Rod. When he first began to see other women, he worried about how I would feel. Richard assured him that it was okay; that we both recognized that life must go on.

Now, Rod has a new woman in his life and in his home. We met her for the first time last week when we spent a night with them on our way to a family reunion. I wondered how it would feel to see another woman in Joan’s house. I wondered if all traces of Joan’s presence there would be gone.  I needn’t have worried. When I saw how comfortable Rod and Eunice are together and how she so clearly cares for him, I knew that this was a good thing and when I went upstairs to bed, there at the top of the stairs, was the framed photo of Joan and I that was taken shortly after her cancer was diagnosed.

I think poor Eunice was much more nervous about meeting me than I was about meeting her but by the time we stopped again for coffee on our way home yesterday, she had relaxed.  She showed me how, with a few changes, Joan’s craft room had become her sewing room and she offered me one of the lovely crocheted afghans that Joan had made.

Yes, life goes on and I think that’s a very good thing.  When I think of the pain that Rod went through during Joan’s four and a half year battle with cancer and his devastation at losing her, I’m delighted that he has another chance at happiness.

When another friend of ours remarried about a year after losing his first wife to cancer, tongues wagged. He isn’t honouring her memory, some said. We had watched as he tenderly cared for his wife during her several years of illness and we were there to witness his tears the day she died. We knew that choosing to share his life with another in no way diminished his love for his first wife.  In fact, he told us himself that if remaining alone for years on end could somehow bring her back to him, he would wait but, of course, he knew that couldn’t happen.

It was during the drive from this friend’s wedding ceremony to the reception that Richard turned to me and told me that if anything ever happens to him, he wants me to feel free to marry again. I told him that I wouldn’t wish years of loneliness on him either. Hopefully, we grow old together but if we don’t, life must go on for the one who is left behind. I’ll always miss Joan but I’m glad that Rod has found someone new and that his life is moving on.

We were only home for two and a half days.  Just long enough to do the laundry, weed the flower beds, play a little golf and give the dried out lawn a good soaking.  Then it was off to Calgary to spend the weekend taking care of our grandson while our daughter and son-in-law were out of town to attend a wedding.

On the way to Calgary, we stopped at several RV dealerships to look at trailers.  We saw so many that I began to lose track of what I’d seen and my brain began to turn to mush.  After all that, we decided to buy the second one we’d looked at! The basic requirements were that it had to be small and lightweight enough to pull behind our Trailblazer. In addition, we had a fairly lengthy list of features that we were looking for.  The one we finally decided on is a 2005 model, 21 feet from hitch to bumper and in absolutely excellent condition.  It has everything we were looking for and more! It’s not quite as lightweight as the brand new models but we’re getting it for an excellent price and it falls within the weight limit that the vehicle can pull. I can hardly wait to pick it up but first we have to get the finances and insurance in place.

Once we got to Calgary, the fun began!  Fourteen months is a wonderful age.  Drew has changed a lot since we last saw him two and a half months ago. No more tottering baby steps; now he practically runs. He loves to go for walks and the playground is a favourite stop along the way. While the swings and the slide are fun, it’s playing with the gravel that holds his attention the longest! I guess the world looks a lot different from his perspective.  Grass that we barely notice is a thing of wonder to him!  Playing in his pool is also a favourite activity on a hot afternoon.  After all, you can do a lot with water.  Drinking it is part of the fun, of course, and since Mommy’s tomato plants share the balcony with his pool, they are very well watered! Visiting with his best buddy, the dog next door, is also lots of fun.

Drew did very well while his parents were away.  We were with him for a full day before they left; long enough to become familiar with his routine. He missed his Mommy, of course, especially when he woke up in the morning and she wasn’t there, but he was secure in his own surroundings and totally comfortable with us. Mommy did well too, only phoning home three times to see how things were going!

Now we’re home again for a little while; catching up on a few things that need to get done and playing a little more golf.  Once we have that new trailer, we’ll be back on the road again on our way to a family reunion in BC.  Yes, retirement definitely agrees with us!

After six weeks and a little over 13 000 kilometres, we arrived home yesterday.  We put in some long days on the way back across the continent but we also enjoyed a day with Buck and Chrissy (our “other daughter”) in Winnipeg and a weekend with my brother and his family at their new home in Irvine, just east of Medicine Hat.

When we went to bed the night before the trailer’s second lift cable broke, I’m glad I didn’t know that it was the last time I’d sleep in it.  I’d probably have been overcome by nostalgia.  The gypsy wagon, as I’ve always called it, is an integral part of so many of our family’s memories. Purchased brand new, it replaced the old second hand one that had taken us on our first few long trips and was literally falling apart.  

It’s maiden voyage in 1993 took us to California.  Camped at the KOA campground in Anaheim, the children could watch Disneyland’s nightly fireworks from their beds!  Nathan, our youngest, was born on July 24th and many of his birthdays have been celebrated in campgrounds.  Most of our meals were eaten outside at picnic tables but that year, in a crowded Santa Barbara campground, he decided that he wanted his birthday dinner indoors around the trailer table.  It was there that we dug into a rich and delicious chocolate cake.  No, it wasn’t homemade.  The trailer doesn’t have an oven so finding a suitable store bought cake was always a challenge!

The following year, we went in the opposite direction and Nathan celebrated his tenth birthday in Dawson City, Yukon with his cousin, Martin, who is one day older than him.  It was on that trip that Richard’s mother joined us for a weekend of camping, the only time in her life that she ever camped. Little did we know that she would be taken from us very suddenly just a few months later and that that would be one of our last memories of time spent with her.

In 1995, we spent our summer vacation on the BC coast.  We woke up on the morning of Nathan’s 11th birthday in Powell River where the beachfront campground is just down the street from my childhood home.

The next year, Colorado was our destination.  On the way, while passing through Wyoming, we spent one night camped at the foot of Devil’s Tower, a pillar of stone over 1200 feet high that appeared in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.  Though some of our earlier trips had lasted six or seven weeks, this one was shorter.  It was about this time that spending the third week of July at church camp became a highlight of Melaina and Nathan’s summers.  

Before we knew it, the kids were graduating, going off to college and taking summer jobs.  Family vacations came to an end but the trailer didn’t go into retirement.  Richard and I began traveling on our own.  Our first solo trip was to Ottawa in 2001 where we set up camp on the outskirts of the city so that we could spend some time with Matthew and his girlfriend, Robin, who both attended Carleton University there and were both working on Parliament Hill for the summer.  Robin is now Matthew’s beautiful wife and soon to be the mother of our next grandchild.  

The last time a child slept in the trailer was the summer before last when our little friend, Sebastian, who lives in Hong Kong, joined us for a sleepover.  We were visiting his family at their summer retreat at Fintry on BC’s Okanagan Lake.

The trailer has a heavy duty axle that enabled us to travel some pretty rough roads like the Yukon’s Dempster Highway and the logging road to Bamfield on Vancouver Island.  It’s also lightweight and easy to pull up even the steepest of hills like the one over Independence Pass to Aspen, Colorado which crosses the Continental Divide at an elevation of 12 095 feet!

Yes, there are many memories in that old trailer.  The lift cables can be fixed but the estimated cost is $700 to $800.  If we were planning to continue using it, we wouldn’t hesitate to put the money into it. The body, canvas and appliances (fridge, stove and furnace) are all in good condition but it lacks one thing that would making camping at our age much more comfortable; a bathroom.  I also think that, after putting a tent trailer up and down literally hundreds of times, Richard deserves something a little easier.  So it is that we’ve decided that the time has come to replace it with a somewhat larger, hard sided one. We’ve also decided that, if someone wants to bear the cost of having it repaired, we’ll give them the gypsy wagon. I would love to see it resurrected and used to help another family create beautiful summer memories.

Some people love baths while others prefer showers.  Personally, I’m a bath person. When we arrived at our hotel, the tub was calling my name and I’ve just climbed out after a wonderful soak, the first in several weeks.

I’m really glad that, in this day and age, most campgrounds offer free showers.  Over the past month, we’ve used a lot of them.  Some were spacious while others were claustrophobic.  Sometimes the water temperature was difficult to control.  There was one with enough pressure to send me into the next county while another had so little that I was really glad I’d had my hair cut short recently.  A woman with a lot of hair could never have rinsed it sufficiently.  Then there’s my pet shower peeve; the ones designed for midgets!  I know I’m a bit taller than average but I really should be able to stand under a shower without hitting my head on the shower head!

I know some shower people say that they don’t like baths because they don’t like to sit or lie in their own dirt.  If that’s the case, do what the Japanese do.  Shower first, then soak in a nice warm tub and let it soothe your cares away.

Yes, I’m definitely a bath person.  What about you?

We said farewell to Nova Scotia yesterday and headed through New Brunswick toward the United States. We pulled into a lovely oceanfront campground at St. Andrew’s, a picturesque little town just short of the border. That’s when disaster struck.  A second cable broke leaving the trailer unusable!

With the help of a couple of other campers, we managed to get the things we’d need on the way home and most of the perishable food out of the trailer and fasten it down again.  We found an inexpensive motel, went out for supper, discussed our options and then settled in for the night.

I’ve always been a person who planned ahead and lived for the future. One of the things that I’ve been learning since retiring is to live in the moment. Today definitely put that to the test!  We woke up this morning with no idea what the day would hold.  Would we be able to get the trailer repaired and continue on or would we have to change our plans entirely?  

We started the morning by checking with a small RV place in the St. Andrew’s area but, as we anticipated, he only does minor repairs and wasn’t able to help us.  Since we were going in that direction, however, he recommended a larger sales and service place in Bangor, Maine.  We were there by noon. The two fellows who looked at the trailer told us that it would likely take a full day to repair and that, in their opinion, it really isn’t worth fixing. We’re not sure that we agree but we definitely weren’t willing to put the amount of money that they were speaking of into it. With the exception of the cable/pulley system, which is usually the first thing to go on a tent trailer, it’s in pretty good shape but it is 16 years old and has served us very well.

We made the decision to abort the Boston portion of our trip and head for home as quickly as possible. We consulted our maps, chose the most direct route and headed west. We soon discovered that most direct doesn’t necessarily mean quickest as many sections of the highway were under construction but, in spite of that, we made our way through Maine, over the green hills and mountains of northern New Hampshire and Vermont, and north into Quebec! We navigated our way through Montreal shortly after dark and are now relaxing in a hotel just west of the city.

They say that every cloud has a silver lining and I see two good things in what has happened.  First of all, we’ve been considering for some time whether or not we should replace the tent trailer with a small hard sided one and if so, when.  Obviously, that decision has been made for us! We’re already discussing what features the new trailer should have and will begin shopping for one as soon as we’re back in Alberta.  

Secondly, since I still want to see Boston and we have more reason than ever to want to visit the Maritimes again, I’m already dreaming of another trip across the continent and this time, we won’t be waiting 18 years!  Well, there I go, living in the future again!  Instead, I guess I should get some sleep so we can hit the road again in the morning.

I woke up at 6 o’clock this morning to the sound of thunder.  For almost two hours, the lightning flashed, the thunder crashed and the rain poured. I could feel our whale watching excursion slipping away.  Then, shortly before 8 o’clock, the rain stopped and the sky began to clear.  We got up and got ready to go.  

The sun began to shine as we drove down the long, narrow peninsula known as Digby Neck.  We arrived a bit early at Tiverton, home of Ocean Explorations Zodiac Whale Cruises, so we walked to nearby Boar’s Head lighthouse.  On our way, the fog rolled in.  When we got back, cruise operator, Tom Goodwin, told us that the conditions were “challenging”, that he couldn’t guarantee that we’d see any whales and that we could cancel if we wanted to.    

We had chosen Ocean Explorations because it was recommended by my sister and because we’d be riding in a zodiac that would allow us to see the whales from water level.  If I had to do it over again, I’d choose a different company.  Some of them offer a money back guarantee if no whales are spotted. I’m betting that none of those ones went out today.  I really think that the operator, with his knowledge of local conditions, should make the decision whether or not to go out rather than leaving it to the tourists who have little or no experience to base such a decision on.  A few people, who live close enough to come again another day, chose not to go out today but the rest of us decided to take our chances.  We weren’t out on the water very long when it became clear that the chance of seeing a whale was slim to nil.  If we’d been told this up front, we wouldn’t have gone.  The zodiac ride was fun but it certainly wasn’t worth what we paid for it.

Most of the time, we couldn’t see anymore than 100 feet in any direction. With the exception of a few seals and a variety of seabirds, including some young puffins, we saw nothing but water and fog. Once, when we stopped to listen for whales, we heard another boat pass by so close to us that we were rocked by the waves of its wake but we never even saw it!  The rest of the time, we heard nothing but the water slapping on the bottom of our boat.

After searching for whales for three hours, we returned to Tiverton.  Before coming back to camp, we did a short hike to Balancing Rock.  The hiking trail is a combination of gravel trail, boardwalks across areas of bog and a flight of 235 stairs.  That’s a lot of stairs all at once but not as many as we did on an average day in Japan!  Balancing Rock is an interesting formation; a huge basalt pillar that appears ready to topple from its base at any moment.

Today’s good news is that Richard’s antibiotic has clearly started to take effect.  After peaking late last night, his pain has started to subside.

The toothache that Richard has been enduring for the past few days has reached the point where it could no longer be ignored.  Until last night, he was convinced that it wasn’t an abscess and that he would probably be able to handle the discomfort until we got home.  Not so!  It kept him awake most of the night last night and by this morning, it was obvious that finding a dentist had become priority #1.  

We had a whale watching cruise booked for today but I called and they kindly agreed to allow us to postpone until tomorrow.  We’re camped at Smith’s Cove, just outside Digby, Nova Scotia.  The campground host recommended a dentist in Digby and when Richard called, they told him to come right in.  He does indeed have an abscessed tooth and is now on antibiotics and painkillers.  In spite of the fact that x-rays were taken and the dentist took the time to prepare a letter to Richard’s dentist back in Camrose, there was no charge!  

Rich will be on the antibiotics for ten days and then, according to the dentist, he has a two week window during which he should have a root canal done.  He’ll call his dentist back home to set up an appointment toward the end of that time.  That should give us enough time to do all that we had hoped before heading for home.  We’ll be here for two more nights and then on the road again.

We said good-bye to Myrna and her family last night and are moving on today.  The weather hasn’t been as nice as we hoped it would be so we didn’t do the golfing and hiking that we might have done while we were here but life is about people, not weather.  It’s about making memories and oh, have we made some good ones this week!  Meeting Myrna has been so much more than we could ever have imagined or hoped for.  Not only did we meet a long term pen friend but we found ourselves wholeheartedly accepted by an entire family.

We enjoyed a quiet dinner with Ronnie and Myrna last night followed by a family gathering around the giant fire pit in their back yard.  The evening wrapped up with another feast of steamed mussels!  

Saying good-bye was difficult.  We often talk about how small the world has become but driving across this enormous nation of ours has once again made us realize how great the distances are that separate us.  I don’t know when we’ll see one another again but I certainly hope we do!  

Ronnie and Myrna