July | 2011 | The Practical Dilettante

Cross-country-ness

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Seonaid

If you have been following the story so far, you will have left us in Wawa. Tonight, we are in Winnipeg, but we have been to several locales that did not start with “W” in between. I have learned several things in the intervening days. First among them is this: Ontario is really, really, REALLY big. I know, I know. Anybody with an atlas could have told me this, and I knew it, intellectually. One year our university had a road rally/scavenger hund, and the Thunder Bay teams were sent out two days earlier than the rest of us. Should have twigged me to this reality.

But nothing makes you aware of the size of something like traversing it. So far, I’ve been here:

I draw your attention to the one-line summary to the left of this image, which looked like this:

Oddly enough, I have not been able to find much time to document this trip while taking it. Who knew? What with having no electricity for a couple of days in there, spotty cell service, no internet service at all… (Can you say first-world problems?) All I can say is: North of Superior! Breathtaking vistas around every corner! Geology, history, swimming in Lake Superior, finally getting to a park I’ve been waiting 15 years for. Absolute silence, near-complete dark, warm inland lakes, sudden squalls to remind us that we are small and the lake could wipe us out in an instant, given the right mood and circumstances. Although I had moments of feeling like I was dawdling, I also feel like I could spend a lifetime playing there. I have that feeling a lot. My son sees new views and says he is just waiting for me to say, “What an astonishingly beautiful part of the world.” I’ve said that frequently since I left home. I also realized that I’ve said, “This is one of my favourite places,” about a dozen times. It is good to have that sense of awe strike me so frequently.

Tonight, however, I have had to concede. I can’t spend three weeks in a trailer and also get to all the places I need to get to on time. That is to say, I won’t make it to the other side of Alberta and also see anything in between if I insist upon making all the meals, setting up and tearing down repeatedly, since I also have to do all the driving in between said tasks. There is also nobody else to take the kids swimming while I do those tasks. There will have to be money thrown at the problem. Which is my way of working around to saying that I’m in a hotel for the next two nights to buy back the 10+ hours of set-up and take down time to spend in Winnipeg proper. The hotel has a bathtub. A wonderful, glorious, perfectly normal bathtub in which we scrubbed off the last week of dirt before we start accumulating once more on Friday. Everybody is getting another bath tomorrow.

I am taking notes, and I am taking pictures. I will have months of writing to do after all of this. And it will be good.

Oh! Oh! Today, I passed the longitudinal centre of Canada. But I have done almost 2/3 of the driving, on account of long straight stretches to come. I hear the prairies will not give me spectacular vistas around every corner. Just fields of waving wheat. I might be looking longingly at trains from time to time on this trip.

But for now, I am going to bed, because tomorrow I will be getting up to take a bus. More photos will be taken, more places explored. Probably not more posts written, on account of having just allowed my kids to watch 4 hours of Teletoon, and I can see their brains dribbling. Will catch up anon.

Filed under: WorldView | 7 Comments »

So It Goes

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Seonaid

Day 22… or Day 4, depending on how you count. Here I find myself in Wawa, Ontario. Wawa wasn’t on the list, but things being what they are, it is where we wound up when it got dark and moose-y last night.

I finally left the comfortable environs of friends and family on Thursday, landing at Grundy Lake provincial park, where I was cleverly booked for two nights so that we could spend a whole (uninterrupted) day at Science North without having to set up and take down on that day. If you are planning to replicate this at any point, you should know two things: 1. Science North is fabulous, and we got to pet a skunk! Also, go see the flying squirrel demonstration. 2. Grundy Lake is not, as advertised, conveniently located to Sudbury. Well, I suppose it is, if you were planning on getting out of Sudbury for a weekend. But for going into Sudbury for a day? Pick one of the commercial campgrounds that is NOT nearly 90 km out. Especially if you are driving a big truck which will happily consume nearly half a tank of gas doing that 180 km round trip. Lesson learned: Take a closer look at the driving directions. (Also, even google maps didn’t help me out on this one.)

We are also in the “learning to deal with the equipment” stage of the trip, in which I am starting to suspect that a pop-up trailer might be more effort than it is worth. I’ve managed to position it three times already, but the need to be COMPLETELY level is turning out to be challenging. Sometimes that sweet spot which is levelable (side-to-side) is too close to the edge of the site and doesn’t leave space for the pull-outs. Last night after spending some time helping me, the campground owner pointed me at a pull-through and said, “Why don’t you just take one of those, then?” (Which we hadn’t done in the first place only b/c the electric service is the wrong kind. So my attempt at having electric for the night was a wash-out… I have a HUGE extension cord, but it was about 20 feet too short to get back to the 15 amp service on the smaller site. Apparently those big rigs also have big power cords.) I haven’t managed to light the fridge, and we can’t access it during the day, which seems to me to be the main point of having a trailer. Basically, if I were to get a trailer, what I would be looking for is a kitchen on wheels. Sleeping optional. I’d be perfectly willing to have a dining trailer and keep sleeping in a tent. Somebody get on that, eh? (It has to come in under $300 though, so I’m not holding my breath.) On the plus side, it’s extremely comfortable. In my written journal, I described it as “almost, but not entirely, unlike camping.” The “like” part mostly has to do with mosquitoes and the fact that we had no potable source of water for three days. “Unlike” = real beds, electric lights, and a very well-laid-out banquette which the kids have been using for crafts (since we don’t eat in the trailer on account of bears and being like a tent.)

So I’m pretty happy that we didn’t have reservations until August 4. It gives me more time and space to play with, make corrections, and still have something resembling a vacation. Yesterday morning involved a 4-hour tear-down, a lot of whining on the part of the kids, and a lot of lecturing and ranting on my part. My son said, “This doesn’t feel much like a vacation.” I told them that this much work always gets done on vacation, there is just usually another adult to a) do some of the work, and b) take them swimming while the work gets done. I think this might be a good eye-opener for them.

Anyway, going to take advantage of hot water and an early morning to get cleaned up after a few days of swim, sand and sweat. So far, too much rushing. Another day today.

Filed under: WorldView | Tagged: trailer, travel | 1 Comment »

Catching Up (1)

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Seonaid

I have reached the “avoiding the heat in southern Ontario” stage of the trip. It’s not yet nine o’clock, and it is already too hot to do anything outside. The trailer is fairly cool, but the house we are visiting is not air conditioned, so we are sitting in front of the fan and wilting. Ideal conditions for writing, I say!

It has been an action packed two/three weeks. We’ve been to my parents house in New Brunswick, during which we made a flying stop in St. Andrew’s. The aquarium was closed, but the playground was spectacular.

We drove a tractor:

and played on the beach with a cornucopia of cousins.

We had a decent run from NB to Ontario, me and my three kids stuffed into a Honda Civic. There may have been bribery with ice cream.

We broke the 1600 km (1000 mile) drive into three parts, of 4 hours, 9 hours, and 4 hours, with two nights on the road. Having finally obtained inflatable air mattresses, we declared the accommodations palatial:

And we had solar electric lighting!

In Bas St. Laurent (at the tourist stop at Pocaterie), we discovered an exhibit on the saltwater marsh.

so we took the time to smell the roses:

and look at flat worms under the microscope.

My son took pictures from the car, and we crossed bridges. (This one is the main way into Quebec city.)

We spent the night at Charleston Lake provincial park, which I can recommend for the fabulous beach (sandy, shallow water, warm) but caution you that it is full of poison ivy. On the plus side, we went on a nature walk with park interpreters that included a field guide to avoiding poison ivy. We also saw frogs

Does anybody know what kind of frog this is?

And snakes. Well, snake.

I'm pretty sure this is a northern water snake, since the only other water snake listed on the guide was endangered. My youngest son disagrees.

We ended that day in Toronto, but the photos were all taken from the car and none of them turned out. So Toronto doesn’t exist. Hah! (Whee! Hugely-bad logic R Us! (Also, terrible grammar. My blog, my rules.))

Tomorrow, my busy week in Toronto. Suffice it to say that I used the alarm clock almost every morning. On vacation. I might be missing the point.

Filed under: Day-to-Day | Tagged: kids, photo, travel, vacation | 4 Comments »