What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Time for a little travel log.
In the before times my wife and I used to travel a fair amount. Usually this was for conferences, but we have also taken many road trips throughout the west. We haven’t traveled much at all since Covid hit, we decided this was the summer to take a trip.
This trip took the form of a lengthy roadtrip. We drove to Port Angeles, took the ferry to Victoria Island, and started driving the Trans Canada Highway from Mile Zero on Canada Day. For this trip we departed the Trans Canada Highway at Calgary (after some additional exploring of the Canadian Rockies) before driving back.
In some ways the journey is always strange. We’d been some of these places before, but things have changed, and we have changed. I used to love the food on a road trip, imagining being Dean Winchester and eating burgers and stopping for a beer at every meal. But as I’ve grown older and have found that I need to watch my diet quite a bit… road trip dining is quite a bit different for a middle aged vegan. Fortunately we were able to find good food most places, and the places we didn’t, well some nuts, crackers and hummus, and fruit in the car is a good way to maintain the diet and save money.
My favorite parts of the trip were the two days we weren’t traveling.
We got an extra day in Victoria which was an almost perfect day. It got off to a good beginning with a big breakfast and some time to write. I’ve written on or at least gotten good ideas from a lot of road trips in the past. My third novel, Four Corners, was inspired by a trip through the southwest and the National Parks in Colorado and Utah. It felt good to get time in the hotel to write, even if mostly all I did was some outlining and brainstorming. Then after a brilliant lunch and trip to the local comic book shop, I got to sit and sip whiskey while I watched the seaplanes come in, the water taxis cross the harbor, and the ferry arrive and depart, a perfectly relaxing afternoon.
The other day we weren’t traveling was another relaxing day, this time at the end of the trip. We stopped by a good friend’s in Washington and spent the day with a walk, a good meal, and catching up. This day too was nearly perfect, by this point in the trip all I wanted was to talk about the things I’d missed, games and movies and such and this friend is the perfect person to discuss these things with.
On the trip there was some unpleasantness. There’s the normal difficulties of travel. Getting older, being in the car for long feels like my butt and the seat are fighting and the seat is usually winning. And then there’s the jerk we ran across checking into a hotel. I am still being cautious about Covid, especially since I’m traveling through places with loads of tourists I don’t want to catch it or other diseases nor would I want to spread them, so I still wear a mask indoors in public areas. As I was crossing the parking lot this man starts yelling at me and swearing “what the fuck is wrong with you, wearing a god damned mask.” Of course I didn’t say anything but I was thinking “what’s wrong with me? I’m not the one swearing at strangers in a parking lot.” It was just one person on the entire trip, but it did highlight to me that it doesn’t feel safe when people are crazy and traveling puts us into situations where we have less control.
Despite that bit of nastiness it was a great trip. The views of the Canadien Rockies with the glaciers and the color of the water of the lakes and waterways formed by the glaciers were amazing, even if I’m not a nature type and prefer my time in a hotel writing or at a friend’s chatting about our hobbies.
The plan is to return to Calgary complete the entirety of the Trans Canada Highway on subsequent trips soon.
