It’s always interesting listening to people making travel or vacation plans.
Once we get a chance to get away we want to make the time as worthwhile as possible, so we can post amazing photos on Facebook and make everyone back home envious.
Today, there are plenty of sites the holiday planner can check out before deciding.
Trip Advisor, Travelocity, Expedia, or Kayak can take you right inside the room or cabin you will be staying in. Click on the little Google Earth icon and you can virtually drive down the road to your destination, reading warnings about steep grades or narrow bridges.
Where is the adventure in that?
It was so much more exciting to take off with a rough idea where you were going and experience all the breathtaking occurrences along the way.
Maybe there would be disappointment at the final destination or, maybe it was your dream come true.
But until you turned that last corner on that narrow washboard road, you had to hold your breath.
We were travelling to Winnipeg in a truck and camper with two small kids. Once out of B.C. we had no idea where we were going to camp, but a map from a tourist booth showed a campsite along our route through southern Saskatchewan.
My wife suggested we were getting close but there was not a lake or tree in sight, just acres and acres of acres and acres. Suddenly, she said. “I think that’s it back there.”
I backed up to a culvert and driveway that went into a wheat field. There was a swing set, a large tractor tire stuck in the ground, one unisex outhouse and four picnic tables.
It was dinner time so we set up camp and the kids played on the swings and climbed the tire and we ate our dinner. Sure enough, just as the coffee was being poured a Dodge pickup pulled in. The driver introduced himself, pulled out a receipt book and asked for $6. Then he stayed and had coffee.
When he left he talked about an impending storm but there was not a cloud in sight and it was very warm. So sticky warm, that when we went to bed we left the camper windows open for air.
Sometime during the night I recall the camper rocking.
When we got up in the morning, everything inside was covered with dust — food, clothes and people.
We put the kids outside to play while we made coffee not noticing the rain had turned the dust to mud. After coffee and kid cleanup we decided to leave with the truck tires spinning as we made it over the culvert on to the highway.
Forty-five minutes later, we were glad to see a McDonald’s and we never complained about a B.C. campground again.
But what an adventure.
The kids remembered it for years and we laughed about it every time we put the camper on the truck. Who knows what kind of travel review we would have given to others?
It’s the rough roads and the detours that build character and if we try to plan every detail of our journey, then we risk not seeing the amazing things nature has for us just one road over or at the resort around just one more bend. Be adventurous.
We were never promised a calm crossing, just a safe harbour.
At least that’s what McGregor says.