Category Archives: Travel

Another sunrise

06 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in RV, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 2 Comments

Honestly, this place…

I leave this morning to go into “town”* to try to get my leaking toilet fixed. Tomorrow, I’m driving about an hour away from “town” in the other direction to get the oil changed and the brake fluid levels checked in the van. The need to get this stuff done was motivating me to get moving, with some idea that the right place to take care of such things is “home”. But I was chatting with one of my neighbors yesterday and realized that there should be places to take care of such things here and that once they were done, the nagging sense of obligation to get going would probably fade away. And once that nagging sense fades away… well, maybe I’ll be back at this campground on Saturday. Or maybe I’ll feel inspired to go explore some of Nova Scotia. I’m honestly not sure which.

But if this morning’s sunrise was my last sunrise here, I’m glad I got out on the beach while it was still rising and got to feel the wind and listen to the birds and see Zelda jumping off the rocks like her leg never bothered her at all.

*”Town” is Charlottetown. It’s over an hour away, but when people say “town”, that’s what they mean.

A sunrise in three parts at Campbell’s Cove Campground, Prince Edward Island

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Birds, Campground, Photography, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

sunrise

So early that Zelda was still sleeping.

sunrise, part 2

So gorgeous that I ran out of the van in bare feet and pajamas to take a better picture.

sunrise, part 3

Still gorgeous when walking Zelda on the beach, at least an hour or maybe two later.

I have so many beautiful pictures from this campground. I was only planning to be here for three days, but on Sunday, I decided to stay a few more. Today is Wednesday. I did laundry, filled my fresh-water tank, started stowing stuff to get ready to leave tomorrow morning. And I am going to leave tomorrow morning, because I need groceries, including dog food. But every day has gotten nicer, and it’s going to be hard to say good-bye.

Eh, words don’t do it justice. Have a few more pictures instead.

birds on the beach

Birds on the beach

farm with wildflowers

The farm at the top of the hill

wildflowers at sunset

Wildflowers at sunset

beach and blue sky

The other end of the beach

Best of August 2018

02 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Best of, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

On August 31, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise in a Walmart parking lot on Prince Edward Island. The air was fresh and cool, a hint of chill, and I walked Zelda in a big patch of grass while trying to smell ocean. (I failed, but it was easy enough to smell later.)

We went to a grocery store, Atlantic Superstore, and for the first time in Canada, I found ALL the things — the dog food that Zelda is most likely to eat, gluten-free oats so I can make granola again, even Greek yogurt with the fat. (Fat-free Greek yogurt is the most pointlessly unpleasant food — I don’t understand how people can eat it. But apparently that’s what they do in Canada. Not on PEI, though!)

Then I headed off to Green Gables. I wound up paying to drive through the Prince Edward Island National Park, which would have been silly except that it was a stunningly beautiful drive on a gorgeous day, well worth $4. At Green Gables, I joined the throng of early bird tourists to admire the historic house and beautiful gardens, then escaped from them entirely for a solo walk through the Haunted Woods. Not very haunted, but I’m sure my imagination could have conjured up ghosts on a dimly-lit evening. And they were probably fantastic in the days when the paths weren’t lined with logs and well-trodden by thousands of feet.

the haunted woods at Green Gables

The Haunted Woods

Next I drove to the north of the island, admiring the scenery at every turn. I once told R, I think, that my first trip to England disappointed me, because I’d expected it to be some kind of incandescent green that it just wasn’t. It was green and lovely and I had a great time once I’d gotten over my expectations, and I’ve enjoyed other visits over the years, but it wasn’t the brilliant green that my imagination had generated from years of reading. Prince Edward Island, on the other hand, is exactly that color green.

Green Gables

It was past lunch time and I was hungry, so I thought about stopping and making myself a salad, like a good van-lifer. Instead, I stopped and read TripAdvisor for a bit, then went to The Lobster Shack and bought myself a cold lobster, and a half dozen oysters. I ate the oysters on their patio overlooking the ocean, each one with a different hot sauce, while Zelda napped at my feet. I brought the lobster with me to the campground.

At the campground, my neighbors were using my fire pit — they apologized, but I didn’t mind, I didn’t plan on using it myself — so I got to smell campfire mixed with ocean spray. Zelda and I immediately went walking, taking the steps directly in front of my site down to a lovely empty beach. When she hit the sand, she ran like a puppy. She got her feet wet and yelped with surprise at how cold the water was, but we had the nicest walk we’ve had since she got hurt, out to the end of the curve of sand and onto red rocks, and then back again.

Back at the van, I read some more of the Anne of Green Gables series, eventually ate cold lobster dipped in melted butter with lime, admired the sunset, appreciated the smell of campfire smoke, and listened to the ocean.

It was a most amazing day.

And it wasn’t the best day of August. It was nice, definitely, really nice, and I love this campground so much that I’m thinking about staying longer. But for the best of the month, I have to pick August 10th. I spent that day on Grand Isle, Vermont, with R. Z had her first reasonable walk after getting hurt, and we saw chipmunks and squirrels and rabbits. I made bacon and potatoes and eggs over-easy for breakfast, sat outside, read books, appreciated the sunshine. In the evening, my cousin came and we built a campfire, grilled sausages, ate outside at the picnic table and talked for hours. That day wins because of the wonderful company.

That said, September 1st has a darn good shot at September’s title. Yesterday was beach, beach, more beach, interspersed with good words on the story I’m working on. There was a beautiful sunrise in a cloudy sky, and then a gray rainy morning, with the sound of rain on the van roof, the sight of dark ocean ahead of me. And then the sky cleared and the afternoon was sunny and golden. The evening was the smell of smoke and an absolutely fantastic night sky, scattered with so many stars that if I knew anything about stars, I bet I could have found all the constellations ever named. (Except the ones that can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, of course.)

cloudy sunrise

Yesterday’s sunrise

The Ocean Time Zone

30 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Randomness, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

I am in the ocean time zone.

I have no idea what the real name for the ocean time zone is. In fact, I didn’t even realize I would enter it. Last night, I was actually extremely confused when some of my clocks changed time.

“How did it get so late?” I wondered. “What was I doing for the past hour?”

It felt so truly mystifying that I actually turned the van back on and checked the time on the dashboard, because the dashboard clock has to be changed manually. I was relieved when I got that hour back. The over-active imagination was conjuring up alien abductions and trauma-induced fugue states before looking at a map and discovering that sure, it was highly likely that there was another time zone in eastern Canada, because I believe I am as far east as I’ve ever been in the continental Americas.

But let me backtrack for a day. On Tuesday, I went to visit a reader in Quebec City. (Hi, Mireille!) I’ll admit that I was kind of nervous, but I only told one friend that if I disappeared it would be an internet serial killer plot. It would have had to be very long-laid plot, because when Mireille invited me to stay in her driveway, I recognized her name from years back. I thought maybe she was even in the Eureka fanfiction community, that was how long ago the familiarity was from, but she was actually from arghink.com, Jennifer Cruisie’s blog. (If that link doesn’t work, it’s because I’m writing this without internet and will post it via my cell phone, so can’t test the link, but the name should be right. I hope so, anyway.) At any rate, Mireille invited me to stay, I was a little anxious but mostly excited about the idea, and so I did.

It was lovely. She and her beautiful look-alike daughter live in a terrific neighborhood in Quebec City. I obviously am never going to live in Quebec City (there’s a citizenship problem), but if I could dream up my fantasy semi-urban neighborhood, it would be much the same. I wish I’d taken more pictures, although I probably wouldn’t post them even if I had, because I have no bandwidth today.

The three of us and Zelda went off to Montmorency Falls, a waterfall that’s taller than Niagara, with a walking bridge over it. The truly ambitious could climb down (and then up, or vice versa) a steep and very long flight of stairs, to see it from the bottom (or top, depending on where you parked), but I didn’t think Zelda’s leg was up for that much yet. I suspect our six-year-old companion would also have complained, but it was such a hot day that such complaints would have been justified. But we admired the falls and then drove a small way around the tip of Ile d’Orleans, the nearby island.

Gorgeous island, with beautiful houses. It would definitely be a fantasy place to live, except probably not so much in winter. It’s like admiring Vermont, so beautiful, but winter is always coming. Quebec, in general, has been notably beautiful. It’s sort of a surprise, because it’s not in my head as a gorgeous landscape, but I think that’s because I think of it as a winter place and I am not a winter fan. My mental picture of it is barren trees and bleak landscapes, but at this time of year, it’s pine forests and rolling hills. (Yes, the one other time I was in Quebec, it was in January.)

Back at Mireille’s house, I used her washer & dryer, her internet, and eventually her shower. (Thank you, Mireille!) I would really be hard-pressed to decide which of these luxuries I loved the best. I have clean sheets! Her internet was high-speed! I conditioned my hair! 🙂 It was lovely. And it was fun hanging out with her. It didn’t feel like spending time with a stranger, but much more like being with someone I knew but hadn’t seen in a while and needed to catch up with. We ate quinoa bowls for dinner and chatted until M2’s bed-time, when I headed back to the van to finish reading Magic Triumphs, the last book in the Kate Daniels’ series, which released that morning. (It was a great conclusion to the series and if you like the others, you’ll like it, too.)

Mireille invited me to stay as long as I liked, and I was really tempted to stay for longer. I wish the weather had been cooler because it would have been fun to wander around Quebec City. But I was worried about leaving Zelda in the van for too long, plus she would not quit barking — she won no points for well-behaved dog behavior! — so around lunch-time, I headed out.

The weather was horrible. Lots of rain, so much that I stopped at a rest-stop for an hour or so to wait for it to stop. It stopped, I started driving, it started raining again. Bah. But I was just thinking about stopping for dinner when an absolutely fantastic rainbow — quite possibly the best rainbow I have ever seen, and Florida gets lots of rainbows — spread across the sky. I took the rainbow as a sign, pulled off the highway and camped at the Walmart in Edmundston for the night. Somewhat mystifyingly, everything is still in French, but Google maps tells me I’m in New Brunswick.

And today will be a driving day. I’m not sure where I’ll spend the night tonight, but I’ve still got many hours to go on my route to Prince Edward Island. It is, unfortunately, still gray and cloudy, so I’m not feeling optimistic about the drive, but it was also so cold this morning that before I was willing to get out from under the covers, I turned the heat on for a while. So cold that Zelda also snuggled into the blankets and covered her nose with her paw. (Ridiculously cute!) It’s another reminder that winter is coming. I love the idea of a slow adventure down the east coast, with lots of long stops along the way, but I’m going to have to remember to watch the calendar. Serenity is not meant for snow.

Camping Juneau

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Campground, Reviews, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

When I imagined my life in a van, one thing that I didn’t picture accurately — at all — was how much time I would spend looking at campground websites, campground reviews, and campground apps, trying to find places to stay that I would like. It seemed straightforward when I started — look for places that other people liked, right?

But we all have different tastes. People who are driving 40-foot long buses have very different needs than people in 20-foot camper vans. People on vacation with kids want very different things than a writer with a dog. Serious athletes appreciate different qualities than casual walkers. People who are planning to spend months in one place have different goals then people who are wandering through, hoping for some time in nature.

Those last parks have the word “seasonals” in their descriptions. Over the course of the last two-plus years, I’ve started avoiding them. In Florida, especially, they’re the campgrounds that are basically trailer parks — long rows of trailers stacked up one next to the other, with a view of your neighbor’s sewer hose. Parking spaces with lawn chairs. They curdle my soul.

On Monday, I had sort of an in-between day. I woke up in a Walmart parking lot, did my shopping when the Walmart opened, and wasn’t quite sure what to do with the rest of the day. I knew where I wanted to be on Tuesday, but I didn’t have a plan for Monday night. But it was going to be a hot day so unless I wanted to drive all day or run the (obnoxiously loud) generator all day, I was going to want electricity. (I can survive a 90-degree van, Zelda cannot. Traveling with a dog means running the air-conditioning when the temperature gets above 80.)

I spent a while considering my options, my energy level, and my goals, and finally decided to try out an inexpensive seasonal campground in Quebec City. It was just for a night and it had laundry facilities. Good enough. I drove by it, saw that it was a parking lot with lawn chairs, and decided to try my next option: a more expensive, but also seasonal campground in Quebec City.

Option #2, Camping Juneau, was adorable. Completely charming and beautiful in a campground sort of way. It wasn’t stylish. The buildings were a little run-down, the signs were hand-made (some of them, at least), the roads were narrow gravel and dirt, the washing machine had dead bugs on it, my fire pit was made of crumbling concrete. But a shack of a restaurant had a patio, maybe four tables with plastic tablecloths, overlooking the lake. There were trees between all the spaces, plants everywhere. It reminded me somehow of Maine and Greece mixed together, with a whole bunch of the resort in the Catskills from Dirty Dancing thrown in. There was sunshine and shade and pure essence of summer.

patio overlooking lake

The restaurant was closed, but the patio looked like a fine place to play pinochle on a summer evening.

I didn’t wind up doing my laundry, but I did open the awning and get out my own lawn chair and read books sitting outside in the shade. It was a lovely afternoon.

picnic table view

The view from the van window. Not a sewer hose in sight. My site was much smaller than my site at Camping des Voltigeurs, but I liked it much more.

I think the thing that I will look for in future campground descriptions, though, is “tents”. Juneau had tent spots and tent campers, and a place that appeals to tent campers probably can’t be a parking lot with lawn chairs. It certainly wasn’t. It was lovely! As is Quebec City, but somehow it’s almost 9AM and I’ve got to get moving. Today’s going to be a busy day. It might just include poutine!

Trois-Rivieres, Quebec

27 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in Food, R, Randomness, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

I am sitting in a gray Walmart parking lot, as the sky slowly gets darker and darker. I count at least a dozen other campers and trailers here, so probably this town is a good place to be a tourist. It was certainly beautiful when driving around, despite the gray. I crossed a fantastic bridge, over a huge river that looked green in the foggy light. Then I crossed another bridge. Then another, then another.

Somewhere along the way, I thought, “Wow, how many rivers are there?”

And then I thought, “Duh, I need R in the van, so that I could have said that thought aloud to him for whatever his deadpan response would have been.” Pretty sure the name indicates that there might be three of them. Me driving over what felt like four was probably me getting lost.

I was headed to a beautiful church, one that I believe allows overnight camping in a parking lot behind it, but there was a No Dog sign on the parking lot. Alas. I might have been able to park on the curb of the very pretty river — it really didn’t feel like the kind of place where the police come and tell you to move on — but did I mention the gray? The fog was spooky. Yes, I literally had a lovely parking place on the side of a river that might have been a perfectly good place to spend the night, but I wimped out because the fog made everything just that slight bit surreal that makes you think about monsters rising out of the river. Sometimes my imagination is just too good for me. Or maybe that’s not good for me, I’m not sure which.

Either way, I retreated to Walmart. I was putting together a list of things I need — I know that there are several random things that I’ve been meaning to get, like another coat hook because one of mine broke — when I realized that the Walmart looked closed. Yes! It closed at 5PM. I was once again reminded that I am not in my own country, ha. I know that some Walmarts are not 24-hour, but 5PM? And actually, the reminder should have come from me needing to translate 17:00 back to 5:00. Or maybe from not being able to read any of the words on the sign.

So I have a random story from a while ago that I keep remembering, and I’m going to write it down because ten years from now it will make me smile should I stumble across this blog post. R and I ate well, of course, during the week that he camped with me, because I do eat well. We ate out a few times, too, because that’s definitely one of the pleasures of traveling with company, but I cooked most meals. We didn’t eat anything special, particularly — sausages on the grill with salads, risotto with asparagus, sautéed salmon, eggs and potatoes and blueberry pancakes… just food.

And he complimented it, but he grew up while I was learning to cook. He is the person who got to eat every failed experiment, every lesson learned the hard way, every “oops, maybe not like that,” and so he approaches my food with a little more wariness than the average person I feed. But on one of our last nights together, he said to me, “You really are an incredible cook.”

And I was sooo pleased. So delighted. So just a-glow with pleasure that my hard-earned skill was being acknowledged by my toughest audience.

And then I looked at what we were eating and laughed, and said, “Seriously? We’re having quinoa bowls. Not rocket science. Are you complimenting my vegetable-chopping skills?”

Because I make quinoa bowls ALL the time. It’s practically the TV dinner of my life. Put some salad greens in a bowl, add a couple big spoonfuls of quinoa, top with vegetables of some sort and protein of some sort and a dressing, probably based on Greek yogurt, but varying depending on what’s in the bowl. Sometimes even bottled salad dressing! I love the Simply Lemon vinaigrette. It is not a meal that requires any kind of cooking expertise at all. It’s just tossing a bunch of stuff together. Although I actually don’t even really toss it – I like having the ingredients be more layered.

But he said, “I’m serious. This is the best quinoa I’ve ever tasted.”

And so I went back to being pleased. But I also told him, as I will tell you, that the secret to good quinoa is to toast the grains before cooking them, which in my case means sautéing them in the base of the Instant Pot, with no oil or liquid. He asked how long to saute them and that’s a question to which there is no real answer, because it depends on quantity and the heat of the pan, but the effective answer is “until they smell toasted and nutty and delicious.” He has since made his own first quinoa bowl — he went with olives, feta, and a vinaigrette, and reports success, which adds to my pleasure. The only thing better than being a good cook is teaching someone else to be a good cook, too.

river view

I could have been parked next to this beautiful river for the night. I wonder if it was the graffiti on the rocks, unnoticed at the time, that made me feel unsure? Or maybe it was jut parking right next to a river when it was clearly going to rain? But no, I really just think I was worrying about the Loch Ness monster or some Canadian variant.

Camping des Voltigeurs, Drummondville, Quebec

23 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Travel, Vanlife, Writing

≈ 14 Comments

I dreamed last night that the campsite I’m in turned to solid mud in the rain, two inches deep, and that Zelda ran out of the van door and straight into the mud, sinking in and leaving footprints all over it. I immediately objected, super frustrated because even though I’m supposed to have water at this campsite, it’s not at all clear to me where I find said water. There’s no hook-up within reach, not unless I had incredibly long hoses. No hook-up that’s obvious, anyway.

So she was muddy and I was upset, because I knew I’d never get her clean, and there was going to be mud all over the van, and although I’ve gotten used to being dirty, I’ve never really accepted it. I still hate it, especially when the van is dirty and it feels like there’s no escape from the dirt.

And then I woke up and it hadn’t rained, the sun was shining and there was no mud. Isn’t it strange how happy one can feel about something that one would totally have taken for granted in other circumstances? Without that dream, it would never have occurred to me to be glad that the ground was solid. I would have been mentally grumbling about the traffic — my campsite is across from a busy road, so even though there’s a line of trees mostly blocking the road from view, I’m again listening to a lot of traffic noises. But I don’t mind now, because at least it’s not traffic noises in the mud.

The part about the water is true, though. When I got here yesterday, I was mystified, but also much too tired after a really long day of driving to deal with going back up to the front and finding someone to help me. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. There are plenty of empty spaces, so I could go talk to someone at the front and maybe move to another site, but I could also just go without water hook-ups for a few days.

I’ve gotten pretty good at coping with water scarcity from all my driveway camping — water hook-ups are more of a luxury than a necessity for me — but I’m paying for the water so I sort of feel like I should have it. Paying a lot, too — provincial parks in Canada are not cheap, even with the exchange rate. On the other hand, I’m tired and unmotivated and don’t speak French. For the moment at least, I think I will survive without water.

But I will survive without water in Quebec! Where people speak French! Yesterday’s French adventures included a confusing stop at a gas station where the pump didn’t work and the messages on the screen were all in French, and then a confusing stop at a CostCo where my debit card didn’t work. In both places, the cashiers spoke perfect English once I made my confusion clear, so it’s not like I faced any true challenges, but it was rather fun. I like feeling lost in another country. It adds another layer to being tired, though — when I finally made it to my campsite, I really just didn’t have the energy left to have another confusing encounter.

A campsite with trees, a car going by, electric wires overhead and much dirt ground.

My campsite. Electric wires and traffic, but no mud!

I believe that this campground is next to an historic Quebec village. No dogs allowed, but I might leave Z in the van for a while and go wander around for a while. I’d feel okay about doing that, because it was 53 degrees this morning and is still only in the 60s. 53! I was too cold to get out of bed, because it hadn’t remotely occurred to me that I might want to run the heat. But it makes me really happy to be so chilly. Autumn is on its way, yay! I love Serenity, but I love her best when she’s not an oven.

But before I do that, I’m going to write for a while. Real words. Fiction words. Yesterday’s long drive (pretty close to eight hours, including two stops for gas, one dog walk, and one quick CostCo visit for Canadian blueberries) was rich with imaginings. My only problem is that I had good ideas for so many stories that I’m not even sure where to begin. It’s a lovely problem to have.

On the positive side

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in Personal, R, Randomness, Travel, Zelda

≈ 9 Comments

Yesterday, I picked up R at the closest subway station (or light rail, I’m not sure which) and we set off for a day of city luxuries. It turned out to be a day of very minor city luxuries because we are too cheap for much in the way of city fun. We tried to go to Mission Impossible and it was $26 per ticket. $26! Thank you, but I’ll wait until it hits some television-type format.

But I’d picked out a restaurant for lunch that sounded like a bistro-type pub — interesting food, claiming to have gluten-free options. We got there and it turned out to be more like a combination sports bar/Applebee’s, with the only gluten-free items on the menu being pad thai or potato skins. We decided to pass and left.

I was frustrated, because we’d both spent quite a while browsing various review apps on our phones, trying to find the perfect place, but there was a Vietnamese restaurant in the same strip mall-type place, so we decided to go there.

Spontaneously.

Without reading any reviews.

Without consulting TripAdvisor or Yelp or even Google.

And it was delicious! I had mango salad and shrimp summer rolls and R had pho. I took one bite of his pho before he added hoisin sauce (which has gluten, so is not an option for me) and it was so delicious that I ordered myself a pho to go. I ate it for dinner last night and lunch today and it was so good that I’m now feeling in ridiculous harmony with the world. Good soup, that’s all one needs to cheer one up.

I liked the restaurant so much that I went to TripAdvisor to leave a review for it and… it doesn’t exist! Or at least not in Trip Advisor. But for anyone wandering around Toronto, it was called Good Pho You, and that’s the right address and the right menu, even if the name on the website is Mr. Ping’s Noodles. And it was very good for me, several times. If it rains tomorrow, I might have to go back there.

Why is rain connected to dinner, you wonder? Because R and his girlfriend are coming over. I’m planning on making chicken piccata, gluten-free, which is a food I don’t make when I’m on my own, because it requires wine and I need someone else around to drink up the wine. But dinner in the van for more than two people only works when it’s really dinner outside at a picnic table. Still, if my chicken piccata plan fails, we will have Vietnamese and I, at least, will be content.

In even more positive news, albeit already mentioned, R and his girlfriend are coming over for dinner tomorrow. I haven’t met her yet, but I’m looking forward to it. R paid her a compliment that I am not allowed to repeat (not because it’s overly personal, but because he feels it might stress her out to have to live up to said compliment), but it makes me highly inclined to think I’m going to like her a lot. I’d probably think that anyway, though, because R is so happy about their relationship. I told him that while I refuse to take on his unhappiness as my own, his happiness boosts mine by about 20%. So happiness boosted and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

In additional positive news, Zelda is doing great. She’s not limping anymore, even on long walks. And we’ve run into some other dogs on our walks and she’s been perfectly pleasant to them. I was worried that she might adopt an “attack first” attitude, but a lifetime of good dog encounters has not been jeopardized by the one Very Bad Encounter. At least not for her. I’m working on my own anxiety around the issue.

The only continuing problem for her is that after hurting herself when jumping off the bed a few times in the first days after the VBE, she’s decided against doing that anymore. I’m hoping she’ll get over it eventually, but right now, she jumps up on the bed and then gets trapped there until I realize she’s standing, staring at the ground, and help her down.

And another positive — I’ve made a decision about what I’m doing next! I’ve really been debating about what to do, where to go. I know I write better and more when I sit still. The past two weeks have been terrible writing weeks, because I’ve done so much driving. But what’s the point of living in a van if it doesn’t include some adventuring? If I’m just living in a tiny space, I could do that much more comfortably in one that had a permanent connection to hot water.

Anyway, I was debating between heading west and going along the north side of the Great Lakes all the way to Winnipeg, then south through North Dakota in order to see North Dakota (#49 on my list of states); or heading west to Michigan and visiting the upper peninsula, as missed earlier in the summer; or heading south through New York, over to New Hampshire and Massachusetts and then continuing south.

I decided to do none of the above.

If you were to take a list of the top 50 things to see in the US, I would have seen most of them. Not all of them. I’ve never been to Yellowstone, Glacier, Carlsbad Caverns or Denali. I’ve not watched Old Faithful or visited Craters of the Moon. And there are definitely places I’d like to spend more time, like the Great Smoky Mountains and the entire state of New Mexico. But the places that I actually want to see? Not just “will go see, because hey, why not?” but “want to see”? There are not so many of them left. In fact, when I — in exasperation with myself — meditated on that question only one popped into my head.

Prince Edward Island.

Which, conveniently enough, is actually in the same country that I’m currently in! Not exactly close to where I currently am, but close is relative, right?

So I’m heading to Prince Edward Island, hoping to find places to stay along the way that don’t involve too many parking lots. This last week of summer is a terrible time to find campgrounds and places are mostly booked. And I don’t want to brave PEI until after Labor Day if I can manage it, since this is peak tourist season. But Labor Day is only two weeks away. On Wednesday, I’ll head to a campground in Quebec for the weekend, and then after that… well, I’ll play it by ear, I guess. But I’m excited! Anne of Green Gables country! And the ocean! And then south through Maine and maybe even some New Hampshire autumn foliage.

Life is good.

spiderweb photo

It’s very hard to take a good picture of a spiderweb but it was a beautiful web!

Fifty Point Conservation Area, Grimsby, Ontario

15 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Personal, R, Randomness, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

I wrote the name of this campground as Conversation Area initially, which really amused me. And it would be so apt! This is a lovely campground on the shores of Lake Ontario. Our site is a pull-through adjacent to another pull-through pointed in the opposite direction, so we’re very close to our neighbors but facing in opposite directions. Conversation would be easy, but is not required.

the sun setting over Lake Ontario

Last night’s view of the sun setting over Lake Ontario.

The campground itself is pretty much everything I like in a campground — grass, trees, water, sunlight, space, beautiful walking, a dog beach where Zelda can play, birds, including the world’s cutest woodpecker working on the tree by the picnic table this morning and some unidentified species sauntering through the grass. Even the bugs were cute — I have no idea what the one crawling on the sink this morning was, but it was green and tiny, with long legs. Maybe some kind of aphid?

Also lots of birch trees, and I’ve decided that the wind rustling through birch tree leaves really makes a unique noise — it’s not the same as wind rustling through other tree leaves. The birch leaves sound like they’re whispering. And tons of cricket noise last night, or maybe they were frogs? But the night was loud and seventy degrees, perfect summer feeling.

So yesterday was Niagara Falls. It was crazily tourist-y, in the way all the main tourist attractions seem to be. Amazing people watching, and frankly, pictures of people would be by far the best photographs from any of the tourist attractions. Preferably pictures of people taking pictures. I started amassing a little collection of those in my travels, but then I realized that I would never be willing to post them anywhere, because it would feel so rude to post a picture of a stranger, but yesterday’s collection of strangers would have been amazing. It reminded me of being at the southern-most point of the United States, in Key West — lots of tourists, people from all over the world, there just for the sake of being there. That said, they were some pretty cool waterfalls, no question about that. And it was such a hot day that it was pretty lovely to stand in the spray of the mist.

Zelda in a field of wildflowers in front of edge of Niagara Falls

You can just see the top of the falls in the background. In order to get a real view, you walk down a hill to the right of the photo, and join a mob of people clustered at a railing, all taking pictures. We liked the wildflowers better than the concrete platform, though.

We also saw my very earliest childhood home yesterday — only somewhat out of our way. The interesting thing about that was not so much how different the neighborhood looked from my memory — very different, and so much smaller — but that I had the address wrong. The day before, when I was failing to find my other childhood homes, I told R confidently that my early memories were the most reliable and that of all the different places I’d lived in during my childhood, the only one that I actually remembered the address of was the first. Wrong! I had the street right, but not the number. I’m not sure that means anything, except maybe that none of my memories are reliable. But I had a very different feel looking at that house than at the others, much warmer and cozier. I’m glad we drove by, even though it was a very long driving day for me. It was worth the stop.

Today we’re headed on to Toronto. Our mattress hunt yesterday failed — perhaps the influence of the bed bug revival? Thrift stores don’t seem to carry mattresses anymore, unfortunately. But we’re going to check out Ikea this afternoon, so fingers crossed for good luck there. Otherwise, R might be going to steal one of the mattresses from the van for a few days while he orders a mattress online or tries for a Craig’s List find. Either way, he’ll have something on which to sleep tonight.

And somehow it is already 10AM, which means it’s time to get moving. Lots to do today, but much, much enormous thanks to the readers who have reached out to tell me that they read Grace — your words brought me much joy this morning! R and I had pancakes (gluten-free, of course) to celebrate!

Green Lakes State Park, Manlius, New York

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Anxiety, Campground, R, Travel

≈ 10 Comments

Post our lovely time in Grand Isle, R and I had no specific plans, but he needs to be back in Toronto by Wednesday. Originally, I’d thought we’d wander slowly through Ontario, but after much discussion, we went for a slight change of plans and decided to take the southern route back to Toronto instead. It’s longer, because we’re swinging pretty far south to get below Lake Ontario and then go up the other side of the lake and around to get to Toronto, but it offered several advantages.

First, gas is enough cheaper in the US that the cost was probably close to the same. Second, R needs a cheap mattress for his new living situation and we’d like to buy it on the last day possible before arriving at his new place, ie Wednesday. US prices might be cheaper, so being in the US on Wednesday could be handy. Third, driving through the south opened up the possibility of driving by several places where I used to live — this area of upstate New York is where I mostly grew up and I haven’t really been back in decades. And fourth, Niagara Falls! Classic Americana road trip sight — the kind of thing that belongs on a list with the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore.

But along the way is Green Lakes State Park, a gorgeous park, very green and lush, beautiful lakes, pleasant treed campsites and really nice showers — the single room kind, where you have a door, plus control over the water temperature. The weather, typical of this oh-so-familiar area, is gray and gloomy, but we drove around for a while, passing by my old high school, three of the houses I lived in (one of which I couldn’t identify — best I could do was say, “sort of somewhere around here and now we must have passed it”), and the site of every bookstore and library that I loved. In fact, R’s impression of my childhood is probably that I did nothing but go to school and read books, because those are the only things that I remember. Although that said, I do vaguely remember this park as a place where we sometimes came to swim in the summertime.

a camper van in a spacious campsite

Our site at Green Lakes. Very green.

Perhaps it’s because I vaguely remember it that I’ve been feeling utterly phobic about poison ivy. I swear, every random leaf looks like a poison ivy leaf to me. Did I once get poison ivy in this park? Is that why I’m so paranoid?

That’s probably not it, though. Sometimes anxiety manifests as semi-irrational fears in order to shield our mind from less-irrational fears. In this case, I think I am struggling not to let last week’s attack turn into a serious dog phobia on my part. It was so fast, so out-of-nowhere, so aggressive and so brutal. My head still knows that dogs are our friends, but the back of my neck seems to be experiencing some post-traumatic stress, and while I try to talk myself out of it, I worry about poison ivy. Now that I’ve figured that out, maybe I’ll stop. Or maybe I’m actually right that all these random leaves are poison ivy and I’ll be hunting for remedies by the time we get to Canada.

Meanwhile, today is release day for A Gift of Grace. I’m trying not to let that stress me out — Niagara Falls, way better thing to think about! — but I’m not that zen. But I checked and double-checked the files, and I do know that it’s time to let go. So I’ll be working on that while I admire the big waterfall today. But I do hope that all of you reading Grace today enjoy yourselves!