Lewis and Clark with a V8 engine
ROAD TRIP: Far-flung places are nice, but it’s hard to beat Canada’s great outdoors
No matter how vast and geographically diverse our country is, it seems everyone I’ve ever met feels their little chunk of Canada is the best.
Maritimers wax poetic about the folksy charm and breathtaking vistas; prairie folk talk about wide-open spaces and magical nighttime skies.
In British Columbia, we rave about whales and waterways and mountains. And let’s face it, we’re the ones who are right.
So this summer my husband Rick, his 12-year-old son Kaleb and I decided that far-flung places were exciting, but it was time to see a little bit of beautiful B.C. up close.
As a child of Sprout Lake on Vancouver Island, Rick fancies himself as a bit of a country boy and outdoor adventurer. And as a child of the Lower Mainland I like to think my love of Travis Tritt makes me a bona fide country girl.
I’ve long argued that singing country tunes in a bad southern accent while commuting in my Audi to downtown Vancouver is basically the same as being raised in rural Saskatchewan.
Rick disagrees. I hate it when he’s wrong.
That said, I fully admit travelling à la RV isn’t something I’ve done often, and he is slightly more experienced when it comes to camping than I am. So when we picked up our 22-foot Adventurer at Fraserway RV in Abbotsford, I concealed my nervousness with witty banter about sani dumps and cruise control. I cracked myself up while the staff smiled politely and Rick shook his head, but in surprisingly short order they’d given us the orientation and safety demonstration, completed our paperwork and we were off.
Maybe because my early family vacations always involved camping or road trips, to me, setting off on the open road in an RV is the ultimate escape route.
The concept of a vacation whenever you want it is surprisingly appealing, and given we live in a place in the world where you don’t have to drive far to find a great roadway, having an RV makes logical and financial sense for today’s busy families who can find worldclass camping within a couple of hours’ drive in any direction. It’s like we’re Lewis and Clark with a V8 engine.
In our case, we combined the open road, our snazzy Adventurer RV, B.C. scenery and my country roots (OK, OK, just go with it) in a family trip to take in the music of the Rockin’ River Music Festival in Merritt.
After some debate about the risk-reward of the Starbucks Drive-Thru (risk wins), we hit Highway 1 through Abbotsford and Chilliwack like pros. Being RVers now, I decided it was best to embrace some folksy ways, and began to wave randomly at the poor people driving cars.
I noticed Rick rolling his eyes, but Kaleb was fine with it. Of course, he was comfortably lounging in a club seat pretty intent on his PS4. This RV lifestyle suited him just fine.
We stopped at the Blue Moose Café in Hope for a to-go latte, and couldn’t help but notice the park across the street was teeming with tourists in RVs en route, seemingly, to Vancouver Island.
The drive along the Coquihalla was predictably gorgeous, and we sailed into Merritt on time and in style.
Rockin’ River featured a selection of great headliners — Sam Hunt delivered as expected and Randy Hauser was fantastic — but we particularly loved the made-in-Canada performers, including an up and coming B.C. band called Me and Mae and the bona fide stars such as Dean Brody.
We were able to get our country on and head back to our home on wheels each night for a relaxing sleep in the family camping area in what has to be one of the most beautiful festival sites in our country.
All in all, the RV experience was better than I hoped, and I left Merritt believing even more in the concept of vacationing every weekend in this great province.
Next year, we check out what all those Albertans are bragging about!