Surviving a family road trip across Canada
Long-haul family vacation was fun, safe and clean
No Tranquilizers! 17,000 kilometres, 63 days, 3 kids, 1 van.
This may be a strange title for a book, but a Calgary-to-Corner-Brook-and-back family road trip will be a laughing matter for years to come for the Palmer family.
Canadian writer, entrepreneur and traveller Mi- chael Palmer, who also works in finance and marketing in Alberta’s oilpatch industry, will soon add “humorist” to his CV and he’ll have his wife and kids to thank for that.
“People thought we were nuts to do this: travelling so far for so long with kids,” said Palmer from his home in Calgary, where he and his clan have just relocated after living in Costa Rica for a year, following their road trek from Alberta to the northern tip of Newfoundland and back.
“But the way we saw it was that you can have kid issues at home just like you would on the road. So, why not take those crazy, chaotic kid moments on the road, deal with it and enjoy it all for what it is.”
Palmer has written works of fiction and non-fiction, and this time he’s aiming for the funny bone in his family travelogue of the nine-week cross-Canada road trip that he, his wife Catharine, a physiotherapist, and their three children, Andrew, 11, Ryan, 9, and Jenna, 7, took during the summer of 2013.
From June to late August the family travelled in their Honda Odyssey van, staying at inexpensive cabins, hotels and motels and making occasional pit stops along the way to visit relatives in Ontario and Prince Edward Island.
“We wanted it to be an educational trip for the kids and give them handson experience,” said Palmer. “So we visited things like the Terry Fox monument (in Thunder Bay), went to see the whales and other points of interest our kids would have read about in school.”
Working as a team, the Palmers all had input in the planning of their road trip: where they were going and where they would stay along the way.
“Everything was totally planned because you had to be on time for things like the ferry to Newfoundland, which has to be booked ahead of time, as did the baseball game we went to see in Toronto,” he said.
“If you don’t, you’ll loose your place (on the ferry) and any kind of interruption throws your whole schedule off. So when you don’t make it to the hotel or the event you’re planning to go to, you’re going to lose your money and could find yourself without a place to stay.”
Palmer and his wife realized the kids had to be occupied but they didn’t want to rely on TV and videos to keep them entertained, so they limited that activity to 45 minutes a day.
Catharine Palmer put together an entertainment bag for each of their kids packed with books, puzzles and other things they could access whenever they wanted.
Vehicle safety and cleanliness was an important factor, so the Palmers made sure the van was prepped for the trip by having it mechanically checked over, from the tires to the drivetrain. And they stocked up on everything they’d need to keep the interior clean in the event of spills and other messy possibilities.
Although navigating the TransCanada Highway was simple enough, GPS came in handy in getting them to their booked accommo- dation or finding restaurants and stores whenever they got into cities and towns.
“We all got pretty good at it,” Palmer said. “At the beginning, there was a bit of, ‘Aw, I don’t like this place, or I don’t like this bed.’ But as the weeks progressed, the kids became seasoned road warriors. They learned to adapt, and that will go a long way in their lives.”
That’s not to say it was smooth sailing all the way. As in any family situation, there was the potential for tantrums and other tribulations due to tiredness, boredom or other factors.
“It seems funny now, but we had an incident in Corner Brook, N.L.,” Palmer said. “We were racing to get to the ferry on time and the kids were getting antsy, so we made a quick stop to get a movie.
“Each kid, of course, wants a different movie and, the next thing I know, one of them is sprawled out on the floor crying. I’ve got one kid under my arm and another’s hanging onto my leg and the cashier was thinking we were the worst parents in the world.
“We finally decided on a movie, got back into the van in the pouring rain and managed to make it onto the boat on time. And soon we were all laughing about it.”
Although every stop was planned on the road east, the Palmers decided to do the opposite on the return trip.
“We thought, ‘Let’s just drive and whenever we felt like we were done for the day we’d just stop at the nearest hotel. It was late August, past the high season, and we managed to find places to stay where we wanted.”
Although mom is the family’s principal photographer, the kids got to take their share of pictures and by the time they got home they had more than 2,000 images from their adventure.
“A trip like that is a great way for a family to reconnect,” said Palmer. “There are those little moments that happen when you’re all together and they add up to family memories that last a lifetime.”
Since their 2013 trip, the Palmer family has lived in a Costa Rican surfing and yoga community, populated by North American and European expats, with an international school the kids attended. They are now resettling in Calgary. “After a year away, we just wanted to get back to some normalcy,” said Palmer, the day after he arrived in Calgary a couple of weeks ahead of his wife and kids.
That normalcy will see Andrew, Ryan and Jenna reconnect with their Calgary school chums, and they’ll have travel stories to tell until the next big trip comes around.
Palmer said that journey may involve living near Barcelona, Spain for a year, where the skiing is just an hour away in one direction and the Mediterranean beaches about the same distance the other way.
And then there’s the family’s collective yearning to go across Canada by van once again, but this time on a northern route taking in the upper prairies, James Bay region, Gaspé peninsula and Labrador. It should be a laugh, either way. Palmer’s book based on the family’s Canadian road trip is expected to be published in the fall, while his mystery novel, The Leaf Cutter, will be available later this month.
“As the weeks progressed, the kids became seasoned road warriors.” CATHARINE PALMER