Drum Roll Please!

• “A dream realized” is the best way to summarize my nearly five-month motorhome trip.

• After a few days at home and some good zzzzz’ing in my own bed, it was time for the post-trip analysis and future travel planning. The most influential factors were: how I feel about the experience, what I want to do next, and how much all this is costing me.

• On the up-side, it was amazing to live so happily in such a small space – with room to spare. I loved the laid-back winter lifestyle of a desert-climate resort. The wonderful memories of happy hours (and Happy Hours) and the fabulous friendships will last a lifetime. On the down-side I absolutely hated being so far away from my family and friends, especially knowing how difficult it would be to “get back” if the need arose.

• On the down-side, I did not enjoy the actual driving of the motorhome. I was too focused on the road to see much of the countryside and hated the difficulty of driving in bad weather. At the end of the day I didn’t relish the prospect of leveling the motorhome so I could hook up to power and water, particularly for a single night’s stay and especially if it was or had been raining.

• Describing the down-side would be incomplete without mentioning the cost. The Canadian dollar had been at or near par with the Yankee greenback for more than a year so I did not really anticipate the serious nosedive the loonie would take as soon as I crossed the border. It was simple but incredibly painful math to figure out what the killer exchange rate averaging 33% did to my travel budget.

• As I mulled over all of the above, I started plotting my Western Canada adventure; Kamloops, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary and back to Victoria. The estimated cost of gassing the motorhome and paying summer campground rates for numerous one-night stays inspired me to investigate how much it would cost to take a plane, bus or train to the places on my most-want-to-go-there list.

• It didn’t take long to figure out more relaxing and far cheaper alternatives to driving a motorhome! The revised trip plan is for a six-week multi-modal, stay-with-friends trip. I will start out on a Greyhound Bus bound for Kamloops. Then I will ride the rails with Via Rail through the Rockies and across the flatland prairies to Winnipeg. The route back will include Greyhound to Regina and Westjet back to Victoria.

• As for MineRVa ……well, having helped me realize my dream, she’s now on the market looking for a new dreamer.

• Stay tuned as the travellingsmurph adventure continues.
  

Happy Hour Victoria Style

• I have returned to Victoria with a renewed appreciation for this west coast city that I have been lucky enough to call home for almost 16 years. Among the lessons learned during my 5-month absence: this is where I want to stay.

• While the general population of Victoria may be grumbling about the late arrival of spring, it is totally working in my favour. Usually the City's annual Blossom Count takes place in mid-February. This conspicuous form of bragging often reports 3 or more billion blossoms at a time when most Canadians are still coping with deep snow and bitter cold. Delayed by more than a month this year, the canopy of pink and white blossoming trees continues to cloak many streets. I've been walking around inhaling the sometimes intoxicating scent. With trumpets angling toward the sun, hoards of vibrant yellow daffodils are standing tall in gardens and patio planters, alongside tulips that will soon reveal their own splashy colours: red, white, pink, orange.

• Beacon Hill Park is Victoria's equivalent of New York City's Central Park; 200 acres on the edge of downtown, bisecting the city's funkiest neighbourhoods and bordering on waterfront. My friend Rick, visiting from Edmonton, invited me to share the realization of a bucket-list event: sitting by a lake in Beacon Hill Park, feeding the ducks while sipping red wine.

• When I joined Rick on the traditional dark green slatted park bench, he pulled from his backpack two small wine glasses, a large wine-filled thermos, a plastic container filled with cheese and crackers for us and a bag of bread crumbs that brought ducks, seagulls, blackbirds and a few squirrels scurrying toward our feet. Surrounded by bright green grass, blossoming trees and the reds, purples and yellows of assorted ground flowers, we wiled away a happy hour with an occasional appreciative nod and eventually a toast - "cheers" - from passersby.
  

• Although Beacon Hill Park's landscape presented an incredible contrast to the palm treed desert of Arizona and California, the sentiment of happy hour was the same. A relaxing, conversation filled time shared by good friends. In fact it was so relaxing and so good that we went back two days later and happy houred again.

Four Days on the Road

Day 1: Hemet to Kettleman City, California

• Donna and Tom, my full-timer RVing friends, knocked on my door at 6 a.m. for a last round of Golden Village farewells. After more than three months of sound friendship on a daily basis, I sure am going to miss them; at least until September when they plan to visit Vancouver Island. Donna and I had quickly established a weekly "girlfriends day" ritual of shopping, lunching, sharing stories of our lives, families, secrets, hopes, dreams and schemes.

• On the first day's drive toward home I went from Hemet to the very small town of Kettleman City. I got a fishburger and fries at the comination Chevron gas station/McDonalds and settled in to munch and update my daily log book. To my horror, I discovered that somewhere between MineRVa and the McDonalds' table, I had lost my wallet! Credit cards, driver's licence, birth certificate, health care card, miscellaneous cards, cash and a key to my motorhome. The gas station clerk told me some guy had approached him with the wallet but hadn't left it or even his name.

• I rumbled down the road to the local fire hall/sheriff's station where I hoped the finder might have taken the wallet. The calendar-caliber firemen could only give me lots of smiling sympathy as they notified the Deputy Sheriff whose jurisdiction includes KettlemanCity.


• The motto "be prepared" having been drummed into my head as a teenaged Girl Guide, I actually was prepared for just such an emergency. Before leaving home I had carefully stashed a spare credit card and $200 US cash inside my motorhome. Otherwise I'd have been screwed - there is just no other way to put it!
  
• Deputy Sheriff Parker, a roadside saint of the highest order, got right on the case while I got on the phone and cancelled the lost credit cards. I will never know what secret policing magic he used but within an hour, the Deputy Sheriff's fruitful investigation yielded the name and phone number of the guy who had found the wallet. Unfortunately, that roadside saint had been heading toward Los Angeles and had taken the wallet with him. As he later explained, there was just too much in it to entrust it to a gas station clerk and he planned to mail it to me in Victoria. I offered him the cash from the wallet as a reward but he declined to accept it. Instead, I will be sending a letter to his boss to let the company know what kind of high-integrity person they have in their employ. Likewise with the Kings County Sheriff. What the heck, I may even write to Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Day 2: Kettleman City to Redding, California

• The I-5 in Central California runs through wine country. Some of the vines looked brown and crispy while others were lush with green leaves and the promise of a healthy grape crop. Overall the land looked flat, sliced here and there by channels of the California Aquaduct; a system of canals, tunnels and pipelines that conveys precious H2O from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to a productive agricultural area that would otherwise be completely dry and barren.


• The wind cutting across the I-5 made driving difficult. With both hands glued to the steering wheel and both ears tuned to the radio, I heard the next day's forecast: high winds in Northen CA with an attendant advisory for road travellers and, even worse, a dreaded prediction of afternoon snowfall in the Southern Oregon mountain passes. Adjusting my travel itinerary, I bypassed the Flying J truck stop in Corning that had been my overnight destination and drove through to Redding. At the northern end of the State's central valley, Redding marks the transition from flatland to foothills with snowbound Mount Shasta standing distant guard.

Day 3: Redding to Kelso, Washington State

• Up and out of there at the chill break of dawn, I headed north from Redding toward the CA/OR state line. As the road wound its way up toward the mountain passes, the temperature dropped, rain started falling and a thickening fog made the road ahead almost impossible to see. The transport truck drivers turned on their four-way flashers, pulled into the slow lane and crawled along at 25 mph. I know how fast they were driving because I turned on my flashers and, with white knuckles evidencing my status as a novice RV driver, tucked in between two blinking transport trucks. I really don't know what I would have done without that long line-up of 18-wheeled roadside saints to guide me safely through the passes. After what seemed like a very long time, the snaking parade emerged from the passes that had taken me from 400 feet to the 4310 foot summit of Siskiyou Pass and back again.
  
• Having travelled longer than intended on the previous day and started out early, I reached my day's intended destination by 11:30 a.m. The 7-Feathers Casino has a lovely, full-facility RV park where I'd stayed on my southbound trek. It didn't look so lovely in the blustering rain so I spent a leisurely lunch hour revising my trip plan and carried on. As I had during my southbound trip, I was hoping to see Mount St. Helen's volcano but once again she was hidden from view behind fog and clouds. For the time being, I will continue to accept, on faith, that the volcano which had long ago dusted me with windborne ash halfway across the continent in Winnipeg, does indeed exist.


• After spending a very long day on the road, I wearily arrived at Kelso, Washington State. Like most places I'd been that day, Kelso was drenched in rain so I checked into a motel and hit the sack, exhausted and early.

Day 4: Kelso to Victoria, British Columbia

• I was wide awake before daybreak and once again ready for the road. Within an hour, I turned off the I-5 onto coastal highway 101, a much narrower road that winds its way along the shore of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. With low speed limits and a posted requirement that slower vechicles must use designated pull-outs to allow faster traffic to zoom by, the 101 passes through tiny, picturesque seaside villages and waterfront resorts. Although I had hoped to catch a close-up view of the always snow-capped Olympic Mountains - so familier from my usual distant vantage point in Victoria - they too were lost in the clouds.


• At Port Angeles, I boarded the Coho Ferry and could see the welcoming shores of Vancouver Island and Victoria's skyline emerge in the distance. Now celebrating 50 years of transporting travellers between Port Angeles and Victoria, the faithful old boat rocked - what I thought was rather precariously - from side to side as it crossed the line from American to Canadian waters.
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Patti, my ever-faithful friend and roommate was standing on the breakwater waving the Coho into Victoria's Inner Harbour. After MineRVa rolled off the ship and passed through Canadian Customs, Patti met me at a parking lot close to home, helped me unload "the basics" and immediately escorted me across the street to the Heron Rock Bistro. It felt incredible to be back at the scene of November's bon voyage dinner, once again sipping a few cosmos and awaiting a Canadian beef steak; cooked rare, just the way I like it.

• In four days I had travelled from a landscape of sparse, spindly desert palm trees to the densely forested northwest coast. For as much fun as I had during my four-plus month southwestern US adventure, I am looking forward to my upcoming Western Canada tour.

• Stay tuned as my adventure continues. I'll be spending - and writing about - the next month "on vacation" in my hometown, waiting for the Goddess of Springtime to work her magic and end this historical, much too long winter.

Ready to Roll

• Having sampled so many Southern California adventures and lazed my way through a winter where the worst weather was strong wind and occasional rainfall, I’ve come to the usual conclusion: people are what make a place special.
  

• Saturday night, after a leisurely farewell dinner at a family-run, yummy home-made pasta restaurant, the “usual gang” sojourned to Sandy’s candle-lit patio for a late-evening happy hour. Sandy, a “six and sixer” snowbird with homes on both ends, had already jammed her car three-quarters full with the “stuff” she needs for the summer months in West Vancouver.
  

• Sunday morning, Donna and Tom invited me to the Elks Club for a farewell buffet breakfast, no doubt the finest in Hemet. Being an Elk is all about helping your neighbours and Tom lives that credo in spades. Sunday afternoon when I started road-prepping, he initially offered to install my new windshield wipers – heading for BC, I need the finest money can buy. By the time Tom was done, my oil, brake and other fluids were all checked and topped up and he had hauled his compressor down the street to top up my tires. On a daily basis, Tom has cruised by on his rickety red bicycle and recycled his newspaper by delivering it to my door. (Thank you, Tom!)

• When it came time to load my scooter onto the hitch behind MineRVa’s back bumper, Gary was quick to offer his help – which really means he did it with minimal help from me. (Thanks, Gary!)

• Yesterday, it was a farewell pancake breakfast with Carol and a farewell Texas barbeque dinner at Donna and Tom’s. In between, farewell hugs and last-minute waves abounded as 55 snowbird rigs jockeyed for position at the departure gate.

• While every moment of my 97 days in residence at Golden Village has been thoroughly enjoyable, I am eagerly anticipating racking up the northbound miles (ooops, time to shift back to kilometers) zooming along the I-5, heading home to Victoria.

• This morning I am up early, have showered, dressed, brushed my teeth, and fixed some coffee and snacks for the road. Momentarily, I will dump my black and grey water tanks, disconnect the water supply, cablevision, the shoreline power and do all the last minute checks to ensure MineRVA is road-ready.

• Signing off from the Golden Village in Hemet, California!

The Snowbird Exodus

• I was up extra early this morning. I've got travelling on my mind. Three more days and I will join the exodus of snowbirds from the Golden Village. My route options are all mapped out, including a list of highway exits that have gas stations, McDonald's, RV parks and, just in case the weather is really crappy, roadside hotels. While I do plan to spend a few nights at truck stops relying on my batteries and on-board water supply, I assure you I won't be ending a long day’s drive by scrambling outside in the rain to dump my tanks or hook up the fresh water, sewer and electrical connections. With the weather continuing to be as crazy as it is, simple rain would be a bonus. (Mental note: get new windshield wipers.)

• Punctuated by last-minute happy hours, hugs, handshakes and variations on the phrases “keep in touch”, “see you next year” and “travel safe”, many snowbirds have already started their northbound migration. Yesterday there was a line-up at the clubhouse of folks wanting to settle their accounts and get assigned to the departure “pull-through” sites that will allow hooking up their towed vehicles before bed-time in anticipation of a next day early-morning departure. Those headed for non-coastal provinces and states are having their rigs winterized before leaving Southern California since they are headed into the lingering nastiness of what is now being labeled “this historic winter".

• Tornadoes, winter blizzards, the volcano eruption in Alaska and record-breaking floods are plaguing the US and Canada. There have been reports of several small earthquakes here in Southern California but nothing I've felt. The predicted return of the Santa Ana winds that force motorhomes off the road has failed to materialize. Although the days here are getting warmer, the desert climate means a drop of twenty to thirty degrees at night. Early morning furnace blasts continue but by 9 a.m. the furnace is off, the windows are open and the fans are doing their best to stave off the escalating heat of the day.

• As if on cue to signal the end of the snowbird season, spectacularly scented orange blossoms on the tree outside my door have surrounded the last piece of hanging fruit.

• Another countdown is on as I anticipate the next phase of my own historic journey.

Reviewing the Situation

• Once upon a time when I was pondering a decision that might have been easily made by others a dear friend said to me, “It must be hell going through life as an analyst.” I consider that a compliment of the highest order!

• Consistent with that characterization, my trip planning process about ‘what comes next’ started with creating an array of spreadsheets, worksheets, and action plans that consolidate carefully researched data from the weather channel, websites, maps, and guidebooks, advice from family, friends and fellow travelers, and, most importantly, the wealth of dreams that whirl and swirl in the cauldron of my mind.

• I put on my rosy red thinking cap and after giving due consideration to pros, cons and cost/benefit analyses, I broadened, narrowed and redirected the options and finally distilled all of the foregoing into a sensible, practical and logical decision: With my mind on my driving, my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road ahead … I will leave Golden Village next week, homeward bound to spend a month in Victoria before hitting the road again for my tour of western Canada.

• With the dregs of this unseasonal winter continuing to torment the US and Canada, the 10-day weather forecast for most destinations on my wanna-go-there list is snow, rain, sleet, sub-zero temperatures, high winds, and/or possible flooding . That, combined with the killer exchange rate between the Canadian loonie and the US greenback, made it easy to conclude that I do not want to drive a thousand miles through deserts, mountains and flatlands just for the sake of saying I did it.

• For those unfamiliar with the rules, Canada’s medicare only allows a citizen to spend 6 out of 12 consecutive months outside the country. By returning to Canada before my must-cross-the-border deadline, I will essentially have time-in-the-bank for a further jaunt back into the US before my journey ends in September.

• To date, my trip has been a dream fulfilled. Fully decompressed from the stress and pressure of the workplace, I have travelled to exciting places, connected with kindred spirits, searched my soul, and even made friends with dogs. Having made the decision to return to Victoria, even for a few weeks, I am now excited about getting on the road.

A Wunnerful, Wunnerful Day!

• I was up at the crack of dawn this morning for a road trip with my friend Sandy. She spends 6 months each year here in Golden Village and the other 6 months living (in a manufactured home) under the Lion’s Gate Bridge in West Vancouver. She laughingly calls herself “the troll”.

• Thankfully Sandy has spent enough winters in Southern California that she knows the winding route of highways, byways and interstates required to travel the 61 miles from Hemet, on the desert, to Carlsbad, on the coast. (The rolling Pacific Ocean waves crashing onto a beach were a familiar and welcome sight!)
  

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• A perfect place to commemorate the first day of spring, the Carlsbad Flower Fields cover 52 acres of which 50 are dedicated to ranunculus and two to other specialty flowers; sweet peas, orchids, poinsettias and the like. Only about 2% of the flowers are sold, the rest are allowed to complete the growth cycle and each year six to eight million bulbs are harvested for sale at garden centres everywhere.

• Sandy and I accepted the challenge of navigating a sweet pea maze. She had plenty of time to relax on a bench outside the exit while I wandered and wandered and wandered, completely lost, but thoroughly enjoying the rich scent and brilliant colours.

• Another 30 miles on highways, byways and interstates, with the geography changing from ocean beaches to desert rocks to the lush green hillsides and valley nestling the Lawrence Welk Resort in Escondido. Born in a sod house on a tiny farm in North Dakota, leaving home with a fourth grade education, and achieving little success with band names like “The Hotsy Totsy Boys” and “The Honolulu Fruit Orchestra”, he attached his own name to the band and the rest, as they say is history. Parlaying his interest in music into a 41 year run of champagne music and a bubbles on television and making wise investments in real estate and music publishing, the old accordion squeezer became the second wealthiest entertainer in Hollywood (the wealthiest being Bob Hope). I shamelessly admit to having watched and enjoyed the show, back in the day, and even now I occasionally sway along to the sticky-sweet dance maneuvers of Cissy and Bobby re-runs.

• Although the maestro’s plan was to develop an orange grove in the desert, the investment was diverted to the first class golf course and resort, an escape destination for the Hollywood crowd seeking a break from Tinseltown. The small museum and musical theatre are open to lesser mortals such as yours truly and the troll.

• Today’s musical fare was “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, a lavishly costumed, orchestra-accompanied production about a dashing English aristocrat who risks his life to enter France and save innocents from the guillotine. I don’t know how the play was interpreted on the Broadway stage but at the Welk Resort, the hero and his associates avoid detection by pretending to be gay. While I found the mincing and limp-wristed affect to be highly amusing, I’m not so sure about the busload of grey-haired veterans who were also in the audience.

• “A one and a two and … adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen!”