Happy holidaying

The highway running a few hundred yards from the first campsite is deceptive.
You’d think all those motorcycles rolling for their piece of the Blue Ridge Parkway would be interfering noise to would-be campers. But those who chance it, and cross the bridge over Soco Creek into Happy Holiday RV Village, don’t regret it,
The rushing rapids of Soco Creek easily drown out any noise from traffic on Wolfetown Road in Cherokee, N.C., leaving campers lulled to sleep by murmuring waters. If you’re not lucky enough to get a site backing onto the creek, where fishermen ply their hobby daily in search of trout a foot long or better, maybe your site backs onto the small man-made lake called home by countless Canada geese and mallard ducks.
The 365 sites of the campground, which has been open on Cherokee land since the late 1960s, will be open all winter this year for the first time. The Cherokee this year have taken over management of the facility, after letting a lease lapse with another management group. That means opening year round and bringing the facility, which currently doesn’t boast WiFi or reliable cable service, up to grade.
“They have a lot of poop,” says campground manager Vicki Cucumber of the pest known as Canada geese. “There’s a grape seed extract spray and the geese don’t like the smell. So we’re going to try that, spray it on the grass because it won’t hurt anything.”
Cucumber also asks if we, as Canadians, could just take the geese home with us. We share some of the universal complaints about the animals.
Nestled between hills of the Smoky Mountains, Cherokee and this campground are a jumping off point for any number of activities from touring Biltmore, the enormous Vanderbilt home near Asheville, to cruising the world-renowned parkway. There’s golf nearby at the Sequoyah National golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., grandson of golfer Bobby Jones, and native golfer Notah Begay III. You can see Santa year-round at a local amusement park or take a side trip to a working grist mill and pioneer village. And at this time of years, the deciduous trees covering the hillsides are dressed in their most colourful best.
All this activity means the average guest at Happy Holiday RV Village isn’t an overnight camper.
“The majority stay, I would say, four days to a week,” Cucumber says. “They come to see the mountains, and they come to see the Indians.”
The area, including the small store at the RV Village office, is flooded with native crafts.
The campground keeps campers comfortable for a longer stay by offering three large shower and washroom buildings, plus a games room topped by a room that can be used for any sort of meeting. It means larger groups, such as a recent gathering of fibreglass RV owners, can gather and play at the facility.
One recent gathering brought 70 or so motorcyclists, all making a fundraising ride to support one of their own, stricken with multiple sclerosis. They hope to pay for his CCSVI surgery, a new, as yet unproven treatment for the disease.
In the future, Masons will gather here.
Locals support the campground by leaving their RVs in the same site for the season, some living as close as 40 miles away. While their fees allow them hookups to power, water and sewer, they are not permitted to build anything in place, as happens in some other campgrounds.
Cucumber, and the Cherokee who own the campground, hope the winter brings more campers. Offering half-price camping will be an incentive for some.
And come March 31, they will start the high season yet again, gearing up for a couple of bluegrass festivals among other things.
And then the small town of Cherokee will be chock full of tourists, keeping the economy humming.

From godly comes greedy

Amish country, it said on the map in the area surrounding Berlin, Millersburg, Sugarcreek and Walnut Creek, Ohio.
Even before we had seen it, we had images in our heads — horse and buggy clip-clopping down the highway, guided by a stoic driver unsmiling behind long, probably white, beard, as he goes about his business (turns out the road’s shoulders are extra wide and sloped to suit the rigs), men and women in distinctive clothing marking their religion and way of life (saw them walking placidly down the highway or side by side in town, seemingly oblivious to the repeated stares they generated), farmyards without mechanized equipment (eight heavy horses grazing in a field so knew what kind of farm it was) and harvests in the fields (a crop gathered into stooks is a solid hint.)
What we didn’t expect was all the kitsch.
While the Amish aim for the roadside dollar in a quiet way with signs for their hand-made furniture or farm produce, their neighbours capitalize in full American style for the dollar generated by the mystique of yesterday’s way of life.
The black silhouette of a horse-drawn buggy is everywhere, on everything from cheese to ice cream.
Every birdhouse sold at a craft fair is tagged as handmade, even though it looks remarkably similar to any wooden birdhouse sold anywhere. McDonalds has its golden arches towering over a couple of flower-filled buggies, not to mention its buggy parking sign. It’s any excuse to make a tourist town out of any village near an Amish farm.
It cheapens what was built on a people’s belief.
The Ohio countryside is beautiful, fertile land. It gathers attention all on its own but it’s the way merchants attempt to get travellers to stop and spend their money that cheapens a beautiful area.
From our perspective, the trouble with all this is that it works. Streets are clogged with tourists eager to take home a souvenir of their travels. Stores are clogged with merchants eager to help them with that.
We drive on, holding on to the image of the Amish going about their daily business as we go about ours.



Two's company, three's a crowd

GPS




“Who is she?!?!?!?” Vicki yelped as we made that first left turn to leave her brother Warren’s subdivision.in Dexter, Mich.
It was her first words in the truck, as she purred “Turn left” that set Vicki off. Ian, sometime in their four days in Dexter for their nephew Ryan’s wedding, had changed the voice function on the Tom-Tom GPS system they borrowed for this trip. For some reason, after 13,000 kilometres, Ian had grown tired of the Miss Efficiency voice that had been cooing form the Tom-Tom.
Suddenly it was Tom-Tom as one of the Bond girls giving James instructions on how to please her.
Vicki just stared at the dashboard device. This hussy wasn’t going to be the third person on this trip.
Ian changed the voice function at the next gas stop. We call this guy Skippy, Vicki’s brother’s favourite salutation to all and sundry.
As we roll through the Irish Hills of Michigan, with autumn leaves everywhere and the abandoned resorts of summer lining the road, we contemplate the technology of this trip.
For one thing, there’s a laptop in the lap of the only passenger as the blog is written. It’s plugged into a inverter to use the DC power supplied by the running vehicle. The Tom-Tom sits on the console between the seats, next to the iPod Touch to provide our home CD roster when we tire of the available radio. (Country at the moment, we’ll tire soon.) The iPod plugs into the truck’s stereo system to provide good sound.
The laptop is the news source, a communication device for family and friends and sometimes a family reunion. Last night, in Vicki’s brother’s kitchen, their daughter Robyn, in Winnipeg, had a face-to-face Skype chat with her cousin, Keenan, seated at the island in the kitchen of his Michigan home.
In the trailer there’s more. The Bose docking station for the iPod Touch means wonderful music, something Vicki and Ian couldn’t travel without. Harley, the trailer, was originally equipped with mountings for a television. That’s gone, since Ian and Vicki don’t watch TV at home let alone on the road, leaving only an alien-looking antenna on Harley’s roof.
The convection/toaster oven means there might be a pork tenderloin roasted tomorrow night, or maybe we’ll cook up those Pop N Fresh biscuits for breakfast.
The cell phone parked in Vicki’s purse rarely rings and is put to use even less often. It really is only for emergencies and thankfully, there have been few as we hit the halfway point of this trip.
We wonder how we would have managed without all this nifty technology. We might not have been quite as comfortable and not in touch with friends and family, but we would have been rolling down another small highway between cornfields in Ohio, done with their work for this season.

Weeping at the wedding

picture by Evan Martin


The groom knew his mother had chosen The Man You’ve Become as the song.
He’d heard it before, knew the lyrics (see below). He thought he was prepared for the sentimental moment, after dancing with his bride of a couple of hours, when he would take to the dance floor with his mother. He knew it would be a moment when he would feel for what he was leaving behind, when he would remember the hugs and kisses of a childhood when this woman put him before everything else.
He knew it would be emotional.
He didn’t know he would cry like an infant.
Nor did he realize half the people in the crowd would cry with him.
At an event that was planned down to the minute, it was completely spontaneous and unexpected.
Yes, the lyrics are tender and heart-wrenching but that wasn’t what prompted the flood of tears.
It was the moment each of those soon-to-be crying people realized his mother was singing as she swayed to the music in his awkward arms.
It was the moment when he looked down at this woman he towers above, hardly able to see more than the top of her head, and realized she was singing the words of this song to him.
She hadn’t planned it that way. The words just seemed to come naturally.
The father of the groom, seated at a table nearby, thought it was a touching moment until he swung around to point out to his sister that his wife was singing the words to their son.
The tears streaming down his sister’s cheeks put the father over the edge. He had maintained control until he realized his sister was crying. Looking around, desperately, he saw another sister-in-law weeping, and she was not alone.
That’s when he joined the rest.
It was an unexpected emotional moment in what had already been an emotional day. The bride wept tears of joy as she recited her vows and listened as the groom spoke his.
The parents of the bride were seen to wipe their eyes, a moment expected by all the guests.
But that mental image of mother singing one more tribute to her son as they danced will linger in guests’ minds for years to come.
Congratulations to our nephew, Ryan, and his bride, Erin, on the occasion of their wedding.
To Christine Martin, mother of the groom, thank you.

Lyrics: The Man You've Become - Molly Pasutti
Big wheels, hot wheels

Little trucks and cars

Skinned knees, climbing trees

Wishing on the stars

Moments may be lost somewhere in time

But the sweetest memories are never left behind

Now you’ve grown so fine

And come so far…


CHORUS

I’m so proud of who you are

The man you’ve become

Thrilled to share your deepest joy

To know you’ve found the one

For the great things you will do

I’ll be blessed ‘cause you’re my son

But I’ll always see the boy

In the man you’ve become



School days, sleep-aways

Driving all alone

Phone calls, shopping malls

Late coming home

It was hard to know when to let you spread your wings

When to let you go to face the challenges life brings

But you’ve grown so fine

And come so far…


CHORUS

Ian's version of hell on earth

We went from Boyd's Lake in Quebec to Hwy. 401 in Ontario




Ian swore he wasn’t going to drive that four-oh-one through Toronto.
He’d cross into the States at Cornwall, take the southern scenic route around Lake Ontario on the U.S. side.
That was before our trip started, before we knew we’d be heading out from Dunany, Que. on the Sunday of a long weekend. How bad could Toronto be?
At one point, Ian looked at the roadway stretching ahead of him and said, “I can see more cars from here that there are on Pender Island at any one time.”
It was a day where we went from the sublime to the ridiculous. Leaving Dunany at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, there was no one else on the twisting, winding country road. That meant we could crawl along at 40 kilometres an hour to ensure Sidney, the cat, didn’t spill his breakfast. That road had done him in on Friday night about a mile before we arrived at Vicki’s cousin’s place.
It was a sunny, very crisp fall morning, with leaves showing all their brilliant colours as we left near freezing temperatures for the warmer climes of southern Ontario. The cats basked in bright sunshine in their cat carrier, sleeping contentedly until we reached the asphalt jungle of Toronto.
The vast expanse of pavement is unimaginable to a Westerner. There isn’t anything like it in Vancouver or Calgary. There are up to 18 lanes of traffic, and even on a holiday long weekend, they’re full as vehicles tear along at 120 kilometres an hour or more, weaving in and out of various lanes.
There we were, permanently in the slow lane, tugging Harley along behind us.
We didn’t fit in.
Nor do we want to, ever.
The highrise office towers and residences that line the highway are impressive, especially when you realize this isn’t downtown Toronto you can see. It’s just part of the apparently never-ending sprawl that is now urban Toronto.
Since we were headed out the other side, beyond Hamilton, we also got a feel for just how far Toronto reaches. There was a time, in Vicki’s memory, when there was farmland between Toronto and Oakville, and again between Oakville and Hamilton.
Not any more.
We know people live happily in their neighbourhoods in the Toronto area, but to get away from home, to go anywhere, they have to tackle the asphalt jungle.
We’d rather live in the wilds than take on the city.

Cousins catch up

Boyd's Lake, Dunany, Que.



Eight weeks into our trip, and 10 of Vicki’s cousins.
It’s kind of pathetic when you think that’s only a quarter of the tally. There are 40 people out there, first cousins to Vicki, all on her mother’s side. Her dad, thankfully, is an only child. Her mother’s eight siblings produced anywhere from two to 11 children each, hence the vast expanse of cousins.
The cousin part of the trip started with a fishing stop in Nipawin, Sask., when we met up with Vicki’s cousin Robyn Hamann, namesake for our daughter. Vicki and Robyn were each raised in smaller communities fringing Brownsburg, Que., went through school together, stood beside each other at their respective weddings. It’s been a long road, always together and means trips between B.C. and Robyn’s farm near Regina, Sask., as often as possible.
The next cousin, fittingly, was Robyn’s eldest brother, Glenn, now owner of the cottage where Vicki spent her childhood summers. Being in the “home” area means spending time with some of the other cousins. Billy, now grown up as William Gauley, and his sister Marion. Then there was a trip to Lachute to meet cousin Patricia Elliot, who Vicki only knew as a little kid way behind her in school. (Turns out it was only a few years but at the time an important few years.)
A day trip to Ottawa led us to more cousins, with Wendy, Bernice and Betty stealing some time out of their daily lives for us.
After Thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday of the long weekend, at a table with Glenn, Billy and Marion plus Vicki’s Auntie Mike (known by her childhood nickname because two of Vicki’s uncles married women named Dorothy), we rolled off to Welland, Ont. There lives Vicki’s Auntie Margaret, her mom’s twin sister. Margaret this summer moved into a suite in her son’s Barry’s house. There, Vicki connected with a cousin she hadn’t seen in 35 years. Barry, for a variety of reasons, hasn’t been close with many of the cousins, and as we left, he said how wonderful it was that we had reached out to be back in touch.
At his table, we ate Thanksgiving leftovers on the Monday with another of Margaret’s sons, Robbie, now known as Bob.
And somewhere in that couple of days, there was a trip to see Auntie Elva and Uncle Charlie, Vicki’s mom’s baby sister and her husband in St. Catharines, Ont.
We’re all very different people, leading quite different lives in different parts of the country and yet we can walk into a room and connect. After a few minutes we find something more than blood that we have in common. We find ground for friendship with cousins and with their spouses as we come to know them just a little better.
As we head down a windy, wet highway aiming for a ferry at Sombra, Ont. to cross the St. Clair River into Marine City, Mich., we think of the rest of the family we’ll see this weekend. We’ll be at Ryan Martin’s wedding to Erin Cozart in Dexter, Mich. He’s Vicki’s nephew, son of her brother Warren. We’ll see Warren’s family, her brother Ian and his family, plus her parents who are flying in from Sooke, B.C.
It’s been a Thanksgiving week in the middle of a trip all about family.
To the other 30 cousins, sorry we didn’t connect on this trip. Maybe next time.

Happy camping cats

When we told people the two of us were going to spend four months together in 98 square feet of trailer, their eyebrows went up.
When we told them we were also taking our two cats, their eyebrows started doing the lambada.
Many people believe that, unlike dogs, cats are aloof, happy on their own, animals who only pay attention to their “owners” when their dish is empty or their litter needs changing. That’s never been true for the half-dozen cats we’ve shared in our married life, and it’s certainly not true of Luther and Sidney, our current travelling companions.
When we were considering our epic voyage, one of the questions was, “What do we do with the cats?”
But after a few minutes reflection, there really wasn’t any other choice. The animals regard us as part of their herd, sort of clumsy, stupid cats who don’t sleep the required 20 hours a day, and want to sleep when real cats are most active. Leaving them at home would have been cruel, and would have made us miserable.
Any regrets?
None . . . . well, hardly any.
Seven weeks in, the cats have settled into a routine. They go into their cat carrier reluctantly, but they do walk in, then settle down almost immediately and are asleep by the time we hit the highway.
The only exception is Sid. He has always engaged in an extended, very vocal and demonstrative puke session when we first leave home. Within the first kilometre he has blotted his copybook and soiled the towel in the bottom of the cat carrier in spectacular fashion, sending Luther crowding to the back of the enclosure with a look of distaste on his face.
Then we get to the ferry, change the towel, and Sid is as good as gold for the next however many kilometres of the trip.
Sid of course started our trip in his usual fashion. But imagine our surprise as we travelled from Winnipeg to LacLu. Two hours into the trip, we hit the winding Minaki road that takes us from the main highway to the lake. We heard the old familiar noises, Luther headed for the back of the cat carrier to get out of the way and Sid shared half-digested kibble with us once more.
That has not been the end of it and we can tell you every twisting road we’ve taken. But Sidney has always restrained himself to just one hurl per day, expressing his displeasure with our chosen roadway.
Fear not. This isn’t hurting him in any way, other than a few minutes of discomfort. Earlier this year, we worried about his drastic weight loss as he shifted from winter camp to spring hunter and lost four pounds.
Outdoor cats at home, they are now confined to the confines and immediate vicinity of the trailer with Sidney quickly regaining that lost weight, and then some. They have harnesses that are never removed, and 10-foot leashes that we attach to them and to the trailer whenever we are going in and out the door. Their outings are at the end of the leash and for Luther, extend as far as the front step. Sidney, a trifle more adventurous, is exploring on his leash with a human in tow, a guide and bodyguard combined.
The only other time the cats’ behaviour has been an issue has been at dawn. Sid, now two years old, started the expedition thinking that, like other cats, we should greet every new day with a feline Indy 500 around the trailer, from one end to the other and back again, with reckless disregard for life, limb and sleeping humans.
Luther, three years old but a sedate middle-age from birth, regards Sid as an aberrant teenager until the younger beast decides it’s time to switch from NASCAR to WWE and needs a wrestling partner – and Luther’s it.
But that’s only for a half-hour or so and only every few days, and when the fun’s over the cats are content to cuddle up against us on the bed, the single largest item in the trailer, and everyone catches a few more winks.
And what could be better, on the cold, damp nights we’ve waited through this fall in various parts of the country than a toasty electric heater, a good book and a cat curled up in your lap?