Finding Wisdom, Courage and Grace on the road less traveled.

For as long as I can remember, our family vacations were spent in cars, journeying across Western Canada and the US. Trips to Airdrie, Banff, Drumheller and Edmonton became monthly rituals. We found every excuse to get in the car and just ride. I remember weekly trips to Mackay’s Ice Cream in Cochraine after Sunday mass. We’d pass the wealthy neighborhoods of Bearspaw and Springbank, with their large acreages and golf courses. I’d daydream about living in one of those big houses one day, with a yard big enough for a trampoline. I think we enjoyed the drive up more than the ice cream cones, in the end.

Our first big road trip was in 1991 when we drove from Calgary to Vancouver in a grey, rusty 1985 Honda Civic that my dad bought used when we first moved to Toronto. I don’t remember how hot it was without air-conditioning (the car didn’t have it) and I don’t remember how many hours we spent in that back seat (eleven, to be exact). What I do remember is how thrilling it was to watch the prairies turn into rockies, the rockies into pine forests and pine forests to big city lights. The hours passed quickly. My brother and I would look out for caribou, deer, elk, beaver. We’d make up songs, play road-trip bingo, recite stories about the cowboy lives we could be living out in the wilderness. We discovered the world through the windows of our little car, with the wind whipping in our hair, the radio blasting, cheese curls and Fruit Loops in our laps. We drove to Seattle, Las Vegas, Disneyland, San Diego and even Tijuana in that little un-airconditioned Honda.

Soon, we upgraded to a van – a wild berry colored Chrysler Grand Voyager, with a maroon interior and bucket seats. It had room enough for Bope’s (the hamster’s) cage, all the food we could want, pillows, blankets and several weeks worth of luggage. The road trips became ritual then. We visited Banff every weekend and if not, we’d go find some other place to drive to: strawberry orchards, Glacier National Park, Jasper, Kananaskis. My fondest memories were of rainy evenings driving through the rockies, the windshield wipers swiping to the beat of Tina Turner’s Greatest Hits. I know every word to every song in that casette tape. And if not Tina Turner, it was Kenny Rogers.

This past week, we paid homage to our family road trip traditions while on vacation in Maui. Instead of day-long beach escapades and snorkel trips, we drove the lush jungles of the Hana Highway all the way round to Kipahulu’s barren fields. We drove the misty up-country roads of the Makawao Forest Reserve and winded our way up to Haleakala National Park. With the roads mostly to ourselves, we had ample time to visit volcanic beaches and red clay canyons along the way. We passed cattle grazing on the highway, stopped at road-side trailers for bites to eat, explored two hundred year old churches that time forgot. And in true form, the three of us often fell asleep to leave Dad at the helm.  Minus the hamster cage and Fruit Loops, it felt like we’d traveled back in time for a few days. Just us, our car and the wide open road ahead.

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