Head Tale

4400 km.  20 days.  9 stops.  3 provinces.  One really awesome trip!  And a super-long post to vent all the built-up thoughts after three weeks without blogging!

Here are some random thoughts about our trip…

1. “It’s the journey, not the destination”
Shea’s a “destination” person and I’m a “journey” person and though neither is right or wrong, I was happy to hear Shea say really early in the trip that she’s getting to enjoy the journey instead of just wanting to get to our destination.  If we’d just focused on our destinations (at least as we roughly outlined them before the trip), we’d have missed so many serendipitious experiences – from the enjoyable evening spent in the pools at Harrison Hot Springs to once again seeing the beautiful sight of the endless wind turbines on the southern route home, via Crowsnest Pass and Lethbridge.

2. The iPhone Rocks
I’m already on record for how much I love my iPhone having named it “best purchase of the year” in last year’s Christmas entry (I think I said it was the best thing I’ve ever bought actually.)  But this trip made me realise even more, how amazingly useful it is.  We took Shea’s dad’s GPS system but never even used it because the iPhone (even without a turn-by-turn GPS app) with Google Maps was more than sufficient for finding where we were going.  With the tap of a button, we could call hotels from the road after doing a Google search for them (and a quick scan of TripAdvisor to see how they were rated.)  I bought an FM Transmitter before we left and after loading the iPhone with about 10 GB of music (roughly half of our favourites and half randomly generated by iTunes), that became our radio for the trip.  The camera was so convenient during our various roadside stops compared to our digital camera which we never seemed to have at hand.  Pace could play games on it during those few occasions he got bored in the van or while waiting in restaurants.   On and on and on. 

3. Foursquare Rocks Too…When Traveling Anyhow
I’m still not sure how much I’ll use Foursquare (a location-based service where you “check-in” as you stop at various locations) in Regina since my check-ins would be some variation of: “Home”, “Work”, “Playground”, repeat.  But while traveling, it was great to check-in at the various hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and so on.  Often, you’d find that people have posted “tips” and those could be useful.  For example, I looked at “Nearby Tips” while waiting for Shea to run back to our hotel for her sunglasses just after we checked into our Vancouver hotel.  By the time she got back to the street, I had an awesome avocado milkshake in hand from a nearby coffee shop! 

On a related note, it’s getting to the point that you could probably follow our entire trip, not just by our Facebook updates and Tweets (which we didn’t do that often) but by the other similar but more targeted services we use – Four Square to track where we went, Last.fm to see the music we listened to and so on.  If I was brave/stupid enough to join Blippy, you’d know everywhere that I’d made a purchase including hotels, gift shops, restaurants and so on. 

The day of the complete record of our daily lives is not far off!

4. It Never Rains in Vancouver
Although I’ve never spent a huge amount of time in most Canadian cities (save Regina, Calgary and London), I’ve visited many of them.  And based on those limited experiences, I came to the conclusion that I could live in mid-sized cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, London – cities in the roughly 500 000 to 1 million range) but that I could never live in the bigger cities – Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.  Our time in Vancouver, though completely biased by being tourists and having barely a single drop of rain during our time there, made me think that I could possibly live in that city.  Maybe. 

5. Three Weeks Holidays
My standard line about taking three weeks holidays was that “I haven’t had that much time off in a row since I was last unemployed!” (I only took two weeks when Pace was born – something I regret to this day.)  It was so weird at the end of the first week to think, “Hmm, during most of my holidays, I’d be getting ready to head back to work next Monday and now, my holidays aren’t even half over.”  I’ve got a few other thoughts about holidays – how long they should be to be optimal and that dread comment, “You must be really refreshed and ready to go back to work” but I won’t get into them here

6.  “Honey, Where’s the Animatronic Mouse?“
Shea and I got two “Valentine’s” meals during our entire trip – wicked meals in nicer restaurants where your tab for two people might be bigger than the tab for six the following night at a Memphis BBQ joint (er, just as one example off the top of my head.)  One was at Hanna’s in Kelowna while Pace was being babysat by relatives and one was at the Teahouse in Stanley Park which our non-child having friends thought would be a great place to go for a Friday night sunset meal.   Luckily, Pace was on his best behaviour for the most part and we ended up having a wonderful experience and nothing from the bread plate was thrown at any nearby tables.  (We also got to eat a wide range of cuisines – from sushi to Korean to East Indian – throughout our trip and we’re lucky Pace will eat most things.  We only had fast food twice – once on the way out of Regina (and Pace puked soon after!) Then once just before we got home while passing through Swift Current.) 

7. The World’s Longest Wine Tour?
We managed to hit three wineries in Kelowna – Tantalus, Cedar Creek and Summerhill but a highlight was on our last day when we stopped at last year’s Tourism Saskatchewan “Business of the Year”, Cypress Hills Winery and Vineyards just outside of Maple Creek.  (More serendipity – the winery had been closed by the flooding in the area – which also made us wonder if we’d get home – but had just re-opened on the day we were passing through.)

8. Let’s Go See What They’ve Done With the Hospital Gift Shop! 
After visiting a few different libraries on our trip – in Calgary, Kelowna, Vancouver, North Vancouver and playing “spot the local branch” as I drove through many smaller towns – I started wondering “Is there any other profession where practitioners visit similar operations in other cities?”  Shea has no need to visit hospitals in other cities.  Teachers don’t go to other schools.  But lots of librarians visit libraries.  I wonder why that is?

9.  In Absence of Blogging…
…I rediscovered my personal journal which I wrote in more than I have since, well, since I started this blog four years ago.  Each has their advantages – I love the connection that the blog gives me to people around the world and the platform it gives me to blab my thoughts so freely.  But the journal is special too – for allowing me to truly record my thoughts and opinions with no self-censorship and no thought of who may read it – now or in the future.  (Okay, I sometimes dread the thought of Pace reading my journal someday after I’m gone from this earth.  But I guess I wont’ care much by then either, now, will I?)

10.  One Highlight?
The question you always get asked after any trip – what was the highlight? – truly has no answer this time around after a trip where we had so many fun, exciting, magical experiences – both planned and spontaneous. 

If someone had a gun to my head, I think I’d pick our night in Harrison Hot Springs, halfway between Kelowna and Vancouver.  That’s a trip you can do in a day easily but we’d decided, both to make it easier on Pace and also because we had such a large amount of time off, that we’d break our trip into lots of little stops. 

We were looking at a map and noticed Harrison Hot Springs and after talking to some relatives who raved about it, decided to stop there.  I’d checked online and it looked like they didn’t have rooms available but when we called from the road, they said there were lots available and to just show up.  We not only got a great rate (the hotel was at low vacancy due partly to recent bad weather and partly due to the depressed economy) but unasked, they also gave us a free upgrade to a pool view room. 

We enjoyed their tea time service (yep, it’s a pretty traditional hotel in some ways) soon after checking in then went for a swim.  Pizza in our room to relax then another swim that extended to nearly 11pm since we ended up chatting with a fascinating couple who’d met protesting at Clayoqout Sound, had lived in Australia and Bali, were traveling across Canada in a camper van (well, we saw the next day that this is what they called their motorhome so not 100% the hippies we’d assumed!) and had two young kids including a girl who was Pace’s age who hit it off marvelously. 

Delicious breakfast buffet the next morning overlooking the scenic lake and then on the road after stopping for some locally grown hazelnuts.  Good times!