"We all lived in an Orange Micro-bus"

Many people thought we were crazy. Last fall we bought an old (1975) orange VW camper. Tricia and I were both soothed to sleep as babes by the sound of purring VW engines and I particularly had always dreamed of owning one. Tricia and I got a good deal on the van from some friends of friends, so the thousands we poured into it to make it road worthy was a lot easier to justify.

I realize that many of you reading this would never describe a VW van of that vintage as “road worthy” under any conditions, and you have plenty of company among our many friends, family members and acquaintances whose suspicions about our mental health were confirmed when we announced that we would spend the summer driving our newly reconditioned (NB not “restored”) bus across Canada and the U.S. last summer.

I’ll admit I had some doubts along the way – even if it was my dream. For instance, I finally accepted that the bike rack holding three of the five bikes we were carrying (I know, there were only four of us – it’s a long story!) was in fact up to the task only after we started our descent out of the Rockies. The two smallest bikes dangled from the home-made rack clamped to the spare tire in front so that they would pose the least obstacle should they happen to fall under our front tires. With all of that hanging off the front and back steering in a side wind was even more challenging than usual. Though sorely tempted to stash a bug shelter on the roof when attacked by mosquitoes crossing the Canadian Shield we wisely decided to forego that added challenge to keeping the van in our lane and on the road.

Of course the van’s steering was also probably complicated by the irregular wear pattern on our front tires. Tricia noticed this first as we came into Calgary to visit her sister Deb, her husband Matt and daughter Elizabeth and our friends Nancy and Brajesh who treated us to a wonderful meal and “loaned” us their road atlas. We only noticed periodic humming at slower speeds on smooth roads, not, for instance, as we left our friends’ Pam and Glen’s in Camrose, Alberta (who wisely decided not to risk their lives by following us to tell us about the tornado alert for the area), or when I was driving alone from the VW dealership in W. Edmonton that replaced the van’s starter motor to the shop downtown that knew enough to reconnect the dangling vacuum hose to enable the engine to idle again. (I guess I was too busy restarting from stalls at 70 kmh on the White Mud Trail to notice the hum of the tires in the driving rain.)

Of course, it’s hard to hear much of anything near a ’75 VW traveling at (close to) highway speeds, much less when traveling inside it. I topped up the tire pressure regularly anyway since I was in the habit of keeping tabs on the oil leak that had developed on our climb through the Rockies.

We seemed to have hit our stride by the end of our first marathon drive from Saskatchewan’s Cypress Hills to Brandon, Manitoba so we decided to carry on to Winnipeg and see the Children’s Museum. After being chased for a day by three thunder storms to Thunder Bay, Lake Superior was spectacular. The road along its north shore offered many beautiful views, but after noticing smoke billowing from the engine when we stopped at a lookout at the top of a long, steep climb we learned to enjoy the lake at “sea level”. After a long day’s drive we ate supper as we watched the sunset from a very different west coast than the one we’d started from. While we had been warned that that stretch of road was nothing more than a corridor of trees we were all greatly impressed by the Group of Seven landscapes. Here was proof we were seeing Canada!

Unfortunately, at night, Canada couldn’t see us. Somewhere along the way our tail lights stopped working. We only discovered this when we finally made it to Vermont where Tricia’s dad, Rick, and I managed to rig up an alternate system with some left over house wire and a live circuit I found dangling from under the dash. When we realized we had no brake lights, turn signals or running lights the unconscionable rudeness of the truck driver who passed us in the dark on that winding stretch of road north of Lake Superior, while far from excusable, made considerably more sense. At the time I thought he was just upset that he’d had to wait 150 km to pass!

We all had a great time visiting Tricia’s mom and dad, Libby and Rick, brother Peter, his wife Lesley, their kids Cameron and Hannah and family and friends in Vermont. Liam and Elsa got to take swimming lessons with their cousins in Waterbury’s outdoor pool. The van and its innovative lighting system were the envy of Tricia’s cousins at a family reunion in Island Pond, Vermont.

After two weeks in Vermont we trekked across New England, winding our way through Vermont and New Hampshire and stopping for an afternoon of riding horses with Tricia’s cousin John along the way to the Maine coast. Though we had lightened our load of provisions somewhat by then (Tricia’s food packing had been inspired by earlier great transcontinental crossings that pre-dated grocery stores – think Little House on the Prairie) our brakes still smelled a little hot as we descended the White Mountains to the Atlantic. Nevertheless we made it safe and sound to stay with Tricia’s Aunt Edie and cousin Mary in Biddeford, Maine and then on to Old Orchard Beach for a quick dip and crab sandwiches before driving the length of Maine to visit a nursing friend of Tricia’s, Mary-Lou and her mom, Irma in Saint John, New Brunswick. We managed to keep the van on the road despite hurricane winds on the approach to Confederation Bridge. As it must to any island, the bridge affected our perceptions of the place. And as we flew over its rainbow and saw the wonderful view of PEI’s fabled storybook landscape stretch out before us comparisons with the land of Oz couldn’t be avoided.

It was as if we had come home. On PEI we counted as many VW vans as we’d seen across the rest of Canada and New England. We also saw lots of beaches, Anne of Green Gables the Musical (the kids sang the songs the rest of the way home), built lots of sand castles, and ate lots of sea food. We also enjoyed lots of hospitality from Tricia’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Diane, great swimming and the best weather PEI had seen this year.

While we had initially planned to turn around at PEI a colleague of mine who grew up on Cape Breton Island encouraged us to visit him at his parents there (if we made it that far!). We did and after a magical day experiencing eighteenth century Louisbourg, a reconstructed French colonial fortified town looking out over the Atlantic we drove up the Cabot Trail to Jonathan’s folks’ idyllic wilderness retreat where we enjoyed a quiet we had almost come to think impossible after so many thousands of miles in the van.

The next day we started home. Along our way back to Vermont we stopped near Pugwash, Nova Scotia to visit friends and participate in the 2004 Cottage Olympics and managed to avoid another dying hurricane that caused lethal flooding in northern New Brunswick. After locating a VW guru outside of Burlington, Vermont who kindly made time to tune up the van for the return trip we set off across New York State. With a welcome respite from the road for a night with Tricia’s Aunt Peg and her husband Tom south of Utica, NY we pushed on to see Niagara Falls and visit our friends, Laura and Ed and their kids John and Alison in Pickering outside of Toronto.

Here, between trips to the zoo and the Renaissance Festival we finally replaced our front tires. The Canadian Tire salesman nearly refused to release either of the old tires for use as a spare until I convinced him that I had just driven across the continent on those “unsafe” tires.

Though we were supposed to be camping at Fort Abraham Lincoln outside of Bismark, North Dakota when the tornado hit we were in fact a day behind schedule in the middle of Minnesota. Even there the winds were pretty fierce and we wondered why there wasn’t another soul at the campground (even the caretaker was gone). As the winds picked up I took more than a passing interest in the many notices describing tornado survival strategies (Mobile homes, and presumably VW vans, are not considered safe refuge.)

We celebrated Liam’s birthday the next day amid the wreckage of flattened cottonwoods along the banks of the Mississippi. After enjoying birthday “cake” (boxed brownie baked in a foil-covered fry pan – not recommended) we picked branches out of the monkey bars and threw rocks in the river. As I hiked under the big night sky to the nearest pay phone by moonlight to let family know that we had not been flattened ourselves, little did I suspect how fortunate we were to celebrate Liam’s birthday that day rather than the next.

Our dying alternator lasted just over the Montana border. We pulled off the I-90 without enough charge on to signal our exit and just in time to buy a new battery from an Interstate Battery truck stopped by chance at the mechanic’s shop on the side of the highway. I finally found the vacuum hose we knocked loose while putting the new battery in the next day at another garage (where the owner and mechanic consider VWs to be the Germans’ revenge for being beaten in World War II) and then tracked down the nearest VW guru who had the right alternator shipped from southern California by noon the next day. Though he was 200 miles away we managed to get there on our new battery (no fans, music or lights).

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. We helped out a fellow VW van owner when her van broke down and took her, her dog and red-bellied toad to the town where she was headed, lost our sandwiches to seagulls along the lakeshore in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and discovered on our way to a wonderful Orme family reunion outside of Vancouver on our 59th day on the road that there really is nothing in the middle of Washington State.

One of the many who helped us along our way commented that we “didn’t look like the kind of people we usually see getting out of one of those things”. Though he didn’t mean it quite this way many of you reading this are probably just as surprised to be reading of our adventures as we were to be living them. We are not exactly the adventurous sort, so we appreciated the summer’s learnings – expect the unexpected and roll with it. We have much to be thankful for – not the least of which is that life is probably at least a little more forgiving than we often expect it to be.

I wish you an adventurous New Year!