Bravely limping into the future

The final week before our departure was one of many changes, much chaos, and hours and days of working towards the goal of getting on the road. One enormous task was to get our house ready to turn over to the housesitters. This meant taking care of years of loose ends, fixing little problems that we had grown accustomed to, clearing out and storing all the flotsam and jetsam accumulated by the royal family of junk, and preparing the instruction manual for our idiosyncratic abode. Then we had to get our 14 year old vehicle, and our thirty year old trailer, ready and roadworthy. They had both served us well our last adventure, but that was 8 years ago, so repairs, maintenance, and making sure all systems were still functioning was essential. We also then had to pack everything we needed for three months of boondocking, starting in the dead of winter in eastern Canada , and driving into the desert spring of southwestern U S of A. Lastly, we attempted to rapidly jump into the future (for us) of new technology. We recently bought a new laptop after Donna's faithful Dell crashed. We also just acquired a GPS, a lovely Garmin.... and finally we promised ourselves and others to set up a blog of our travels. So three of the last nights were spent as I got up to speed on the computer, as I downloaded and loaded maps onto a whole new toy, the GPS;, and jumped headfirst into the whole new realm of bloging (blogging?) And as you all know, doing things for the first time can create quite a time consuming learning curve.

Happily, we actually accomplished everything we hoped to do (well, almost). But by the time we were finally all ready, mentally, physically, electronically and spiritually, the week was rapidly ending. By the time the bins were all stashed safely in their stacks (see yesterday's posting), and we had said our final farewells, it was 5 in the afternoon Saturday. Hooray, we were away, but the sun was already setting. Fortunately, we had agreed to make a traditional and symbolic first night at the Amherst rest stop. When we left on our last big adventure, we also had only made it 2oo km's away, and were still in Nova Scotia, when we stopped for the first night. The rest area just before the New Brunswick border we knew to be safe, friendly, with all night restrooms, free newspapers, and various parking lots to tuck away into. So this time, we gladly anticipated getting only to Amherst, and using the familiar first stopping point as a place to remember the last trip, and think about and plan the new one.

It was quite dark at 7:30 when we rolled into the rest area. The main information area was closed but the restrooms were open, both as expected. However, we were surprised by the amount of snow, and the fact that only the main loop of roads were plowed. The area is right at the narrow low portion of land that is the provincial border, and the winds and weather there is often worse than the surrounding area as the winds blow off the cold Gulf of St. Lawrence, and roar across to the Bay of Fundy, or vice versa. That night this was definitely the case, but we were here, on the road at last, and sure that there was no better place to stop for miles in any direction. After doing a couple of exploratory loops, we settled on a safe corner of the parking lot, with our furnace vent and door away from the prevailing wind. We set the parking brake, and were home for the night.

My first task was to fire up the furnace. Fortunately, the great owner/mechanic at Jerry's RV in New Minas had told us a trick to speed up the process of heating the thermocoupler, so within seconds the furnace was lit, and starting to take the deep chill out of the trailer. I took the dawg out for an evening walk around the grounds, and Donna moved into the trailer to start warming up dinner. The wind was howling outside, and it took quite a while before the trailer actually got comfortable enough to settle down for our first meal on the road. But eventually, we had a lovely meal at the little dining room table at one end of the Buug, while Dixie was settled in on the bed at the other end, closely watching every move of the forks. After dinner we went for a final walk of the grounds, and a limp that Dixie had earlier into the day, developed into a three legged hobble as she kept her right, rear leg up off the ground and out of the snow. We had noticed the day before we left that she had been worrying the pad on that foot, but she wasn't exhibiting any other signs of distress, and with everything else going on, it didn't warrant our attention pre-departure. Back in the dim light of the trailer, we inspected the foot, and found that all was not well in Dawgland. She was quite hesitant to let us inspect it closely, but it seemed that she had torn part of the tough pad on her foot. After we determined that she was comfortable in the trailer and that it wasn't a serious emergency, we settled in for the night, knowing that we had a new problem to deal with in the morning.

The night was relatively quiet and warm, snuggled into our little bed, with the down duvet pulled up to our chins. The winds howled outside, and the 24 hour continuous loop of traveler's information blared out from the loudspeakers on the outside of the building, telling the moon and snowdrifts and trees and us, the current weather conditions, a blurb about maple syrup, the conditions on the bridge to PEI, and ad for a local ski area, a bit of trivia about the queen, and a very lame joke, over and over and over and... But we were happy and cozy, and definitely on the road and starting our new adventure.