1.
Hit the “Reset” button.
Our
family vacation this year was not far away or extravagant – just a
weekend away in our tent trailer. My husband figured since we have
only taken the tent trailer one place in two years that we should
maybe go somewhere closer by just to be safe. I figured since we had
been to all the places closer by in the last two years we should go
somewhere a little farther away. We went a little farther away. To
Kenora, ON. Which is about four hours away.
All
was well until about three hours down the road when the trailer
started to vibrate suspiciously, even considering Manitoba's bumpy
highway. So we pulled over onto a side road, far from any
civilization, to see what was the matter. Just the tent trailer
tire, shredded to bits from going from complete disuse to overuse in
a very short time. Evidently, my husband knew what he was talking
about.
What
could have turned into an embarrassing “I-told-you-so” moment
happily turned into a “reset-button-pressing” moment for my
husband (an unscheduled event triggering a switch from work to
vacation) and an exciting learning adventure for my middle son who
helped change the tire. (Fortunately we had a spare!)
2. Commit experiences
to memory.
To
cut down on space-hogging items on this camping trip, I decided to
leave my camera at home and just use the camera on my smart phone to
capture memories. I discovered on the morning after we arrived that,
as my husband will tell you is frustratingly common, I had not
charged my phone recently enough and it was now dead. No more photos
for me. Normally being the family photographer, I found it
surprisingly freeing to simply have to experience the moments without
trying to take pictures.
3. Slow down.
While
one can sit quietly and listen to leaves rustling in the breeze, or
sit by a fire and tell stories, or look up at the stars while at
home, there is definitely something special about doing it while on
holiday.
4. Learn something.
Kenora
is not like a prairie town, nicely laid out on a grid, and is frankly
rather confusing to get around in. However, as we were randomly
driving up and down streets, not quite sure where exactly we were
going or how to get there, we chanced across a little art
gallery/shop where the resident artist had just opened a new exhibit. It
was a table laid out for a banquet for a meeting of animal minds.
She had animal skulls which she had embellished with metal work set
around the table. What was surprising to learn was how small animal
skulls are – wolf, bear, beaver, etc. The adult lynx skull was
only slightly larger than the jack rabbit's skull. The moose skull,
on the other hand, was plain enormous.
5. Spend some money.
Apparently
in Kenora, a family consists of two adults and two kids, so we had
to pay extra to bring our third kid (the middle one) along on a
cruise on the MS Kenora. That's where we got to pay money to take a
trip around Lake of the Woods to see how people with a really lot of
money spend it (private islands, sail boats, tennis courts over the
water, yachts) and enjoy a whole lot of free natural beauty.
6. Redevelop an
appreciation for your loved ones.
There's
a beach in Kenora that has this floating walkway across the entrance
of a small bay. When some of my kids saw others jumping off this
walkway into the water, they decided they needed to try it too. Of
course, they couldn't do this alone, so I jumped in too. It was very
refreshing, but what made me nervous was that there was no indication
as to how deep the water was.
The
two kids who were jumping wanted me to count how many seconds it took from the time they hit the water until the time their heads
popped out of the water. It was consistently four seconds. Four
very long seconds. It doesn't matter that my kids just came off two
weeks of swimming lessons and can all swim better than I. It's a
mother's prerogative to be nervous with her kids in the water.
Then
my middle son gets it in his head that he really wants to see how
deep the water is. So he does a “pencil dive” to help him go
deeper. Mother is sitting on the dock counting. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
– 5 – where is he? - 6 – 7 – finally his head pops up, still
without having touched the bottom of the lake. Okay! Enough of that
game! Out of the water, kids! Time to go have supper!
We
did go back the next day and jumped from a different spot and he was
eventually able to touch the bottom in less than seven seconds and he
even swam from the walkway back to the beach, which made me about as
proud as I was nervous.
7. Buy a souvenir.
Sunday
morning. My husband was putting new tires on our trailer, purchased at Kenora's Canadian Tire, while the
kids and I wandered downtown looking in shops. First stop: Zen Den.
We were the only ones in the shop and had
been there barely a minute when the peace and harmony was shattered
by a clatter and a crash. There was my middle son, bending over to
retrieve two parts of a one-part dragon sword he had been looking at.
This was very distressing for him and he decided to limit the number
of souvenirs purchased by exiting the store. The rest of us finished
browsing before I bought the offending item. When he realized where
his father was, apparently not having paid sufficient attention to
our morning conversations, he was even more distressed that he was
obliged to be on a disastrous shopping spree when he could have been
changing tires with dad. No one seems to want to claim the dragon
sword.
8. Play a game.
After
such a challenging morning, a tasty meal out was in order. Whether they were short-staffed in the kitchen or the fact that it
was our server's first day on the job, we waited
about an hour for our food to come. Fortunately, the restaurant had
a collection of games for patrons in this very situation. So we
played a couple of rounds of “Guess Who?” to pass the time out on
the patio. And the food, when it came, was delicious.
9. Follow tradition.
What
better way to end a family vacation than to follow a family tradition
of stopping for ice cream? And what better place to stop than Ko's Ice Cream in Headingly, MB where their single scoop is worth about
three?
10. End dramatically.
Despite
having only been gone two days, everyone was happy to be home. Oh!
There's our house! Here are our (multitudinous) cats! Let's go in!
Skeleton
keys were cutting edge technology at some point in history. The
skeleton key for our century old house decided that is no longer the
case. And my husband had left the only key to the other door on his
key ring, which was inside the house. We should maybe look into
getting other keys cut.
So
it's raining. It's late. We're tired. And it's time for one last
adventure! There are other perks, besides skeleton keys which don't
open doors, to century old homes that helped us resolve our
situation, which shall remain secret. Middle son is again the hero
of our story! We all made it in out of the rain and had a supper of
taco chips, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, half melted cheese and crumbled cookies.
Glad
to be home!
