Ten Steps to a Memorable Family Vacation

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!