Ominous Velour

The summer I turned 14, my mother decided we were taking a road trip from Vancouver to Edmonton and back to visit a friend of hers who had remarried and moved.

There is quite literally no way that local-history-nerd Jayjay could have been more ecstatic. I got to play with animals at Cottonwood Farm. I panned for gold and drank sarsaparilla in Barkerville. I got to ride in a stagecoach (AND pet the horses afterward.) I burned through way too many disposable cameras taking mediocre pictures along the Cowboy Trail because it was the 90s and that’s what we did to remember important events.

But what my mother and I both remember most clearly of the whole trip was the long stretches of driving and how doggedly persistent (and ultimately unsuccessful) my mother was at trying to drag my attention away from my large duffle bag full of books to get me to look at any of the scenery we passed between historical sites. The one time she got so exasperated she threatened to throw my book out the window if I didn’t look up and enjoy the views, we promptly rounded a corner to see a dead horse lying on the side of the road. The efforts to get me to pay attention to the goings on around me were greatly reduced from that point on, and I did successfully manage to read all 25 books I had packed within the 14 day trip.

So if we can say nothing else in this world with certainty, we can agree with confidence that in the last 30 years, the experience of taking a road trip with me has changed not a whit.