It’s Not Vacation

The man in the little booth was pleasant but efficient. I presented our passports and he could see that we had completed the “Arrive Canada App” complete with records of all our Covid vaccines and boosters. Being fully vaccinated is a pre-requisite to being admitted to the country at all.

He had a large number of questions to get through and he expected me to answer them thoroughly and truthfully.

“Are you bringing any ammunition or weapons including spring-assisted knives.”

I thought about my pocket knife. No spring assist. “No,” I said.

“Any alcohol?”

“I have some beer for personal consumption,” I replied.

 “How much?”

 “Six 12 oz cans. of a delicious Montana IPA. 12 oz is around a third of a litre,” I added helpfully. (They use the metric system in Canada as in every civilized country in the world.)

“Any cannabis?”

“No”

“Really?” he said as if he hadn’t gotten that response in a long time.

“How long will you be staying in Canada”

“About a week or two. We are on our way to Alaska.”

“Is your visit for work or leisure?”

For the first time, I had to think about my response and my thoughts went back to 1986.

My girlfriend Barbara and I were about two weeks into our trip around the world. In mid-February of that year, we had both quit our jobs and with our modest savings had flown to Brussels, Belgium for $99 on the original budget airline, People Express.

We had been dreaming and planning for this trip for nearly two years but as I was learning full-time travel was not exactly what I had expected. First of all, Belgium and France in February were freezing cold and our budget required us to camp. Our budget also required us to prepare almost all our food. A night in a youth hostel or a meal in restaurant was a splurge.

I had imagined a life similar to my semesters abroad in London and Munich. Cafes, pubs, and warm sunny days strolling through public parks. The reality was we were cold, sometimes hungry, and more often than I would have preferred, wet and uncomfortable.

I was likely complaining to my partner who was (and still is) much tougher than I, when she said what became a mantra for me during our 16-month journey through Europe, Africa, India, and Thailand.

“You can’t think of it as a vacation,” she said, “This is our job now.”

I have been very fortunate. I have always had work that for the most part I enjoyed, found interesting, and meaningful. But I also never had a job that was ALWAYS fun. As I used to tell my kids: If work was always fun, they wouldn’t need to pay you to do it!

So yeah, some days in the course of my career, even many days, were challenging, frustrating, nerve wracking, and even brought me to the brink of tears. We accept these challenges not only because they pay us, but also because our work seems worthwhile and solving problems allows us to grow and learn.

Now we are about three weeks into our overland trip to Alaska and in many ways, it feels like a job.

We wake up around 6 am. Make coffee and breakfast on the camp stove. We break camp, changing over the van from sleep mode to day mode and then we drive. Typically, we drive between 5 and 7 hours a day. We stop to hike, make lunch, get fuel, buy groceries. About 3 pm or so we start looking for a place to stop for the night and when we find one, we set up camp, and cook dinner. If we are staying at a place that has showers, we get them and then go to sleep.

Most of the time the camping has been pleasant but as we have gotten further north, the mosquitos have gotten worse and worse. Last night near Watson Lake, Yukon, the mosquitos filled the van as we were setting up and nearly drove us insane with their whining and biting all night. We were on our third days without showers and were hot and sticky in the van with the windows rolled up tight against the bugs and possible bears. This morning we awoke and without making breakfast or putting the van in day mode, we drove away as fast as we could back to the visitor’s center that was comparatively bug-free. There we used the bathrooms and the free wifi and made coffee in the parking lot until we were ready to continue our journey on the Alaska-Canada Highway.

Tonight, we are in Whitehorse, Yukon the last big town before we reach Southeastern Alaska. There are fewer bugs here but at a cost. We are in a campground that is right off the highway and we are squeezed in between the massive RV rigs and the highway where the traffic is roaring by. Still it is a tradeoff that we accept gratefully and I expect that the traffic will settle down sometime after sunset. Tonight, here above 60 degrees of latitude that will be at 11:25 pm with sunrise just a few hours later at 4:43 am.

Tomorrow will be a long day as we are hoping to make it all the way to Haines, Alaska some 400 km from here.

It has been a great adventure so far and fortunately the mishaps have been few. For the most part the journey has been interesting, meaningful, an opportunity to challenge myself and to learn. Last night was unpleasant and I’ll admit at one point with the mosquitos extracting more blood than I have given the Red Cross in a single sitting, I was ready to turn around and head home. But at the same time, we have already seen an ancient forest of thousand-year-old cedar trees, the reenactment of the Battle of Little Bighorn, a moose, four bears, elk, a marmot, and longhorn sheep. We have seen some of the most stunning scenery I have ever seen. And I have answered the question, “At age 60 do you still have it in you to travel this way, to be uncomfortable, even occasionally miserable, and still find the experience rewarding?”

The man in the booth was waiting, “Work or leisure?” he repeated.

“A bit of both,” I said.

Bored of the conversation at last, he sent us on our way waving us through. “Welcome to Canada,” he said.