A year or two before that summer, my grandparents had bought a motor home and started traveling all over the place, taking trips to the Southeastern United States in the winter, and taking off all over Ontario in the summer. I remember going away overnight with them one fall weekend and stopping by a farm in rural Ontario for freshly picked Mcintosh apples - yum...
but, again, I digress.. that trip was part of the scheme to get my sister Catherine, who was five, my brother Mark, who was four and myself acclimatized to the camper and feeling at home with a long drive... we loved it! Quite simply, the fact that we could get up and get a snack out of the fridge or go to the bathroom without stopping was a novelty and we relished it...
So, as I said, in July of 1981, and yes I'm that old, we headed west. My grandfather was at the wheel in the big captain's chair... and I remember the adults talking about hitting the open road once we got past the traffic of suburban Toronto and setting the cruise control... I knew it had something to do with driving, but in my six year old mind, I pictured an autopilot dummy popping up to drive the motor home when my grandfather wanted a break...
While it's no Niagara Falls, to a six year old, Kakabeka Falls was amazing - the rush of water over the 40 foot cliffs was almost deafening and the awe of watching the swirling pools at the bottom.. well I'm sure I was awe inspired...
Somewhere in my parents pictures of us, there is one of all three kids standing with my grandparents in front of this fence at Kakabeka Falls... and if I'd been better organized, I would have asked my dad to scan it and send it to me for this blog post, but I'm not and I didn't... so my six year old self will have to remain my my mind's eye for now and when my mom reads this blog entry, she'll ask my dad to dig out the old photos and find the one of me, Cat and Mark standing with Nana overlooking Kakabeka Falls... found it:
I remember just fragments of the trip really, getting off and on the motor home, stopping at several provincial and national parks and of course, that just before the reunion, we had stopped at one more park to play - and my sister had fallen off the monkey bars and sprained her ankle... I also remember meeting a myriad of relatives, having lots of pictures taken, and dancing with my cousin, Trevor - the only kid my age at the party.
But, the one thing that sticks out in my mind from that trip forward is that no matter where we were going on a long car trip, an imagined ride in the car or boat at the cottage, invariably our destination would be Kakabeka Falls... whether we got there or not.
Next Sunday, I will have my act together and my mother will have browbeaten my dad into finding some pictures from that era... and I'll post them here with another memory of that long ago motor home trip across 2/3 of Canada to reach into my grandfather's roots.
Please check out part two of the story of our family road trip in Summer 1981!
As for other stories about my family, I invite you to check out:
