Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 40

Camping Juneau

When I imagined my life in a van, one thing that I didn’t picture accurately — at all — was how much time I would spend looking at campground websites, campground reviews, and campground apps, trying to find places to stay that I would like. It seemed straightforward when I started — look for places that other people liked, right?

But we all have different tastes. People who are driving 40-foot long buses have very different needs than people in 20-foot camper vans. People on vacation with kids want very different things than a writer with a dog. Serious athletes appreciate different qualities than casual walkers. People who are planning to spend months in one place have different goals then people who are wandering through, hoping for some time in nature.

Those last parks have the word “seasonals” in their descriptions. Over the course of the last two-plus years, I’ve started avoiding them. In Florida, especially, they’re the campgrounds that are basically trailer parks — long rows of trailers stacked up one next to the other, with a view of your neighbor’s sewer hose. Parking spaces with lawn chairs. They curdle my soul.

On Monday, I had sort of an in-between day. I woke up in a Walmart parking lot, did my shopping when the Walmart opened, and wasn’t quite sure what to do with the rest of the day. I knew where I wanted to be on Tuesday, but I didn’t have a plan for Monday night. But it was going to be a hot day so unless I wanted to drive all day or run the (obnoxiously loud) generator all day, I was going to want electricity. (I can survive a 90-degree van, Zelda cannot. Traveling with a dog means running the air-conditioning when the temperature gets above 80.)

I spent a while considering my options, my energy level, and my goals, and finally decided to try out an inexpensive seasonal campground in Quebec City. It was just for a night and it had laundry facilities. Good enough. I drove by it, saw that it was a parking lot with lawn chairs, and decided to try my next option: a more expensive, but also seasonal campground in Quebec City.

Option #2, Camping Juneau, was adorable. Completely charming and beautiful in a campground sort of way. It wasn’t stylish. The buildings were a little run-down, the signs were hand-made (some of them, at least), the roads were narrow gravel and dirt, the washing machine had dead bugs on it, my fire pit was made of crumbling concrete. But a shack of a restaurant had a patio, maybe four tables with plastic tablecloths, overlooking the lake. There were trees between all the spaces, plants everywhere. It reminded me somehow of Maine and Greece mixed together, with a whole bunch of the resort in the Catskills from Dirty Dancing thrown in. There was sunshine and shade and pure essence of summer.

[image error]

The restaurant was closed, but the patio looked like a fine place to play pinochle on a summer evening.

I didn’t wind up doing my laundry, but I did open the awning and get out my own lawn chair and read books sitting outside in the shade. It was a lovely afternoon.

[image error]

The view from the van window. Not a sewer hose in sight. My site was much smaller than my site at Camping des Voltigeurs, but I liked it much more.

I think the thing that I will look for in future campground descriptions, though, is “tents”. Juneau had tent spots and tent campers, and a place that appeals to tent campers probably can’t be a parking lot with lawn chairs. It certainly wasn’t. It was lovely! As is Quebec City, but somehow it’s almost 9AM and I’ve got to get moving. Today’s going to be a busy day. It might just include poutine!

Trois-Rivieres, Quebec

I am sitting in a gray Walmart parking lot, as the sky slowly gets darker and darker. I count at least a dozen other campers and trailers here, so probably this town is a good place to be a tourist. It was certainly beautiful when driving around, despite the gray. I crossed a fantastic bridge, over a huge river that looked green in the foggy light. Then I crossed another bridge. Then another, then another.

Somewhere along the way, I thought, “Wow, how many rivers are there?”

And then I thought, “Duh, I need R in the van, so that I could have said that thought aloud to him for whatever his deadpan response would have been.” Pretty sure the name indicates that there might be three of them. Me driving over what felt like four was probably me getting lost.

I was headed to a beautiful church, one that I believe allows overnight camping in a parking lot behind it, but there was a No Dog sign on the parking lot. Alas. I might have been able to park on the curb of the very pretty river — it really didn’t feel like the kind of place where the police come and tell you to move on — but did I mention the gray? The fog was spooky. Yes, I literally had a lovely parking place on the side of a river that might have been a perfectly good place to spend the night, but I wimped out because the fog made everything just that slight bit surreal that makes you think about monsters rising out of the river. Sometimes my imagination is just too good for me. Or maybe that’s not good for me, I’m not sure which.

Either way, I retreated to Walmart. I was putting together a list of things I need — I know that there are several random things that I’ve been meaning to get, like another coat hook because one of mine broke — when I realized that the Walmart looked closed. Yes! It closed at 5PM. I was once again reminded that I am not in my own country, ha. I know that some Walmarts are not 24-hour, but 5PM? And actually, the reminder should have come from me needing to translate 17:00 back to 5:00. Or maybe from not being able to read any of the words on the sign.

So I have a random story from a while ago that I keep remembering, and I’m going to write it down because ten years from now it will make me smile should I stumble across this blog post. R and I ate well, of course, during the week that he camped with me, because I do eat well. We ate out a few times, too, because that’s definitely one of the pleasures of traveling with company, but I cooked most meals. We didn’t eat anything special, particularly — sausages on the grill with salads, risotto with asparagus, sautéed salmon, eggs and potatoes and blueberry pancakes… just food.

And he complimented it, but he grew up while I was learning to cook. He is the person who got to eat every failed experiment, every lesson learned the hard way, every “oops, maybe not like that,” and so he approaches my food with a little more wariness than the average person I feed. But on one of our last nights together, he said to me, “You really are an incredible cook.”

And I was sooo pleased. So delighted. So just a-glow with pleasure that my hard-earned skill was being acknowledged by my toughest audience.

And then I looked at what we were eating and laughed, and said, “Seriously? We’re having quinoa bowls. Not rocket science. Are you complimenting my vegetable-chopping skills?”

Because I make quinoa bowls ALL the time. It’s practically the TV dinner of my life. Put some salad greens in a bowl, add a couple big spoonfuls of quinoa, top with vegetables of some sort and protein of some sort and a dressing, probably based on Greek yogurt, but varying depending on what’s in the bowl. Sometimes even bottled salad dressing! I love the Simply Lemon vinaigrette. It is not a meal that requires any kind of cooking expertise at all. It’s just tossing a bunch of stuff together. Although I actually don’t even really toss it – I like having the ingredients be more layered.

But he said, “I’m serious. This is the best quinoa I’ve ever tasted.”

And so I went back to being pleased. But I also told him, as I will tell you, that the secret to good quinoa is to toast the grains before cooking them, which in my case means sautéing them in the base of the Instant Pot, with no oil or liquid. He asked how long to saute them and that’s a question to which there is no real answer, because it depends on quantity and the heat of the pan, but the effective answer is “until they smell toasted and nutty and delicious.” He has since made his own first quinoa bowl — he went with olives, feta, and a vinaigrette, and reports success, which adds to my pleasure. The only thing better than being a good cook is teaching someone else to be a good cook, too.

[image error]

I could have been parked next to this beautiful river for the night. I wonder if it was the graffiti on the rocks, unnoticed at the time, that made me feel unsure? Or maybe it was jut parking right next to a river when it was clearly going to rain? But no, I really just think I was worrying about the Loch Ness monster or some Canadian variant.

Camping des Voltigeurs, Drummondville, Quebec

I dreamed last night that the campsite I’m in turned to solid mud in the rain, two inches deep, and that Zelda ran out of the van door and straight into the mud, sinking in and leaving footprints all over it. I immediately objected, super frustrated because even though I’m supposed to have water at this campsite, it’s not at all clear to me where I find said water. There’s no hook-up within reach, not unless I had incredibly long hoses. No hook-up that’s obvious, anyway.

So she was muddy and I was upset, because I knew I’d never get her clean, and there was going to be mud all over the van, and although I’ve gotten used to being dirty, I’ve never really accepted it. I still hate it, especially when the van is dirty and it feels like there’s no escape from the dirt.

And then I woke up and it hadn’t rained, the sun was shining and there was no mud. Isn’t it strange how happy one can feel about something that one would totally have taken for granted in other circumstances? Without that dream, it would never have occurred to me to be glad that the ground was solid. I would have been mentally grumbling about the traffic — my campsite is across from a busy road, so even though there’s a line of trees mostly blocking the road from view, I’m again listening to a lot of traffic noises. But I don’t mind now, because at least it’s not traffic noises in the mud.

The part about the water is true, though. When I got here yesterday, I was mystified, but also much too tired after a really long day of driving to deal with going back up to the front and finding someone to help me. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. There are plenty of empty spaces, so I could go talk to someone at the front and maybe move to another site, but I could also just go without water hook-ups for a few days.

I’ve gotten pretty good at coping with water scarcity from all my driveway camping — water hook-ups are more of a luxury than a necessity for me — but I’m paying for the water so I sort of feel like I should have it. Paying a lot, too — provincial parks in Canada are not cheap, even with the exchange rate. On the other hand, I’m tired and unmotivated and don’t speak French. For the moment at least, I think I will survive without water.

But I will survive without water in Quebec! Where people speak French! Yesterday’s French adventures included a confusing stop at a gas station where the pump didn’t work and the messages on the screen were all in French, and then a confusing stop at a CostCo where my debit card didn’t work. In both places, the cashiers spoke perfect English once I made my confusion clear, so it’s not like I faced any true challenges, but it was rather fun. I like feeling lost in another country. It adds another layer to being tired, though — when I finally made it to my campsite, I really just didn’t have the energy left to have another confusing encounter.

[image error]

My campsite. Electric wires and traffic, but no mud!

I believe that this campground is next to an historic Quebec village. No dogs allowed, but I might leave Z in the van for a while and go wander around for a while. I’d feel okay about doing that, because it was 53 degrees this morning and is still only in the 60s. 53! I was too cold to get out of bed, because it hadn’t remotely occurred to me that I might want to run the heat. But it makes me really happy to be so chilly. Autumn is on its way, yay! I love Serenity, but I love her best when she’s not an oven.

But before I do that, I’m going to write for a while. Real words. Fiction words. Yesterday’s long drive (pretty close to eight hours, including two stops for gas, one dog walk, and one quick CostCo visit for Canadian blueberries) was rich with imaginings. My only problem is that I had good ideas for so many stories that I’m not even sure where to begin. It’s a lovely problem to have.

By the numbers: a self-publishing post

This entire post is going to be about self-publishing, including specific data on book sales and ad prices, so if that doesn’t interest you… well, you’ve been warned!

So, Grace preorders… meh. I sold 207 copies in pre-order, I believe, which is a very nice number by some standards — certainly by the standard of the Me of seven years ago, who thought selling 100 copies in a year would be a feat — but not a number that would ever impress a publisher. (Not that I need to impress a publisher, it’s just a standard I’m setting for the purposes of this post.)

The details: I announced the book on my blog and Facebook and sold about 30 copies. I think 34 was the actual number before I did anything else. Thank you, oh magical 34. You’re my favorites.

On the positive side

Yesterday, I picked up R at the closest subway station (or light rail, I’m not sure which) and we set off for a day of city luxuries. It turned out to be a day of very minor city luxuries because we are too cheap for much in the way of city fun. We tried to go to Mission Impossible and it was $26 per ticket. $26! Thank you, but I’ll wait until it hits some television-type format.

But I’d picked out a restaurant for lunch that sounded like a bistro-type pub — interesting food, claiming to have gluten-free options. We got there and it turned out to be more like a combination sports bar/Applebee’s, with the only gluten-free items on the menu being pad thai or potato skins. We decided to pass and left.

I was frustrated, because we’d both spent quite a while browsing various review apps on our phones, trying to find the perfect place, but there was a Vietnamese restaurant in the same strip mall-type place, so we decided to go there.

Spontaneously.

Without reading any reviews.

Without consulting TripAdvisor or Yelp or even Google.

And it was delicious! I had mango salad and shrimp summer rolls and R had pho. I took one bite of his pho before he added hoisin sauce (which has gluten, so is not an option for me) and it was so delicious that I ordered myself a pho to go. I ate it for dinner last night and lunch today and it was so good that I’m now feeling in ridiculous harmony with the world. Good soup, that’s all one needs to cheer one up.

I liked the restaurant so much that I went to TripAdvisor to leave a review for it and… it doesn’t exist! Or at least not in Trip Advisor. But for anyone wandering around Toronto, it was called Good Pho You, and that’s the right address and the right menu, even if the name on the website is Mr. Ping’s Noodles. And it was very good for me, several times. If it rains tomorrow, I might have to go back there.

Why is rain connected to dinner, you wonder? Because R and his girlfriend are coming over. I’m planning on making chicken piccata, gluten-free, which is a food I don’t make when I’m on my own, because it requires wine and I need someone else around to drink up the wine. But dinner in the van for more than two people only works when it’s really dinner outside at a picnic table. Still, if my chicken piccata plan fails, we will have Vietnamese and I, at least, will be content.

In even more positive news, albeit already mentioned, R and his girlfriend are coming over for dinner tomorrow. I haven’t met her yet, but I’m looking forward to it. R paid her a compliment that I am not allowed to repeat (not because it’s overly personal, but because he feels it might stress her out to have to live up to said compliment), but it makes me highly inclined to think I’m going to like her a lot. I’d probably think that anyway, though, because R is so happy about their relationship. I told him that while I refuse to take on his unhappiness as my own, his happiness boosts mine by about 20%. So happiness boosted and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

In additional positive news, Zelda is doing great. She’s not limping anymore, even on long walks. And we’ve run into some other dogs on our walks and she’s been perfectly pleasant to them. I was worried that she might adopt an “attack first” attitude, but a lifetime of good dog encounters has not been jeopardized by the one Very Bad Encounter. At least not for her. I’m working on my own anxiety around the issue.

The only continuing problem for her is that after hurting herself when jumping off the bed a few times in the first days after the VBE, she’s decided against doing that anymore. I’m hoping she’ll get over it eventually, but right now, she jumps up on the bed and then gets trapped there until I realize she’s standing, staring at the ground, and help her down.

And another positive — I’ve made a decision about what I’m doing next! I’ve really been debating about what to do, where to go. I know I write better and more when I sit still. The past two weeks have been terrible writing weeks, because I’ve done so much driving. But what’s the point of living in a van if it doesn’t include some adventuring? If I’m just living in a tiny space, I could do that much more comfortably in one that had a permanent connection to hot water.

Anyway, I was debating between heading west and going along the north side of the Great Lakes all the way to Winnipeg, then south through North Dakota in order to see North Dakota (#49 on my list of states); or heading west to Michigan and visiting the upper peninsula, as missed earlier in the summer; or heading south through New York, over to New Hampshire and Massachusetts and then continuing south.

I decided to do none of the above.

If you were to take a list of the top 50 things to see in the US, I would have seen most of them. Not all of them. I’ve never been to Yellowstone, Glacier, Carlsbad Caverns or Denali. I’ve not watched Old Faithful or visited Craters of the Moon. And there are definitely places I’d like to spend more time, like the Great Smoky Mountains and the entire state of New Mexico. But the places that I actually want to see? Not just “will go see, because hey, why not?” but “want to see”? There are not so many of them left. In fact, when I — in exasperation with myself — meditated on that question only one popped into my head.

Prince Edward Island.

Which, conveniently enough, is actually in the same country that I’m currently in! Not exactly close to where I currently am, but close is relative, right?

So I’m heading to Prince Edward Island, hoping to find places to stay along the way that don’t involve too many parking lots. This last week of summer is a terrible time to find campgrounds and places are mostly booked. And I don’t want to brave PEI until after Labor Day if I can manage it, since this is peak tourist season. But Labor Day is only two weeks away. On Wednesday, I’ll head to a campground in Quebec for the weekend, and then after that… well, I’ll play it by ear, I guess. But I’m excited! Anne of Green Gables country! And the ocean! And then south through Maine and maybe even some New Hampshire autumn foliage.

Life is good.

[image error]

It’s very hard to take a good picture of a spiderweb but it was a beautiful web!

Glen Rouge Campground, not quite Toronto

[image error]

My campsite at Glen Rouge Campground feels surrounded by traffic.

Last night, I was still lying awake after midnight, restless and annoyed, when I finally gave up on having the windows open. The weather was perfect for it — low 70s, a little bit of a breeze — but there was too much traffic noise. I used to be able to sleep through traffic noise. I lived near a major highway in Walnut Creek, California, for a while, and managed to convince myself that the traffic noise was the sound of the ocean, soothing, peaceful. When I moved down to Santa Cruz, CA, I had to adjust to sleeping to the sound of the real ocean. Apparently now I do better with crickets.

But largely my problem in this campground is my location. The campground’s location is one of its advantages: it’s the closest campground to downtown Toronto, and is, in fact, a lovely little oasis of nature in the midst of a city. There are kilometers of hiking trails, kids riding bicycles, loads of trees, even a river. If I was a lot more ambitious, I could even walk to the Toronto Zoo. (Begging the question of what Zelda would be doing while I went to the zoo, since I would never feel comfortable leaving her alone in the van for that long when the heat could get into the 80s.) My personal location, though, is in the V where the entrance and the exit to the campground meet, and thus every camper, every truck, every bus, every trailer must drive by me.

Toronto traffic, by the way… just wow. Canadians are apparently not Canadian when they are behind the wheel. I saw a literal road rage incident yesterday when two men got out of their cars to yell at one another at a traffic light. I’d pondered the question of whether drivers were specifically being assholes to me because of my Florida license plates. Has the hatred of Americans overseas hit Canada so hard that they’re acting on it to random tourists on the road? But the road rage incident was comforting in that respect — nope, they’re assholes to one another, too. (Not all of them, of course, no insult intended to any nice Canadian drivers who might be reading.)

I didn’t really get to see R’s new apartment because parking in his neighborhood did not seem possible, but I did take him and his belongings there. It is so nice to have some space back in the van! Less stuff is definitely more when it comes to van life. I like not having to climb over the kayak to use the bathroom and I love being able to store my shoes above the door so that I’m not tripping over them every time I turn around.

And… sigh. You know, I had other things I wanted to write about, but a reader decided to ruin my morning by coming to my blog and telling me all the things that were wrong with Grace. I honestly don’t get that. It’s one thing to share information with other readers in a review, and another to point out typos or errors that are correctable, but why tell an author all the things you don’t like about the story she chose to tell? I guess we all like to complain, don’t we? Here I am complaining about my location in a campground — maybe the campground will choose not to let people camp here anymore, LOL. But I am definitely choosing not to write anymore today. I am going to camp and cook and walk my dog and play WoW and maybe find myself a job as a nanny. I’d be a great nanny, as long as I could bring my dog along!

[image error]

Before I decided to complain, I was thinking of using this picture as my Glen Rouge memory. Nice trees are so much more peaceful than traffic.

PS Many thanks to the readers who have written reviews and/or sent me nice messages. I promise not to let my anti-writing mood last too long!

Fifty Point Conservation Area, Grimsby, Ontario

I wrote the name of this campground as Conversation Area initially, which really amused me. And it would be so apt! This is a lovely campground on the shores of Lake Ontario. Our site is a pull-through adjacent to another pull-through pointed in the opposite direction, so we’re very close to our neighbors but facing in opposite directions. Conversation would be easy, but is not required.

[image error]

Last night’s view of the sun setting over Lake Ontario.

The campground itself is pretty much everything I like in a campground — grass, trees, water, sunlight, space, beautiful walking, a dog beach where Zelda can play, birds, including the world’s cutest woodpecker working on the tree by the picnic table this morning and some unidentified species sauntering through the grass. Even the bugs were cute — I have no idea what the one crawling on the sink this morning was, but it was green and tiny, with long legs. Maybe some kind of aphid?

Also lots of birch trees, and I’ve decided that the wind rustling through birch tree leaves really makes a unique noise — it’s not the same as wind rustling through other tree leaves. The birch leaves sound like they’re whispering. And tons of cricket noise last night, or maybe they were frogs? But the night was loud and seventy degrees, perfect summer feeling.

So yesterday was Niagara Falls. It was crazily tourist-y, in the way all the main tourist attractions seem to be. Amazing people watching, and frankly, pictures of people would be by far the best photographs from any of the tourist attractions. Preferably pictures of people taking pictures. I started amassing a little collection of those in my travels, but then I realized that I would never be willing to post them anywhere, because it would feel so rude to post a picture of a stranger, but yesterday’s collection of strangers would have been amazing. It reminded me of being at the southern-most point of the United States, in Key West — lots of tourists, people from all over the world, there just for the sake of being there. That said, they were some pretty cool waterfalls, no question about that. And it was such a hot day that it was pretty lovely to stand in the spray of the mist.

[image error]

You can just see the top of the falls in the background. In order to get a real view, you walk down a hill to the right of the photo, and join a mob of people clustered at a railing, all taking pictures. We liked the wildflowers better than the concrete platform, though.

We also saw my very earliest childhood home yesterday — only somewhat out of our way. The interesting thing about that was not so much how different the neighborhood looked from my memory — very different, and so much smaller — but that I had the address wrong. The day before, when I was failing to find my other childhood homes, I told R confidently that my early memories were the most reliable and that of all the different places I’d lived in during my childhood, the only one that I actually remembered the address of was the first. Wrong! I had the street right, but not the number. I’m not sure that means anything, except maybe that none of my memories are reliable. But I had a very different feel looking at that house than at the others, much warmer and cozier. I’m glad we drove by, even though it was a very long driving day for me. It was worth the stop.

Today we’re headed on to Toronto. Our mattress hunt yesterday failed — perhaps the influence of the bed bug revival? Thrift stores don’t seem to carry mattresses anymore, unfortunately. But we’re going to check out Ikea this afternoon, so fingers crossed for good luck there. Otherwise, R might be going to steal one of the mattresses from the van for a few days while he orders a mattress online or tries for a Craig’s List find. Either way, he’ll have something on which to sleep tonight.

And somehow it is already 10AM, which means it’s time to get moving. Lots to do today, but much, much enormous thanks to the readers who have reached out to tell me that they read Grace — your words brought me much joy this morning! R and I had pancakes (gluten-free, of course) to celebrate!

Green Lakes State Park, Manlius, New York

Post our lovely time in Grand Isle, R and I had no specific plans, but he needs to be back in Toronto by Wednesday. Originally, I’d thought we’d wander slowly through Ontario, but after much discussion, we went for a slight change of plans and decided to take the southern route back to Toronto instead. It’s longer, because we’re swinging pretty far south to get below Lake Ontario and then go up the other side of the lake and around to get to Toronto, but it offered several advantages.

First, gas is enough cheaper in the US that the cost was probably close to the same. Second, R needs a cheap mattress for his new living situation and we’d like to buy it on the last day possible before arriving at his new place, ie Wednesday. US prices might be cheaper, so being in the US on Wednesday could be handy. Third, driving through the south opened up the possibility of driving by several places where I used to live — this area of upstate New York is where I mostly grew up and I haven’t really been back in decades. And fourth, Niagara Falls! Classic Americana road trip sight — the kind of thing that belongs on a list with the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore.

But along the way is Green Lakes State Park, a gorgeous park, very green and lush, beautiful lakes, pleasant treed campsites and really nice showers — the single room kind, where you have a door, plus control over the water temperature. The weather, typical of this oh-so-familiar area, is gray and gloomy, but we drove around for a while, passing by my old high school, three of the houses I lived in (one of which I couldn’t identify — best I could do was say, “sort of somewhere around here and now we must have passed it”), and the site of every bookstore and library that I loved. In fact, R’s impression of my childhood is probably that I did nothing but go to school and read books, because those are the only things that I remember. Although that said, I do vaguely remember this park as a place where we sometimes came to swim in the summertime.

[image error]

Our site at Green Lakes. Very green.

Perhaps it’s because I vaguely remember it that I’ve been feeling utterly phobic about poison ivy. I swear, every random leaf looks like a poison ivy leaf to me. Did I once get poison ivy in this park? Is that why I’m so paranoid?

That’s probably not it, though. Sometimes anxiety manifests as semi-irrational fears in order to shield our mind from less-irrational fears. In this case, I think I am struggling not to let last week’s attack turn into a serious dog phobia on my part. It was so fast, so out-of-nowhere, so aggressive and so brutal. My head still knows that dogs are our friends, but the back of my neck seems to be experiencing some post-traumatic stress, and while I try to talk myself out of it, I worry about poison ivy. Now that I’ve figured that out, maybe I’ll stop. Or maybe I’m actually right that all these random leaves are poison ivy and I’ll be hunting for remedies by the time we get to Canada.

Meanwhile, today is release day for A Gift of Grace. I’m trying not to let that stress me out — Niagara Falls, way better thing to think about! — but I’m not that zen. But I checked and double-checked the files, and I do know that it’s time to let go. So I’ll be working on that while I admire the big waterfall today. But I do hope that all of you reading Grace today enjoy yourselves!

Grand Isle State Park, Grand Isle, Vermont

[image error]

Zelda is healing well — eager to go for walks again and happy to greet the dogs we encounter on the way. Still limping a little, but not yelping when she jumps any more.

I made my reservations for Grand Isle State Park in Vermont several weeks ago. It’s the most popular state park in Vermont, on an island in Lake Champlain, and in my imaginary visit, there was much kayaking, some swimming, some hiking — several days of actual nature adventure. Real camping, not just living in a van.

My imagination did not include a limping dog.

Nor did it include human companions, in the form of my delightful son and my favorite cousin.

So things sort of balanced out, some bad, some good. I’m sorry to say that my kayak never touched the water, and neither did Zelda or I. R walked down to the beach and went swimming but it was too long a walk for Zelda.

We did, however, have a campfire one night and cook sausages over the fire, which was fun, and we went to a farmer’s market where I bought maple syrup, which felt very Vermont.

And the campground was as beautiful as I’d expected it to be. Vermont is gorgeous. This was my second visit, not nearly long enough, and it’s so green and hilly. I suspect that I wouldn’t like it nearly as much in winter, when I would be admiring the hills and wishing to be somewhere warmer, but in August, it’s lovely.

The campground was great, too. I wasn’t in love with our site (#96, for future reference) which was packed dirt, but it was huge and felt quite secluded, because it was surrounded and sheltered by trees. Total shade, with only tiny patches of sunlight. Z wandered from one sunlit patch to another as the day wore on. Some of the other sites are grassy and sunnier, so if I ever go back, I’ll aim for one of those (on the outside, for my own future reference).

The only real negative for me was the showers: coin-operated, no control over water pressure or temperature. Not my favorite and on our last day, the shower stole R’s coins and neglected to give him any water. He was not a happy camper.

Despite being less energetic than I’d planned, we had a very pleasant three days there. No electricity, so lots of reading and relaxing, and for me, lots of cooking fun food. We ate blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast one morning, scrambled eggs with avocado and cilantro and sausage another. I braved the fish smells and did sockeye salmon for dinner one night, with salads of mixed greens, avocado, pea pods, radishes, sunflower seeds, and lemon vinaigrette.

On one of the other days, I ate a nameless food — ground beef and rice cooked with turmeric, cinnamon, parsley, garlic, cilantro, chili sauce, and fresh cherry tomatoes. My description of it to R was so poor that he passed and ate leftover salmon, but he did take a bite after I’d cooked it and agreed that it was better than he’d been imagining. It actually was pretty delicious, although it felt like an ideal mid-winter food, rather than a deep summer food — rich and spicy and satisfying.

After five days, R is now my longest van companion. He says that he’s tired of hitting his head, which I sympathize with. I don’t know that he would ever want to drive around exploring the country anyway, but I am pretty sure if he did, he would like a taller vehicle. And I just asked him and he agrees, he would rather not spend a lot of time in this vehicle this size. The perils of being 6’4”!

But we’ve done pretty well together, I think — I was worried that after a few days of tripping over each other, I’d be getting cranky about having extra stuff in the way and he’d be getting cranky about me being cranky, but so far, so good. A second (and, briefly, third) person does mean a lot more dishes to wash, though, and that’s meant some minor tragedies. Yesterday I broke two of my favorite bowls, because I didn’t stow them properly when we were on the road, and I’ve been surprisingly sad about that. When you own almost nothing, the things that you own that you love become much more important, I guess. But I’m trying to remind myself that the universe has plenty of bowls, and maybe I’ll find some new ones that I love just as much.

Tomorrow is the release day for A Gift of Grace, and I’ve been meaning to write about that — some more about the book itself, maybe some about the things I learned writing it, some self-publishing thoughts about how the release has gone and what I’ve done, that kind of thing. But I spent a solid twenty minutes staring at a blank document and writing and re-writing some words and then decided that maybe that wasn’t going to happen. At least not yet. I’m doing a pretty good job of letting go of the anxiety and stress and tension that comes with releasing a creative baby into the world and I think I’d like to keep it that way. So instead, R and I are going to go do laundry. Exciting days!

Lake Saint Peter, Ontario

My resolution to write about every place I stay is taking a hit from moving too fast and being too stressed. For my own future reference, when I am trying to put together my Year Three itinerary eleven months and a couple weeks from now, I went from Allentown to:

Barber Homestead in Westport, NY (independent) for two days

Jacques Cartier State Park in Morristown, NY (state park) for two days

Cedar Beach Campground in Eganville, Ontario (independent) for two days

Lake Saint Peter Provincial Park in Lake Saint Peter, Ontario (province) for two days

This is not how I want to travel. It’s made worse right now because of Zelda, of course, because it’s not relaxing at all to be traveling with an injured dog. I was stressed yesterday about how pink her stitches looked, debating whether I should find a vet to take a look. Finally decided that the problem was probably that she was jumping too much and I’d wait and see. They look better today and she’s getting seriously restless. She’s still limping heavily, but she wants to go for her walks. She was ridiculously excited this morning when I got her leash out. Hmm, and I just remembered that I totally forgot to give her the painkiller she’s supposed to have this evening. Must do that.

But Lake Saint Peter first — I’m not going to remember this park, unfortunately. No walks means that we haven’t seen anything but our campsite. It’s a nice campsite, surrounded by trees, feels very private, even though there’s plenty of other campsites within hearing distance. Many ferns, many birch trees, and a generous supply of plants that look like they might be poison ivy, but I hope are not. There’s a total fire ban on, so no lovely smell of campfires at night, and it’s been overcast and rainy, so no stars either. I know that there’s a lake somewhere — I suspect it’s a nice lake — but it’s not within walking distance for a dog that can’t walk. So basically, I have been sitting inside the van, feeling tired and anxious.

[image error]

Fortunately, it is a very peaceful view from the window.

Tomorrow, I head out to pick up R. I’ll get him first thing in the morning and then we’re going to make a long, long drive — over six hours — into Vermont. We’ll be camping at a state park there through the weekend, no electricity, but good company. And maybe Zelda will get to go to an animal acupuncturist, because of course they have those in Vermont.