RV park near historic cemetery makes for stark contrast and sobering contemplation

September 12, 2016

It had been a "travel day,  meaning that we'd booked it to get through New Brunswick and close to the Nova Scotia border. Nova Scotia means New Scotland. Duh! How did I not know that??

Our New Brunswick experience the previous day at Kouchibouguac National Park had been stellar, so a hurry-up driving day was OK. We were excited to get on to Cape Breton.

To find camping spots we use an app called All Stays. You type in the general area you're planning to stay that night, and along the way, it points out the sorts of camping opportunities you've chosen from a list of "filters." Our requirement for this night: we had to be in Nova Scotia and we wanted a shower.
We had not, however, requested a deserted residential RV Park practically closed up for the season. And certainly not one with a cemetery gleaming in the late-day sun just across a ravine. But the cemetery was the unexpected bonus that made the RV park stay a travel moment, not necessarily a highlight of the trip but one that provided insight into the place and inspired thoughts about mortality.

Rust-colored waves lapped at rust-colored sand along a short beach in front of the RV Park as we took a stroll, wondering why earlier inhabitants had chosen prime real estate for a cemetery. We decided to climb the rocky rim guarding it to have a look. We discovered later that historic graveyards often occupy the most desirable places, perhaps a way to honor the dead. The grave stones were arrayed on a bluff overlooking the ocean. And also overlooking, the RV park. We were soon immersed in Scottish history. A mass migration from a troubled Scotland occurred in the early to mid 1880s. About a third of the country's current residents are their descendants, according to Wikipedia.

There were are hunkered down at the far left end in our little van dwarfed by giant trailers.This is not a campground, but an RV park. Most of the 150+ sites were occupied with travel trailers in winter mode. The owners had vacated, trailers were winterized, and we had our choice of maybe 20 campsites reserved for actual travelers. Although the park was deserted, remnants of summer days were evident; a list of park activities posted in the washrooms and community hall, a huge empty playground next to a slanted soccer field, and a ground-down path to the beach where rust-colored waves lapped at red sand. You could almost hear the shouts of children playing and summer neighbors chattering and clinking their glasses of local brews over their sizzling BBQs. 

If the ghosts of the Scots buried in this place could see it now, what would they think? The idea of metal homes on wheels? The notion that people could have a permanent home AND one they could move from place to place? Incomprehensible.  And our understanding of their hardships and sorrows, and perhaps their joys? Equally inconceivable. 

Family groupings with names such as McDonald, McAllister, McDaniel, McClellan and so on, most of whom died in the mid-to-late 1800s, populate this burial ground overlooking the sea.

PK and I are old enough to face that we'll die sooner rather than later. Like in maybe 20-25 years. Could be sooner. We'll likely be cremated and perhaps ask that our ashes be strewn near the Rogue River in Oregon, where we've lived for 45 years. But then in another century, how will random people happen upon  proof that we existed and wonder about who we were and how and why we died and what our everyday lives were like? As we did that evening when we crossed the rust-colored beach and communed with Scottish spirits. 

Recent travel posts

Kouchibouguac National Park, New Brunswick, travel moment lasting an entire day

Rain and a nasty encounter in wonderful old Quebec City

Tofino, BC, Yes!

Travel Moment (s) New Brunswick

It was such a thrill to see this posing heron and others in his flock in New Brunswick's Kouchibouguac National Park, a place we stumbled upon as we were recovering from some rough travel the previous day. I learned that great blue herons, a treasured seasonal bird in our Southern Oregon home, nests here in New Brunswick. In Oregon we rarely see more than one heron at a time. Here, they hang out in gangs. Thank you, GBH. The older I get, the more such  moments thrill me. I enjoyed many such moments today.

Yesterday sucked. Even though we traveled from beautiful, rolling, church-spire-bejeweled and grain-silo decorated Quebec to reach New Brunswick, we disagreed about where we were going and what we were doing. You think that a married couple traveling in a small van for miles and miles and weeks and weeks doesn't sometimes think about divorce?  Gags? Murder? We're probably not the only ones. Right?

PK's a planner, and he's good at it. If he wasn't, we wouldn't be doing all this traveling.

But the problem with detailed planning and road trips, in my estimation? Plans put spontaneity on the back burner. If you have a destination, and you gotta get there on schedule, then unexpected side trips tend to well, slip aside. That's the crux. We managed to compromise with some mileage along a scenic route as opposed to a get-there-quick freeway, and arrived around 6 p.m. a few miles from our stopping point, Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick. (Hard to pronounce, easy to love, is the way they describe it around here.)

We found a municipal campground, scored a site in the trees, and started to relax. Our plan  for today was to roar on over to Nova Scotia and the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton, a place we've talked and dreamt about for years. But we were just a few minutes from a national park. What the heck. Let's have a look. In a sweet burst of spontaneity, we decided to spend the entire day in the park and camp overnight. Thus began a day filled with wonder and fun, brimming with the travel moments that keep us on the road.

Canadian geese in, where else but Canada! They were feeding just a few pedal strokes from our campsite and the great blue herons were close by. 

PK getting ready to cycle. We practically had the campground  to ourselves, a Sunday in September, the

start of "shoulder season." Great time to travel! Even though it rained a bit today, and was windy, it was shorts weather.  This campground also has blazing fast wifi, which, coupled with a long relaxing day, is why I could whip out a blog post in short order. Wifi is not something we expected in Canadian parks, but it is often available. 

One of the park's claims to fame is restoring the pied plover population, which had dwindled near extinction here. One

of the interpretive signs provided this silly photo op. We rode our bikes here and that rectangle on my glasses is a bike 

mirror, in case you were wondering.

Just a few minutes down the boardwalk through the marsh, perhaps through divine intervention? we spotted this bird, which we believe, with the help of Stokes, to be a juvenile pied plover. Again, just unbelievable and thrilling to us both. Photo below, PK on the board walk where we spotted the pied plover.

One of many interpretive signs along miles and miles of hiking and biking trails throughout the bogs, lagoons, forests, and sea shore in this hard-to-pronounce national park.

Strong winds made the grasses dance but kept us safe from the local mosquito population, of which we were warned.

PK making his way through bog vegetation on a sinking boardwalk.

It was a warm but blustery day and we didn't expect to see people swimming or playing in the Atlantic Ocean on Kelly's Beach in the park.  But there they were, enjoying the last Sunday before school starts here next week. 

Yes, warm enough to swim, but PK and I stuck to wading and
splashing around a bit before getting back to cycling.

I liked the red chairs provided by the park service. By the time we got to the chairs to clean our feet and put on our

shoes, a middle-aged woman was occupying one and struck up a conversation. Within a few minutes, she spilled the news that her husband had recently left her for a much younger woman and was also deserting their sons, ages six and four. This was an unexpected torrent of anguish that didn't fit with our perfect day. But we both warmed to her and ended up in a discussion about love and marriage, hope and betrayal. I think we ended with hope. The last time she'd visited this place had been with the errant husband and their boys. She wanted to reclaim the powerful place as her own. I hope she did that. Our encounter reminded me that even when inevitable human suffering occurs, the sea and the sky, forests and mountains and rivers, birds and mammals, and even strangers on the beach, can be restorative. 

Travel moment on the Plains of Abraham

Sometimes on a rainy foggy day, we can see certain things more clearly.
The St. Lawrence River from an overlook near the Plains of Abraham, Quebec City.

Language alert. I'll be quoting someone below who used bad language that crosses the line. No way to tell this story without the actual words.

I haven't posted a blog since August 18, a few days before we said goodbye to our tomatoes and peppers in Oregon and hit the road. It isn't that I don't think about writing every single day, but I get overwhelmed with photos and "material" and underwhelmed with reliable wifi and/or strong cell service. Hence images and words pile into a muddled mess in my brain and on my computer, and finding a focus eludes me. Even when I do land on a hook, as we used to say in the newspaper business, driving a few hundred miles several days a week and traveling in close quarters with another person doesn't exactly encourage productivity.

When I do find time and place to write, I try to avoid the "we went there and did this, and then we went there and did that" as blog narrative. So when traveling in wifi territory, I do the easy thing: post photos on Facebook with brief descriptions and move on. (If you're interested in seeing the photos, please be my FB friend.)

But something happened this inclement morning in old Quebec City that gave me an idea about how to handle too much stimulation.

Paul and I decided to hell with the weather, pulled on our Eddie Bauer raincoats, unfurled our travel umbrellas and ventured into the heavy rain. A few minutes later I started to smile and talk to myself.

You're doing the traveling you've wanted to do for decades. You're healthy. You have a good man. A good van. A good plan.  Quebec City is charming, picturesque, historic, beautiful, art-filled and stimulating. What a great day to be alive!

I skipped a bit but stifled myself as my Birkenstocks were soggy and the straps were stretched and my footing wasn't solid. As usual, Birks were the only shoes I had with me.

We were pretty much alone,  PK and me, strolling in a downpour from our little boutique hotel in Old Quebec City to the nearby Plains of Abraham. We reached a shelter with a viewpoint down  the St. Lawrence River and, in the opposite direction,  a look at the Plains. We learned that a pivotal battle occurred here between the French and the British in 1759.  It ended with a British victory over France, contributing to the formation of Canada.

The plains had belonged to a farmer named Abraham. No mention of the original First Nation people whose land it was originally.  Canadians did the same as we Americans - stole the land and all but killed off the people indigenous.

Ok. My happy mood was knocked down a notch. There had been plenty of bloodshed here, deep dark history of human beings settling issues with killing, taking, exploiting.  I had to pee.

I descended the deserted stairs to a public restroom. A scowling muscular forty-something woman with a blur of greying hair on her shaved head emerged from the restroom. It was just the two of us,  and as we passed, I nodded and said Hi. I wasn't inviting, or expecting, anything more than a return greeting, one human being's respectful acknowledgement of another.

She stopped and glared at me.
Do I have to say hi to every fucking person?! She spat the words.
I stood stock still, my mouth agape.
She wasn't finished.

Fuck you! Who do you think you are? And fuck Christ, she continued. I'm so sick of people, and you are disgusting. Fuck you! 

She was still spewing anger and hate as she strode into the rain. I made my way into the restroom talking to myself, again. Wow. What was that about? I can't believe that just happened. And so on.

Where I come from in small-town rural Oregon, and earlier in life, small-town Midwest, greeting strangers is as ordinary as toast with jam. It is sweet and harmless. It is not an affront or attack on privacy but an affirmation of a moment of shared time and place.

A few minutes later, when I told PK what transpired, he said he'd noticed the woman muttering something as she passed him, head down.

I'd taken the verbal attack personally, but he took a different view.

She was bald, he said. Maybe she's a cancer patient. Or maybe she's mentally ill. 

Yes, perhaps mentally ill, I concurred. I don't  believe that being a cancer patient explains bad behavior. The bottom line though, was that she was filled with anger and hate. She would have liked to kill me.  I've never been confronted by such a person. But then I've been spared much of the pain and sorrow that life dishes out, lucky in so many ways.

The encounter was a travel moment - a surprising and unexpected result of being out and about in the world, as opposed to sticking close to home. A travel moment is one that can elevate, elate, thrill or educate. Or all of the above. Like the time we swam with whale sharks in La Paz, or when we visited the sacred cremation site in Kathmandu, or when I made eye contact with wild gorillas in Uganda.

But a travel moment can also take you someplace you don't want to go,  proving that travel isn't just about driving around looking at pretty scenery and eating local foods, but also venturing into foreign cultures and lives, places you may not choose but there you are.

In any case, you learn and grow and are somehow challenged.

What does this have to do with Ordinary Life? More travel moments, past and future, will be shared here. I still want to revisit the sacred cremation site and perhaps the whale sharks, and other consequential moments that have become lost in the blur of passing time. Thanks for hanging with me.

Happy travels, wherever they may take you.

Tofino, Vancouver Island. Yes.

Note: We're prepping for a road trip to the East Coast, so I better get this post out before new adventures eclipse our recent visit to Vancouver Island, which was agreeable on many levels.

Ok, so Tofino is touristy. But we are tourists.....and sometimes it's good to enjoy briny air, whales, eagles, beautiful beaches--some with wave-crazed surfers--great food and bike paths, even if others are in close proximity. Many others. 

Dramatic clouds formed as we searched for whales on a tour with only about 30 people. It wasn't a crowded situation. Especially regarding  whales, unfortunately, but we did glimpse a few.

A humpback whale surfaced not far from our whale-watching craft.  But the only way I could see it was by
checking my telephoto shots after the fact. I had no idea I'd actually caught an image. Nice surprise! Mediocre shot!

We arrived in Tofino in our little Roadtrek van in mid-July, prime tourist time. We'd been clued in to Tofino's assets, but I was surprised and delighted by how close those assets are. The ocean is close, the islands are close, the eagles, the restaurants, the temperate rainforests, the hikes, all minutes away, squeezed into the tip of a tiny peninsula.

Case in point. Our campground. We are several tiers back. The towering cedars and firs ease the cheek-to-jowl situation. We got the last site available. Sorta common for us, it seems.


Paul doesn't much care for cheek-to-jowl camping. On this night we could hear the guy next door sawing logs big time in his pop-up trailer. And on the other side, an Airstream with a baby crying. Still, it was a beautiful setting, perfect weather, and we could hear the ocean and the birds.

A favorite image from Tofino, a bald eagle being pursued by seagulls after the eagle attempted to plunder seagull nests. Eagles are scavengers and predators not unlike other birds of prey. Only USA citizens have assigned them a higher calling. 

Tofino's harbor with at least five islands visible.You could swim over for a visit.

Trendy Tofino, just outside the wonderful Wolf in the Fog restaurant, which Tripadvisor ranks as only the fifth most
popular in Tofino out of 36.. Number one? Chocolate Tofino. Ice cream.

Paul, a guy who doesn't like clams, oysters, shrimp etc,  surprised me by ordering this lunch from Wolf in the Fog's menu:cod cheeks and clams!!!! We shared a seaweed and shiitake salad.

The well-stocked bar at Wolf in the Fog bar. We chose this restaurant the best possible way; riding our bikes to town from our campground, I stopped to ask a dog-walking local his recommendation.

Big fat jellyfish doing a raw egg imitation in Tofino's harbor

Big guy seal with attitude oversees a bored harem, seen from the whale-sighting cruise, which lasted about 3 hours.

We didn't get to this restaurant, but you can't argue with the location. 

Tofino appears to be an active fishing port. 

Tofino is a small lively community, even when bloated with tourists, and campers need to make reservations or take a chance with winging it. We didn't exactly wing it, but got a reservation a few days in advance at an RV park.

We inquired too late to get into the Grass Point National Park campground not far out of town, and instead settled for a private campground that crammed 181 sites into prime beachfront property. Numerous spaces are on the beach, or have ocean views, but that was not the case with us, parked several tiers back, not far from one of the THREE restrooms serving the entire park.  Canadians call them "washrooms". If you ask for a restroom, they think maybe you're looking for a quiet place to nap.

 The one closest to us had two working toilets (out of three) and the one and only shower was out of order. And the cleaning crew was apparently on vacation. This is why boondocking - camping in free but legal places - is a growing phenomenon. We paid $40+ for this? But I quibble. We did have electricity, which we don't really need, and access to a great beach during beautiful weather.  On to the good stuff.

A bike path runs several miles paralleling the main road, and was accessible from our campground. We've hauled our bikes on too many trips where we didn't ride them enough to warrant the trouble. On Vancouver Island the bikes saw a lot of action.

Ahhh, a bike path! Just under 4 miles long, it allows visitors and residents to get around without driving.

Eagle portrait captured in the Tofino harbor as we departed on a 

whale watching tour. Guides said that 140 nesting pairs make 

their home around Tofino. It was a joy to see a few.

We didn't spend enough time in the Tofino/Ucluelet area. Ucluelet is small town about 20 miles from Tofino, which we drove through to reach the Wild Pacific Trail, a terrific way to spend a late afternoon taking in the coastal drama.

 The drive to this peninsula is also noteworthy.  Hwy. 4 passes the MacMillan Cathedral Grove, which somehow rivals a redwood forest, and includes a twisting narrow section through dramatic peaks and valleys with grades of 11 percent to 18 percent. Needless to say, but I will anyway, do not ride your bike to Tofino!

Part of the lush understory of the MacMillan Cathedral Grove.

Yet another opportunity for awe. Or ahhh. En route to Tofino.

Earlier posts about Vancouver Island
Butchart Gardens- bring your camera
Victoria - Bring your bike

Should we stay or should we go? Go, of course.

This proud sunflower came up all by itself this year. About a third of our sunflowers are, like this one, volunteers.

We're about to leave for six or seven weeks on a road trip to the east coast, including Canada's eastern provinces. After we pass Minnesota to visit family, it'll be mostly new territory, especially when we enter Canada after Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Then dip down into New Jersey to see PK's family. Excited!

On the other hand....August is pay-off time for garden work that began in early spring. This morning I harvested a dozen cantaloupes, pulled a row of onions to begin a quick "cure" in the full sun before storage, poked through the tomatoes to find the ripe ones, and snipped the glossiest eggplants and the most perfect zucchinis. The harvest box was so heavy I had to unload some on the garden's edge for a return trip. Definitely a first-world "problem."

Part of this morning's harvest included a dozen ripe melons and massive spaghetti squash.

I try not to take for granted the bounty and beauty and my good fortune. Thank you, universe. But having a wonderful home and garden isn't our only fortune, but also the ability to travel and leave behind the few green acres in which we are rooted and where we've grown and learned and raised our sons and made a home we're not ready to give up. I wonder when that day will come, as it must. As it will.

For now, we'll indulge our shared delight in travel and enjoy the best of both worlds, home in the garden and at home in the world. I think we'll do this as long as we're able and our strongest tethers aren't to the land or to wanderlust but to each other.

Later we feasted on smoked grilled veggies marinated in sesame dressing, and succulent sweet melon with fresh basil. The barbecue chicken was a bonus. 

The joy of gardening isn't just about the harvest, it's about the process and the beauty. It's about awakening with the birds and bees and butterflies. They drink the nectar, gather the pollen, and ravage (finches!) the chard and kale, and sunflower leaves. The morning light about kills me. Ditto the evening light.

It's about the intoxicating fragrance of roses and the sweet smell of crushed mint that's grown into what passes for a lawn. This morning,  a few days before our departure I ventured out to work, to harvest, to enjoy, and to assess my brain and heart about leaving at the peak of harvest.

Bottom line. I'm good with it. The garden's inevitable decline has started. The next five days are predicted to be 100-plus. I hate extreme  heat, and the garden hates it more. Leaves will curl, peppers and tomatoes without shading leaves will shrivel with sunburn, and the sunflowers will hasten to seed, much to the delight of numerous bird species.

We've hired a trusted person to harvest and give away the remaining melons and other stuff; and to harvest and freeze tomatoes from 11 plants, down from 17 plants last year! It'll all be good. It's been a process, but I know we'll drive away in a few days without looking back. If I get too lonesome, I'll just look at these pictures.

One of hundreds of bees gathering sunflower pollen. Later, when seeds form, birds will move in to harvest the seeds. We're going to miss that part of the annual garden wildlife show.

We have a great eggplant crop on four plants this year. We'll be giving most of them away, but I did manage to make some ratatouille and mix eggplant into the grilling/smoking routine.

Newly emerged sunflowers, backlit. 

Walla Walla and tropia onions curing in the sun. Tomorrow we'll need to pull the "keeper" onions to let them cure a day before we put them all on screens in the garage to dry. 

Serrano peppers ripening. Peppers of all types will remain on the plants to ripen until we return.The riper they get, the better they are, in my opinion. These will be deeply red and HOT. PK will make his famous serrano sauce.

PK checking the automatic watering system, ensuring that crops needing water will get it. 

Evening light shines through the canna lily leaves....best part of the day.