What Winnie taught us about patience
Our sabbatical roadtrip from east to west in Canada is well underway, and as with any good travel journey, I already learned quite a bit about being flexible and being patient. For instance, prior to our journey, I thought that purchasing a motorhome in Canada would look like this:
but, the reality was more like this:
So, since we had to wait an indeterminent amount of time for our Motorhome to pass his Motor Vehicle Inspection, we helped out at various organic farms for room and board – from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick.
After the fourth iteration, that is, six weeks later, we were ready to give up on the Cross-Canada-Caravan-Dream. We accepted our defeat and made friends with the idea that we would take the train to Montreal and from there, fly to Vancouver.
I guess that’s all the stoic gods needed to hear, because the next day we received a call from the dealer saying the inspection passed and the motorhome was ready to be picked up! So, it seems that being content with not getting that thing you want weirdly brings that thing into your life.
Anyways, now we finally had a new (1989) Toyota Winnebago Warrior at our side (its name is Winnie) and would be ready to sail east to Newfoundland!
The first few days were pretty exciting, since we had a few things to learn about camper life and boondocking that we didn’t know before, like for instance:
- Learning lesson #1: No, one does not simply discharge an AGM (lead acid) leisure battery to empty, like you’re probably used to doing with lithium ion.
- Learning lesson #2: After five days at 25 degrees Celsius, on average, the black water holding tank gives off a smell that embeds itself into the apolstery
The second learning lesson in particular is rather important when one has a Motorhome that is equipped with a kitchen and a toilet. Eventually, you’ll have to get rid of the black and grey water somehow.
So, naturally, having no idea where we would find sanitation dumping stations along our route, I proceeded in the only way that made sense to me:
“I know what I’ll do, I’ll write a bad-ass query for openstreetmap to find all sanitation dumping stations in a particular area” – me thinking to myself
this sounded like a good idea at the time, and to be fair, I did do something similar once to locate all hot springs in Iceland. But, lucky for us, Travellers' Serendipity led us to meet a lovely couple from Quebec, while we were in Twilingate, who told us about an awesome, community driven, and nonprofit, app called iOverlander.
Needless to say, this app completely revolutionzed the way we did our route planning, since it provided us with a map which contained spots to stay overnight, sanitation dumping stations, and places to find potable water. All user driven with helpful comments by the people who had recently visited these locations.
Armed with this knowledge, we boldly continued our trip through Newfoundland and, as we stopped at the next sanitation dumping station and I held the sewer hose firmly in my hands, feeling the lunches and dinners of the past days flow by, I couldn’t help but wonder:
“What would this trip have looked like in a time before the World Wide Web…”