Girl Meets Canada: Don’t Blow Your Top!

The ongoing story of a girl and her van on an epic journey across Canada.

Day 41 cont… (Sat, June 19th)

My mom and step-sister had been planning a trip to Howell, Michigan to visit family for ages.For those that don’t know, this is a little town about 100 km west from Detroit.So when I was in Winnipeg, I thought, hey, I should drive down and meet them!

I mean, I do love both surprising my mother and making her cry.(See my mother’s day post for more info..)

This was about a 1700 km drive. I could have finished it in a day. Hey, I’ve done it before. But I decided to take my time, so I spread it over 4 days. No point going all that way to see my mom only to have her yell at me for driving to hard for too long.

So, Saturday took me from Winnipeg to Kenora, Ontario. I was thrilled to camp in a virtually bug free zone! I spent the night burning up the remaining firewood I had leftover from previous sites.

See, about two years ago Angie and I went camping in Montana. We were two girls in a small beater car filled with obvious camping gear. Tents, sleeping bags, a cooler, etc. Our border guard decided that this must be a clever ruse for covert espionage activity. He treated us like enemies of the state from the second we pulled up. He nearly pulled his gun on Angie after he told her to open the hatch and she went to get out of the car (you can only open it with the key). And when he found (GASP!) firewood back there I think he was close to arresting us. What are you doing bringing FIREWOOD into the U-nited States of America?!

To burn it, Sir. Burn the whole country! MWAHAHAHAHA!

So this time around I made sure I didn’t have any wood (or apples or mangos, the other things he confiscated) on board.

Day 42 (Sun, June 20th)

The border crossing into Minnesota was thankfully uneventful. So was the rest of this day. Just a lot of driving. And driving. And driving. And driving. And driving. And driving. And driving. And driving. And driving.

Day 43 (Mon, June 21st)

I was at a rest stop, and when I got back in my car and went to roll down the window the little knob fell off in my hand. Well, I thought, I haven’t had anything fall off the van since the beginning when I lost the tailpipe and rubber strip from the siding. Of all the things to lose, this is probably the best.

Oh, Sarah. When will you learn NOT TO TEMPT FATE????

Shortly after crossing the Mackinac Bridge (the 3rd longest suspension bridge IN THE WORLD — it’s something like 5 miles long), pretty much right after I took this picture, I nearly lost my roof.

See, my van is camperized, so the roof pops up into a sort of canvas tent thingy. When the top is up I can stand up in there, and there’s a second bed and everything. It’s pretty cool. But so, so unsafe to drive with it up. It would likely rip right off. So the canvas folds up and then the roof latches all snug and secure to the metal frame of the van.

In theory.

In practice, twice already the top has randomly unlatched while I was driving. The first time I assumed I just hadn’t latched is securely. The second time I had both front windows rolled down and was hit by a freak wind storm, so I assumed that it was the wind that did it (the wind, Frank, THE WIND! Sorry, inside joke…).

This time I once again had both windows rolled down (hey, it was freaking hot out, okay?) and pretty much as soon as I got on the bridge the wind picked up. All of a sudden, HELLO! The camper top pops up and it sounded like the wind was trying to rip the whole damn thing off.

Now, when this happened before, I pulled over to the side of the road to fix it. But there really isn’t any stopping on a bridge. Unless you want to cause a massive accident. But there was no way I could cross the bridge with my roof up. I hadn’t even gotten out over the open water yet. The wind there would definitely either blow it away on its own, or take me with it.

So on the hazard lights go, and I slow to about 5 km/h, inching my way forward, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do to stop my van from turning into a parachute.

Fortunately, about a kilometre ahead there was construction, so my lane was closed. I mean, seriously folks, have you ever been happy to see construction? This row of yellow cones slowly tapering off my lane nearly had me in tears of happy, happy joy. I was able to stop the van in the closed lane in (relative) safety, climb in the back, and get my roof down and latched. No dying necessary.

New van rule. The passenger side window may never, EVER be unrolled. This is not a fun rule, considering the smell that has developed. But I’ll talk about that another time.

Day 44 (Tues, June 22nd)

I made it to Howell without further incidents, and laughter, hugging, and beer was had by all.

Photo Credits

All photos by Sarah Gignac

Ontario Border

Mackinac Bridge

This article was first published on Raggedy Threads in June 2010.