Our Holiday Co-Pilot

Brenda examining a pile of coal rocks that appear to have been purposely dumped in a lot alongside Highway 31A in The Kootenays.

​I think one of the reasons why I don’t normally worry much when we travel anywhere is because of my faith. We recently took a holiday in early October that covered about 1,300-kilometres. I was not far and we took several breaks. In fact, we stopped and stayed in different communities for a number of nights with no exact destination set for each day.
 
We had a general outline of the territory we wanted to see and the main cities we intended to visit but we did no other pre-planning. We did not book hotel rooms in advance and we did not make reservations for meals. You could say that we just winged it and that would be very close to accurate as that was pretty much what we did.
 
However, I did take one precaution and Brenda took another.
 
I signed us up for on a two-year contract for a cellphone. We used to have one each several years ago and eventually got rid of them. For this holiday I just felt a little better with a communication device with us travelling on roads we had never been on before in places we had never seen. I just didn’t want to feel stranded should something happen.
 
I also had another reason for getting it. With our ongoing vending weekends out of town and the oncoming changes in weather for winter, I thought a cellphone would be a good idea. Plus, when Brenda travels out of town on her own, I wanted her to have something she could use if she encountered something that was out of the ordinary.
 
As for Brenda’s precaution, she arranged for someone to stay at our place when we were away. Typically we have neighbours watch our home and have someone stop by frequently. This time around we knew someone who could actually ‘camp’ in our yard with their recreational camper and we provided water and power hook ups to sweeten the deal.
 
It was nice to leave the yard and have no worries. It was also nice to travel a couple hundred kilometers per day taking our time and letting God more or less guide us to our next stop. When we decided on staying the night, it was my job to check-in and as we never pre-booked, we did not encounter anywhere there was no vacancy.
 
In fact, that was one of the most amazing parts of our holiday. We did the same thing with our holiday in August 2016. We had an idea of where we were going but didn’t plan much beyond that. Both trips gave us many opportunities to meet new and interesting people as we explored new and interesting places.
 
Speaking of interesting places, both Brenda and I like to stop at various sites along the highway. Our last trip was a great example of this. We stopped so many times it really extended to time it took for us to travel from one place to another. We found some interesting spots along the way including giant piles of rocks of coal and quiet viewpoints.
 
We discovered stunning views from the side of the highway along with curious stops of interest. We learned more about railway history and the ecology of the Western Toad. We wandered streets with century old buildings and several other historic landmarks. And I know none of it would have been possible if God was not riding along as our co-pilot.