eptivity

Once upon a time, Cenaida and I embarked on Best Road Trip Ever 2006. This road trip took us down Highway 101, through the redwoods, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to the campus of UC Davis, and past Crater Lake. On the first or second day of this trip, Cenaida expressed her interest in stopping at McDonald’s for a tasty breakfast burrito. Through no fault of my own, we never managed to make it to the illustrious establishment before they stopped serving breakfast, including this one time when it was the last day of the trip, we had 10 minutes to spare, and I missed the turn that Cenaida didn’t tell me about even though I told her that I didn’t know where it was.

And she’s been mad at me ever since.

So our first morning in Canada, Hope, BC, made all her dreams come true:

Except for the part where, I hear, the breakfast burrito was disgusting. I’m only sorry that Cenaida wasted an entire year of her life being mad at me.

Later that morning, we were Being Spontaneous and paid $9 Canadian to enter the land of the Crazy Creek Waterfall.
Suspension bridge: sweet
Waterfall: I’ve seen better
Conclusion: not worth $9 Canadian

This was better:

And also free.

We stopped in a touristy town, where something happened. It all started when I stepped out of the book store to make a phone call. There I was, minding my own business, standing on the sidewalk with my back to the store window. Suddenly, two people I can only presume were Canadian crossed paths with another person they recognized and who I can also only presume was Canadian as well.

These presumed Canadians stopped to chat in the Weirdest Canadian Configuration Ever: one stood directly to my left, one stood directly to my right, and one stood directly in front of me.

Miles of sidewalk on either side of me, on both sides of the street, and beyond that, many more miles of Canadian wilderness in which to hold as many lengthy conversations with as many people as you want that don’t involve boxing me against the wall and talking over my own cellular telephone conversation that is costing me approximately $1 American per minute.

A few hours later, we pulled into that night’s campground, at Tunnel Mountain near Banff. The nice man at the campground registration assigned us our campsite. And then told us that there had recently been “a mess” of bears marauding about; were we afraid of them? One of us was, but she lied and said she wasn’t.

So this is where we slept:

Well, we slept in the tent on the bare patch of ground, anyway. Please note the small patch of forest that is all that separates us from the aforementioned mess o’ bears and also the prominent bear path leading directly to our campsite.

Fortunately for us, our two days on the road had taught us all that we needed to know to survive in bear country:
Our cooler was bearproof.
Our tent was bearproof.
In case it wasn’t bearproof, I made Cenaida sleep by the door so she would get eaten first.
As though a bear would ever have even tried to eat us; bears mainly eat berries, cows, fish, babies, dogs, the elderly, and boys.
None of which were we.
And there were plenty of noisy babies and dogs surrounding us at this particular campground.
And also Cenaida has mad bear negotiation skillz.

So we were not eaten that night either.

Second Day Observations
Many Canadians sleep in teeny tiny tents.
Some Canadians are mean.
Some Canadians are nice and let you use the washroom behind the door marked “private” in the game and hockey-jersey stores they own.
Most Canadians are nice in other ways.