It’s you and your wife in a hired car in a foreign country. Your bags are in the trunk and a road map on the lap of the passenger. No hotel precooked at the next location and no healthy alternative restaurant or artisan coffee shop spotted anywhere in the proximity of the planned route. The only plan is an estimated area and a timeframe for when you start looking for vacancies and a place for supper.
Wow. Frightening?
Doing a road-trip in the 21st century way is very convenient and easy. GPS, Trip Advisor & Google knows it all, or at least can find it for you as you go ahead. Hotel booking apps can help you find and reserve accommodation. It is convenient, efficient and desirable because you can get exactly what and where you want and plan ahead when to arrive and where to eat when. However, there is not many surprises or challenges doing that, really. It doesn’t put you in too much discomfort because you can always just google the route, the best hotel, cafe or restaurant or whatever else you could need nearby your current location.
So therefore, after nearly two weeks of our roadtrip through the eastern Maritime provinces of Canada the very convenient 21st century way, we challenged ourselves to one day doing road trip 70ties style. No google help on the route. Just a map and the signs of the times, or in this case, on the road advertising various diners, coffee shops, motels, hotels or be it B&B’s.
Not too many years ago this was the only way to do a road trip and I have done so myself, so why on earth feel nervous?
Yes, we were kind of nervous. We, are my wife and myself if you need to know, and you probably do if you are reading this and have no clue who “we” are.
I’ve done plenty road-trips myself in the 80ties, the 90ties and also at the very beginning of the 21st century and this without GPS, Trip Advisor and Google knows everything. In the 80ties it was by luck and some preplanning and with the use of maps you could buy at filling stations or it could be by asking around. Meals was mainly either cheap sandwiches or at the “rast platze” at the German autobahns and French ditto. Or it was along the less busy roads in idyllic Spanish villages and towns, Chech republic hostinec’s or whatever the different eateries are called in various European countries. Sometimes the help was in form of a “Lonely Planet” book or any German or Danish equivalent. Somehow I always got from where I started to where I wanted to go. All that in between was just always the interesting “unknown” that made - and still makes - road trips so fascinating and enriching. Pure adventure. There has always been someone else along on these road trips friends or girlfriends and we have always shared the driving and the navigating and map counselling between us.
However, this time I was with my wife - as I said - and to tell you the truth, she does not know how to read a map. It is fine as long as the GPS or Google kicks in and tells where to go right and left and what to follow and look for, but she cannot navigate and direct me with an old fashioned map on her lab. Ok, I could read the map then? Well, I could - and would, but my wife doesn’t drive either, so there is no other way.
So why then do this at all, you might ask. Well, simply for the challenge and the excitement of it. Just for the thrill of not knowing what was next and where we would go to bed and what to expect as the next breakfast.
And so we set off in the direction of the Quebec province from Miramichi(http://www. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miramichi,NewBrunswick) in New Brunswick on a Wednesday morning. Without a map, as we thought we could get one from a filling station later when we got closer and needed it to find smaller roads and towns.
And a motel or something similar. And then walk in and ask for a room. Just like in the movies, older movies that is.
How did it go then? Well, quite good all the way up the highway and until we reached the area we targeted as the place to find nutrition and shelter. We needed a map. We stopped at a gas station and went to look for this map. But do you think they sell maps anymore at filling stations?
No.
And why should they, I mean with GPS & Google and all that, who would ask for one, ever?
So when we asked, the girl at the counter just looked at us. “You can get one in the town at the info office” she said and kind of showed the direction with her eyes and a head movement. That way.
In our car again and we drove that way the girl in the shop had indicated. Towards a city. Dalhousie it was called. We got there and drove to the centre of it. Not too much of a centre. The city wasn’t really a city, more a town and I just followed my instincts and went the way the most cars came from. Often you can find the most interesting places in unknown towns and cities doing that. Smaller towns and cities that is.
At the end of a straight road running parallel to the water we went to the left and soon found us self at the building just outside a huge camping lot. Like in many small towns there was free parking spaces just outside. Not like in Hong Kong, Quebec City or Toronto where you never can find parking or if you can, it costs the green out of your nose to park there for an hour.
Wait a minute, this just made me think why on earth did I mention this about parking and how difficult it is in cities. In fact, I hate cars in cities and damn them far far away when I see them drive around to find parking or double park or park on the pavements and what do I know.
However, when you are a driver yourself, you kinda change, don’t you.
Anyway, just so you know I normally take that approach to cars and drivers and think cars should be banned from city centres and such. Ohh, here I reach a dead end and let us continue where I lost the plot.
Plot. We’d found this car park outside the camping office which at the same time was the tourist information centre. Outside on a bench some teenagers eating ice cream.
In side the building was a tourist office with a lot of brochures and maps on the walls and small pamphlets with various information about places and venues and other kind of things to do and there was advertising for various B&B’s, Inn’s and dinners in the area. A lady in there was surrounded. Y a group of ladies eating ice cream and holding a huge dog on a leash.
We just had a look around. The ice cream ladies and the dog was more interesting than two bloody tourist looking at pamphlets and brochures. All the while we were really trying to find a map of the area to help us get in the right direction towards Quebec province and find a roof over our heads for the night.
In a magazine like brochure about the area we managed to find some sort of map, however it just showed the town we were in at the very top left of the map and we needed a bit more to the north and in to the next province. Quebec. They had no other. This had to do. Still we were not looking at our devices even they were burning on our pockets. A principe is a principe and like the saying goes: “if you snooze you loose” and we do not do that on our holidays. Snooze I mean. Mostly because we don’t need to snooze because we sleep as long as we like anyway. It’s only in the real world we loose, but there you need it to try to show who’s in charge.
To be continued...
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