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Trip of a Lifetime: One Year Around North America

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This adventures happened in another lifetime. At least that’s how it feels.

Our children were growing up in Whitehorse, Yukon where Kees worked as Director of Parks. We had build our own dream home overlooking the Yukon river valley. One day an acquaintance walked in and announced that he wanted to buy our house. We told him it wasn’t for sale. No way. But he left us a blank cheque (yes, really!) and we started dreaming of traveling. Kees loved driving, we all loved exploring new places.

Kees was able to get a year off work, so if we sold our house, we would have an opportunity that might never come again: travel for a whole year. But did we want to backpack around the world with two young kids? We decided to buy a van (with a bench each per child) and a travel trailer with two single beds in the rear. That way our sons would have some stability while being on the go all the time - a stable place for their books and toys.

As a family we planned a route of wishes and dreams: south from the Yukon, circumnavigating most of the US and Canada, visiting national parks, historic sites and science centers. “And Disneyword!” the kids insisted.

In August we headed south, like snowbirds. Through BC, across the border - south east through Washington and Idaho. Along the way, we stopped to inspect how grain on the prairies grows, how the Hoover dam was build and to swim in lakes and climb hills.

In Yellowstone National Park we marvelled at geysers like Old Faithful and saw bisons, lava and bubbling sulphuric waters. We did have to rush though. Yellowstone was on fire that year!

We had enrolled the boys in BC/Yukon correspondence school and we each worked with one of them every morning, mailing their homework back. Kees had a full year off from work. I wrote regular columns on our life on the road for Yukon newspaper and sold the occasional magazine article about our travels with kids. I also said “I don’t like planning meals, buying groceries and cooking dinner. I want a break from daily routine, too.” So we each were responsible for a day of deciding what would be for dinner, buying it within our daily budget and cooking dinner. The others would do the dishes.

At home, I wouldn’t have had the time to teach the kids to cook. Now we did. We were also involved in their daily learning, which didn’t stop after we finished school work, and - not having grown up with North American history - we learned along with them. We obtained a National Park passport to collect stamps along the way.

In Salt Lake City, Utah we attended a Sunday morning performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and tried to float in the Salt Lake but it was too polluted. We headed south to some of the most incredible National Parks in the USA: Arches, Bryce and Zion.

By Christmas we had been through Death Valley, to Los Angeles and its Universal Studios. We spent Christmas Day listening to carols on the Colorado River in Arizona and climbed Picacho Peak on New Year’s Eve. During this special year we cooked turkey dinners, had Easter egg hunts and birthdays, all in our small trailer home.

Where do you stop for the night? And will there be a site available at the next campground? To make our travels easier, we bought a membership for Coast to Coast Campground Resorts. This US (and some Canada and Mexico) wide organization is comprised of hundreds of resorts where members can reserve and stay with relative ease for $10.- per night. The membership fee varies depending of the ‘home park’ where you join. Traveling for a full year this way saved us money but also gave us a safe place to stay. Most of these resorts are gated and were safe for our kids to roam on their own, ride their bikes and play pool or take part in workshops in the clubhouses.

Christmas on the Colorado River was a far cry from Christmas in the Yukon.

In Texas we visited the Alamo and spent a day at Mission Control in Houston. In New Orleans we listened to jazz on Bourbon Street, went down the Mississippi on a paddlewheeler and experienced Mardi Gras! We had time to play chess and boardgames with the kids. In resort clubhouses, we ended up giving talks and slideshows about the Yukon since many of the retired snowbirds staying there were interested in traveling north to Alaska in summer.

In Florida the kids had to learn the difference between Disney World aligators and real ones in the Everglades National Park. In one campground we asked if there were aligators to watch out for. In a southern drawl, the lady said “Nah honey, the ‘gators all hang out at the swimmers’ beach.”

Florida also offered a chance to see the Blue Jays play baseball during their winter training down south. And we saw the Harlem Globetrotters play their dynamic basketball! Our parents, the kids’ grandparents, visited us for winter in Florida. And we visited friends and family along the way in different states. Oh, and I kissed a walrus at Sea World.

Driving north along the east coast, we stood on the spot where the Wright brothers’ first flight took place and learned about even older history in colonial Williamsburg. In Washington DC we saw the White House, gazed up at Abraham Lincoln and paid our respects at Arlington Memorial. In New York we had the ironic incident of visiting the United Nations to teach the kids about world peace, then returning to our van to find out that it was broken into and éverything was stolen - from our lunches to the kids’ play dough to our camera.

Flower Pot Rocks, Fundy National Park

After driving north through the Maritime states, we crossed the border to Canada in June. In New Brunswick we got a Canada National Park pass and the boys became junior rangers. We spent time at Fundy with the world’s largest tidal difference and helped fire the canons at Halifax’s Citadel. After visiting PEI and the house where Anne of Green Gables is set, we took the ferry to Newfoundland, leaving our trailer on the mainland. There we learned about vikings who landed at L’Anse Aux Meadows and geology at Gros Morne National Park. More history lessons came to live at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia and on the ship that brought Jacques Cartier to the new world.

We loved strolling the cobblestone streets of Quebec City and listened to a choir in the majestic Notre Dame de Sacré Ceour.

Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City

Thanks to our many talks about the Yukon, we received an invitation for a private tour of Parliament Hill in Ottawa and were able to attend a session of Parliament. What an education, and not just for the kids. We celebrated Canada Day on Parliament Hill, under the shadow of the Peace Tower.

After seeing Niagara Falls, we headed west across Manitoba. We marvelled at the flatness of the prairies and visited the Royal Canadian Mint to see how our money was made (no free samples here!).

We saw dinosaur bones in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park and finally trekked back across the Rocky Mountains to BC. It was time to go back to school and work. What an adventure a year of travel brought us. We drove some 60,000 KM, visiting the majority of states and provinces and countless National Parks in both countries. It was the best investment in our kids we could have made. The only disadvantage? We never were able to stop traveling and exploring again…