Road-Tripping Summer ’24
Five years ago, to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, G and I decided on a three-week road trip up the coast of Maine and through the Canadian Maritimes, with stops in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island. I painstakingly planned each of those 21 days, filling our daily schedule with mileage, great lodging options, and tons of stops—and great food!—along the way. We covered 3000+ miles in our 2002 VW Eurovan campervan, and that trip has since become (at least for me) the trip-by-which-all-others-are-measured.
Unlike the last trip, I didn’t spend months researching, planning, booking, overthinking, changing plans, etc., this year’s trip. In fact, I wasn’t sure we’d even be taking a trip this summer. These past five years have been, well, challenging (shitshow was my first word choice, but I’m working on my reframing habits).
Just before our 2019 trip, G’s nearly 30-year-old transplanted kidney began to fail, and he was put on the transplant list for another. We left for our trip, knowing that once we returned, our lives would probably be consumed with the search for a kidney donor and, we hoped, a successful transplant. Both of those did indeed happen, amidst a global pandemic!!, and G had his second transplant in September 2021. Fast-forward to late fall 2023, and G was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’d be looking at 18 months of hormone therapy and nine weeks of daily radiation. Planning for our 25th was the least of our priorities—and, if I’m being honest, a little bit like tempting fate. We (okay, I) needed to focus on one day at a time.
Back when we were coming up with ideas for this trip, we considered just about everything: Newfoundland, Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, the Gaspésie region in eastern Québec, US national parks, a train trip, and I’m sure I’m forgetting many others. But given G’s diagnosis, timing of treatment, and overall uncertainty about his health and short- and longterm side effects, most of our trip ideas flew out the window. G’s radiation treatments would take him through the end of May, leaving us with some big questions specific to summer travel: Would he feel well enough to travel? To fly anywhere (his radiation oncologist suggested he wait six weeks before flying)? To be constantly on-the-go with some epic trip? Probably not.
And so, the Gaspé Peninsula kept coming up as perhaps our best option—we could drive the van, take our time, mix it up with camping and indoor stays, plan some walks/short hikes, be in nature, explore somewhere new, and focus on slower travel. While I had a general outline of the trip, I held off on really planning and booking anything until the last minute—luckily, that worked out, as late June is just the start to the summer season in the region.
This year’s trip is a two-week trip that will take us from our home in New Hampshire, up through eastern Québec and into and around the Gaspé Peninsula. From there, we’ll head back down into New Brunswick for an overnight before returning to PEI, the province that has absolutely stolen my heart (and G’s too, but perhaps to a lesser extent. But since I’m the trip planner…).
I’m not sure where/when/how the region first popped up on my radar—but probably when I had begun researching Newfoundland. Little did I know then that this region, not too far from home, would become the trip to celebrate not only our 25th but also to mark the end of G’s radiation course, and having come out of the last five years intact (more or less, given a few organs/glands/hormones). But I digress…
This time around, we’ll be in our campervan, but we’re on campervan 3.0 these days, a 2022 Pleasure-Way Tofino (yup, a lot has changed in these five years!). We’ll visit three provinces and six Canadian national and provincial parks. We’ll camp half the time, with indoor stays scattered throughout as well. Rather than dashing from place to place each day as we did in 2019, we’ll be spending a few days in each place this time and embracing a bit of a slower pace.
One thing’s for sure: we’ll be logging miles, seeing new places, revisiting some favorites, and making memories. G will be driving, I’ll be talking (a lot), taking photographs (a lot) and blogging (a lot).
Hope you’ll stay tuned and follow along!