Trip Across the Border

Journal of Our Journesy - Chapter 15  

Oh, Canada

Our trip to Canada in 1974 was full of stories. I can hardly believe we were there for only four days. We drove north to Duluth and Grand Marais, Minnesota, on the first day, which was 296 miles. Dad had a goal of driving only 300 miles a day, so he was pleased with that. It's surprising to me that we got anywhere with that kind of mileage.

The second day, we traveled to Nipigon, Ontario, which was only 240 miles away. But halfway there is the Canadian city of Thunder Bay. For those of us living in northern Wisconsin, people used to talk about taking a trip to Thunder Bay as much as they did about taking a trip to Milwaukee.

That area of Canada is one of six places in the world that have large deposits of the semiprecious gem known as amethyst. At the time, purple was my favorite color, so I was thrilled to go rock hunting for this beautiful stone. I don't know if the whole point of the trip was to pick amethyst, but that's what we did a lot.

The campground where we stayed catered to many campers who had come to visit the amethyst fields. The manager spoke French as her first language, which was so exotic. In the morning, the day after we had taken in a large haul of the purple stone, Dad stopped in at the store in the campground office. The French woman had a collection of large amethysts. When Dad picked up one rock, about the size of my fist at the time, and asked her how much it was, she answered in a strong French accent, "five dolla."

It surprised us all that he actually paid the price. Looking it up online today, that would be over thirty-five dollars! What was Dad thinking?

Another thing we frequently did was walk along Lake Superior. At one such stop, somehow or other, Pat and I managed to climb back up from the beach through a bank of clay. Don't ask me what all this clay was doing there along the lake, but Pat and I decided that that was the place to ascend back to the parking lot. Mom was not happy with us, as our legs, shoes, and socks were completely covered in red mud.

Somehow, we managed to clean up enough to be allowed back into the camper, but we had to stop at the next wayside with running water to get properly scrubbed. We washed our legs under the ice-cold water from the hand pump until we passed inspection.

After Mom released us, I wandered off somewhere, either looking for more clay to get into or a free piece of amethyst. Pat and Mom used the facilities while Dad walked the dog. I came out of the woods where I had been roaming and decided I should go to the bathroom while I had the chance.       

When I exited the little girls' room, the camper was no longer parked where it had been. I looked around and saw it driving off!

My parents were about to leave me in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign country – okay, it was only Canada, which, at the time, you could get into without any ID. But still! I was only twelve years old! And I didn't know any French!

I began my sprint. And I don't run very fast; I never could, and usually, when I ran as fast as I could, I would trip and fall flat on my face. At least that didn't happen this time.

About the time I had finished in the bathroom, my parents had decided it was time to leave. They saw Pat jump into the camper, and since we were practically inseparable, they figured I was already in. Pat, at first, thought I was in the truck's cab, but it didn't take her long to realize I wasn't. She looked through the camper window and the truck window and saw Mom, Dad, and the dog, but not me. She started beating on the window, but with the truck window in between, Mom and Dad were oblivious to her panicked attempts to get their attention.      

At that moment, Pat made a crucial decision, possibly a life-altering decision in my regard. She broke the never-go-near-the-door-when-the-truck-is-moving rule. Bless her heart.

She flung the back door of the camper open just as Dad was stopping for the stop sign before turning onto the road. I had gotten to within five or six feet of the truck by then, so I easily leaped into the camper before Dad started to accelerate.

Before I could catch my breath, Pat started laughing hysterically. Within a minute, I was laughing right along with her.  

At the next break in the trip, when we told Mom and Dad what had happened, Dad rolled his eyes. Mom was unaccustomedly speechless, torn between yelling at us and hugging us. Dad, however, did install an intercom system between the truck and the camper as soon as we got home.

(I couldn't find any pictures from this trip. The one above is from when we were camping in northern Wisconsin in 2022 and took a drive one day up to Lake Superior, still over 200 miles away from Thunder Bay.)