The long drive
If you could erase the few kilometres through Jasper, unsuccessfully trying to find a Tim Hortons drive-thru, the feeling over two full days and 2,000 kilometres was an overwhelming one of loneliness, but perfect cosiness.
I love to drive, so much, which definitely hasn’t always been the case, but that’s a long story for another time.
Every single drive south and back north over all of the years I’ve lived here, I’ve enjoyed immensely, but there was something so different about this drive home. It felt especially lonely and isolated, in a really good and comforting way. Many drive-thru coffees brought me such warmth and enjoyment, and random snacks of licorice, apples, hashbrowns and McDonald’s apple pies (I’m not ashamed) were all part of this comfort.
It’s difficult to describe pulling into a gas station and stepping outside instantly shivering after hours of being nestled into a heated seat. But that crispness and fresh air, that’s a deep breath and awkward stretch moment truly to savour before getting right back in my favourite ever car, fully fuelled up and ready to continue on. There’s something really beautiful in those brief moments.
It becomes like a home for those days of driving, perhaps that’s just it, and for this complete homebody, that is so, so important and perfect.
At the end of 14 hours on my first day, I pulled into a quiet hotel for the night after chasing a magnificent sunset right into the deepest twilight before total darkness. I unloaded, quickly, two boxes of tropical plants, a couple very full IKEA blue bags, my suitcase, and a few other random things before making one last trip out for the night.
This whole day was with a light-hearted but meaningful-to-me time crunch, because KFC closed at 10pm.
Part of being happy is knowing what you love, what feels good, and for me at the end of all this in a state of total exhaustion, the spicy plant-based KFC chicken sandwich meal in front of the fireplace in my dimly lit room, watching HGTV, as frivolous as that seems, made me really happy.
I know that I don’t have any photos to give even faint justice to just how beautiful the fall colours were all the way up to Yellowknife, or any words to convey that magic of feeling gentle sunrise and sunset light hitting my face in the moments between mountains or forests, but it was all unforgettable, and all of this was just another tip of the roadtrip iceberg for me.
