Summer Adventures, part two

For the 3^rd year in a row, our family headed out to Clearwater, BC for some R&R. And we take our Rs pretty seriously over there … mostly by choice, but also by necessity. Clearwater is located in a beautiful part of interior BC, but it’s a small and sleepy kind of town. There are plenty of outdoor activities to be enjoyed, but not much else in the way of entertainment. So, we adjust our schedules accordingly: lots of swimming, some fishing, a little hiking. The kids watch cable TV at the motel – a luxury we don’t have at home – and I read. A lot. It’s heavenly, really.

Clearwater is on the edge of Wells Grey Provincial Park, and there are tons of great trails and scenic sights to be explored. My kids are very urban-conditioned, but they allowed themselves to be persuaded to leave the lake for a few hours and hike a teeny tiny bit. We saw the waterfalls again and I did some lichen-spotting, something I’ve been looking forward to since I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss.

I don’t love swimming, but I do love sitting by the lake with a good book and a cold drink, reading and watching the clouds go by. Dutch Lake is still beautifully clear and warm as last year, though its water levels have dropped a fair bit since our last visit. We spotted quite a lot of wildlife in and around the area: loons, ducks, Canada geese, bald eagles, hawks, turtles, and even a black bear. Yep, just a black bear, sauntering down a side road next to the lake one fine morning. Luckily, we were in the car at the time, but it certainly got out attention. As it turns out, a few days later, other guests at our motel had a much closer encounter with the (same?) bear down at the motel’s private lake beach area. (They were shaken but fine.) Our trip was much less eventful, though my daughter did get stung by a wasp. (She was also shaken but fine.)

This year, I put zero effort into my vacation clothes packing. I have a small capsule set aside specifically for our BC trip, and I only need to add a few warmer pieces and underclothing, and I’m basically packed. Since I know our trips mostly involve outdoor activities and zero likelihood of any need to dress up, what I pack isn’t very exciting; it’s comfortable and suitable for layering – some days can be chilly, others hot as Hades, so I need things that are weather-versatile. Most of the pieces in my vacation capsule are things I wore on the same trip last year, so I know they work. I must say that having a pre-planned capsule makes my life a lot easier when trying to get the family ready for the trip. None of my vacation outfits were the least bit interesting, from a fashion perspective, but they did the job. And I was very very very happy to be reunited with my closet when I got back home.

I was far more excited about my vacation reading and spent a lot more time curating my reading list for the trip than I did my outfits. For a vacation like this, where chilling is the main priority, I always pack books from my favourite genres: mystery, history, and biography. Picking the right number of books is also important; running out of reading material before the end of the vacation is the wooooorst. As I knew I’d have a lot of downtime – and I’m a fast reader – I decided to take one book for each non-travel day, plus one extra. I ended up reading 5 and starting the 6^th (which I finished once I got home), so that worked out well.

I also think I had the right mix of books and lucked out with the selection; they were all quite good! I had been saving the latest Richard Osman book for a while, specifically for this trip – I read the previous one in the series on our BC trip last year, so it seemed fitting.

All told, another great family vacation in the books! This trip solidified the fact that our kids are now seasoned car travelers, and that we love road trip adventures far more than air travel (something that wasn’t the case when the kids were younger). We’ve started making some plans for shorter road trips next summer – in addition to one more Clearwater visit, I think – to explore small-town Alberta. As we prepare to close the chapter on summer 2023, we have something to look forward to.