Weekly Update: Jul 18, 2018

I’m going to cheat just a bit this week, since Wednesday is the day my trailer has a date at the beauty parlor all day (aka the service department at Safari Condo), where all sorts of things will be happening to the inside and the outside of Breeze. Not sure where I will be while this is going on, so I’ll just summarize the week minus a day 🙂

When y’all left me last week, I was at a riverside campground in the countryside southeast of Quebec City. This place, La Jolie Rochelle, was wonderful and we filled the riverside spots with many, many Altos.

From there, we made a caravan to the Grand Rassemblement, an event sponsored by Safari Condo to celebrate their 20th anniversary of making van conversions and aluminum trailers.

It was a crazy three days, and so much fun. Imagine a big event center (or say a really large Walmart parking lot). Now put 250 vans and 100 trailers like mine in it. Yeah. That. But it actually worked really well, and the pink-shirted volunteer crew made sure everyone got parked and secured with minimal wait times.

There were presentations (come on, it wouldn’t really be a business anything without at least one powerpoint, am I right?!), beer tasting, a Beatles tribute band, a great dinner, and so much hanging out and having great conversations with fellow Alto owners from all over the US and Canada that I had only known online before this weekend and those I had met at previous Alto rallies. And some crazy Safari Condo guys (the three in this photo were my pickup day guides).

One of the best moments was catching up with Denis, the person at Safari Condo who sold me my trailer and made sure I got what worked for me. This is us, on pickup day and then 800+ days later, both of us now retired and enjoying the traveling life (he and his partner have a Safari Condo van).

Sunday, we wrapped it up and headed over to a private campground for full hookups (electric, water, and sewer connections) and a respite from the massive socializing scene that was the weekend. I was feeling a bit oversocialized at this point, being used to solo traveling and not camping with 699 of my closest friends. This was a reflected shot of the row I was camping in, I’m the second to the right and it gives you an idea of how packed in we were.

Monday was a complete down day: reading, cleaning up the trailer a bit, and getting things ready for the service crew to be able to access places without all my crap getting in their way. It ended with salads and ice cream bars, both to combat the 90F we had. I had kind of thought that Canada was a cold-ish country even in summer, but I was wrong. I’ve used the air conditioning in my trailer several times this trip, and appreciated it every time.

This place, out in the countryside about five minutes from the Safari Condo factory, is beautiful and quiet and I kind of wish I could hang out here a bit longer.

Tuesday? Rain day and also “catch up on all the website stuff” day while I have solid wifi. I’ve even finished my Nova Scotia travel pages (aimed at those who want to know where I camped and what services and attractions are nearby).

So the rest of my Canada trip is a factory day and then one last camping weekend before crossing back into the US. It’s been one of those trips that seems to have gone by so fast and yet felt like so long a time to be here. Maybe that’s the mark of staying long enough in a country to begin to understand it. Don’t worry, Canada, I’ll be back.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman.

Douglas Adams