My childhood vacations happened via the good old family Volvo.
We went all over western Canada and parts of the Pacific Northwest, finding new adventures every summer. But I remember hearing the phrase “you can’t get there from here” from my mom (our family navigator), once every trip.
That phrase meant it might look simple to get to that place we could see over yonder, but the road didn’t take us there. Sometimes it was due to a convoluted street layout, but often we never did figure out a way to reach our desired destination. We had to move on to another adventure.
I had a rueful laugh to myself this week as I remembered those occasions, given my present situation—stuck in Mission on the can’t-get-there-from-here side of the floodwaters.
What are the odds that all the roads leading to the Okanagan would be impassable at the same time? Good enough to bet on this week, I can tell you that much.
I am very fortunate, my stepdaughter lives in Mission with her hubbie and our baby granddaughter so we were not some of the folks left stranded. We stopped here before heading towards the mountains and hence avoided getting stuck in Hope. However, we are still here and it looks like the only way to get home for now is to go through the U.S. and then come back up north.
At first, we just thought of not getting home. We knew it would be a few days waiting so we went grocery shopping to account for the extra bodies being fed in one house. We walked into Superstore and I was immediately taken aback.
Some shelves were empty and others were being cleaned out by folks filling carts at a breakneck pace. I thought to myself, this is what it feels like to be a contestant on one of those Food Network competition shows—“Make a dish from canned tuna, black beans, barbecue marinade, dehydrated onions and jujubes… Go!”
We did manage to get most of the items we needed and we have not suffered, so again I count my lucky stars. Getting back to the Okanagan may be a different story, however.
We thought we’d drive home once the roads re-open, with our cooler full of fresh produce and some dairy items to tide us over. But if we travel into the U.S., we can’t take anything fresh (across the border).
I did ponder this concept. Why is it that we can buy produce from the U.S. in Canadian grocery stores (and they can do the same with Canadian produce) but we can’t carry anything across the border for personal consumption? What’s the difference between the large transport trucks full of cases of oranges from Florida and the two oranges I take for a travelling lunch as we drive south to detour on our way back home?
I look forward to getting home, even without the produce.
I am sure local stores will be ingenious enough to come up with alternative supply routes for many of their products. I am happy we have our winter tower garden to grow lettuce and herbs and our pantry is full of preserved fruit and veggies.
It turns out, being an old hippie has one more advantage (insert a grey-haired winky face here).
I hope our detour does get us from here to there. At least I know it’s not a road to nowhere.
There is just one more thing that keeps coming to mind. Does anyone else feel like perhaps we should stop asking “What’s next?”
Maybe the modern world is one where there is consistently some kind of crisis that affects us all. I might need to plan on expanding my pantry.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.