Drive, Sleep, Cry...& Dirt. Lots of Dirt.

An intro to my 40th birthday road-trip through the Western USA

My husband Rob and I have been threatening to do a massive road trip through the western USA since we first moved to Alberta in 2012. That was 13 years ago. Thirteen. We've since bought land, built a life, watched our country lose its mind—but Montana? Still a pipe dream. Why are humans like this? Why do we fail to prioritze the things we really, really want to do year after year? Why did we wait until we had exhausted every last national park campground in a 20000㎢ mountainous area before we finally said, “Screw it, let’s go to America”? We had Banffed, Jaspered, and Kananaskised ourselves to death over the years, and while those world-class locations are gorgeous, and even emotional at times with their jaw-dropping jagged peaks and seemingly infinite vastness, they had started to feel more like crowded malls with scenic backdrops. In other words, hundreds of thousands of humans jammed up in road ways, parking lots and tourist traps became a wee bit of a buzz kill. Still beautiful—but also suffocating. Like nature was hosting a Costco free sample day—every day—from June to September. We became like mountain customers sneaking along the back aisles, trying to avoid the hoards of people sampling the latest Kirkland dip.

2020 was our last real hoorah in the big parks. With international tourism basically banned, the park towns were begging Albertans to come visit like a desperate ex texting at 2am.

“…You up?”

Hell yeah we were up. The parks were nearly empty — in the summer! And honestly? It was the best. We camped over 30 nights that season, and bounced around between some of the best hotels. I’ll never forget one trip where Banff was so empty we felt like the only people there. We stayed at the Fairmont for pennies on the dollar. It was peaceful, eerie, magical—and wildly unfair to the small business owners whose livelihoods were crumbling in real time. It was the Canadian Rocky Mountain pandemic paradox: Personal space and economic ruin. We did our best to support them—booked the hotels, ate the food, even signed up for a rafting trip on the Bow River. We didn’t realize we’d get a private rafting tour of the Bow though, until it was time to depart and we were the only two dorks stuffed into life jackets on the raft built for 25. Off we went with our two guides. Yes, two. The guy paddling was being trained — a Banff Taxi driver picking up a new skill because he had no tourists to shuttle around town and he needed more work. Taxis & rafts. Same same, right? The second was a seasoned river cowboy - ponytail and all. He offered us trail mix and fruit from his backpack which was a refreshing change from the fear that was growing in society that we were all somehow going to kill one another with a virus that had cold & flu-like symptoms, but also had no symptoms. River Fabio let us in on some of the local travel secrets, which we vowed never to share. The taxi driver-turned-rafting guide told us if he missed our drop-off point on the river bank, he’d cook us steak at his house in Canmore, because eventually that where the river would flow us to. I was half-hoping he’d miss it. He didn’t, and we got off our raft and boarded the school bus back to Banff - alone.

The following summer, we moved to a cabin in the woods. Literally. We had been living between Calgary & Airdrie up until that point. While we were fortunate to live in Alberta during 2020 with limited restrictions in contrast to the rest of Canada, we could still sense the weirdness growing. The timing was more than right for us to carve out a little slice of our own heaven on a chunk of dirt. What we didn’t anticipate though, was that rural living would crush our desire to “get away,” because well—we already had. Suddenly, we were living the way that we had once looked forward to as a weekend trip. Turns out we weren’t addicted to camping. We were addicted to peace and quiet. So the once-thrilling idea of scrambling for a campsite in a jam-packed national park quickly lost its appeal. Instead, for our getaways we found ourselves heading deeper into crown land, where the bears are real, the fires are wild, and the cell reception is non-existent. Far from glamping and more like … surviving for fun.

Anyway, I share all of this because it’s like we had to run out of things to do in our own backyard before finally pulling the trigger on our bigger dream of a western America road trip, on a route less travelled, no less. How strange, in reflection. Or maybe it was because the government was warning us not to go to America that made us look at each other this past winter and say, “Let’s go to America.” (If reverse psychology ever had a poster child—it’s me.) While headlines buzzed about Canadian citizens being detained at the U.S. border and treated like enemies of war, we started mapping out our journey like a pair of defiant pioneers. We know propaganda when we see it. Yawn. Same old playbook.

Rob took on the noble quest of finding a rooftop tent for our Bronco—a task made trickier by the fact the Bronco’s roof is basically a steel frame, not a full steel box. As the roof and doors can all be removed, it meant limited weight support compared to regular vehicles. And then there’s us: I’m nearly 6 feet tall and Rob’s built like an oak whiskey barrel with limbs. So the tent had to be lightweight but capable of holding two humans who aren’t exactly small stick figures. When he finally found one that worked, we rejoiced—right before accepting the reality that sleeping together in it would be like cramming two bratwursts into one snack-sized ziplock bag. Very romantic. Very cozy.

Packing for this trip was another saga. Forecasts from Montana to Arizona and everywhere in between ranged from -4°C to +30°C, so we needed to prepare for all four seasons, and possibly a post-election civil war. Rain, snow, heat waves, wildfires, rattlesnakes, scorpions, & media Kool-aid drinking democrats—we were ready. Rob packed his survival bag (because of course he did), and I made sure our cast iron cookware was ready to go - the essentials. The one thing we did forget though, were the cooking gloves for the fire, which we’d later regret. But otherwise, we nailed it, aside from having to buy consumables like food, water, beer & firewood along the way.

And so, on April 28th—also the day of Canada’s federal election—also the day before my 40th birthday, we packed up the Bronco and made our escape. No regrets. No apologies. No fear or being detained by border officers. Just 2 weeks on the open road and an opportune time for an existential crisis. There’s nothing quite like the desert and no cell signal to free up the mind and unearth some deeply rooted fears.

First up: Montana.

Stay tuned. And yes, I’ll share our full packing list and travel routes in another post, because I’m not gatekeeping this level of road trip mastery — considering most mornings we woke up, we had no clue where we’d be sleeping that night.

Sarah

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