Oh Canada!

My first trip into Canada wasn’t until I was 20. Somehow, I just hadn’t made it up there. My parents were going in that direction over spring break. It included a visit with my grandfather, but we would end up going to Banff and seeing the Canadian Rockies. I offered to ride along. This trip had a variety of difficulties.

Our first trouble was between Mom, Dad and the driving. In our family, Mom does the driving, Dad navigates and I keep to myself in the back. However, there seemed to be a breakdown in communication at some point. I’m usually under headphones and not paying attention to them. I was alerted to the problem when I started to hear them in the back.

My Mom drove a 2004 GMC Sierra 1/2 pickup truck. It was loud, so there was yelling involved. I took off my headphones to figure out what was wrong. My parents aren’t typically the yelling type. Apparently, some directions had gone wrong. Now you have to understand that often while we are tourists we try not to act like tourists, and my Mom does not countenance driving like a tourist. To quiet things down, I volunteered to navigate. We must have been in Montana, which required some advanced navigation. I did not do very well, and soon things broke down that way too.

This is when I discovered what the issue was about. Mom apparently had been getting a little scary with the driving, and my poor Dad couldn’t take it anymore. So then, we really switched these things up, and I ended up driving with Dad on navigation and Mom in the back. Now, it’s important to note that my Mom did not…