Taking the house party on the road

I’m not particularly graceful, but when you have a houseful of people you learn to tiptoe as surely as a thief in an art gallery.

The good news is the folks scattered about the house included my mom, brother, younger sister, her husband and their son. Mattresses grew on floors and sleeping bags were like islands in the living room. You couldn’t ask for much more save for the presence of my older sister, who couldn’t get away to enjoy the ride.

If she had made the trip, though, I’m sure we could’ve found room for her in the woodshed or on the roof.

As it was, SgamFam West et al piled into a rented van and hit the road. My brother and mom had been to our house here before; my sister’s family had not, and I’m happy to report they were simply blown away by the Valley’s serenity, beauty and pace.

When you have to battle eight lanes of traffic and are stuck in a car for over an hour just to traverse 10 kilometres, small wonder it became a running joke whenever I said we had a bit of a journey ahead of us.

Take, for example, our visit to Hall’s Harbour. I suggested that we had to go up the mountain to get there and each of them looked at one another, clearly envisioning something Himalayan. When we arrived for a day of beachcombing, lobster lunch and a side trip to Huntington Point to see Charles Macdonald’s wonderful concrete houses, all of them thought it funny that the junket was only about 20 minutes from the house.

“Miles away,” my brother said later, shaking his head. “Way over there,” he added, stretching his arm in an exaggerated fashion over his head and pointing yonder.

What seems like a hike for folks here is nothing more than a jaunt for city slickers like them, and the proximity of one place to another recommends this region to people who have to go miles just to escape the clutches of urban sprawl.

The joke continued as we went to Berwick and enjoyed a fantastic meal at Kellock’s the night before they headed home. The journey to the Apple Capital was uneventful; the highway was pretty empty and they just couldn’t get over how we carried on about a trip to Berwick.

“You gotta use the highway for this one,” they chuckled.

“Hey! When you get used to a five-minute ride to work, this is a road trip,” I countered. They just laughed. Road trip. Right.

We rubbed shoulders, shared a few laughs, hung out, ate tons of food and it all went by so fast it seemed little more than a blur.

However, there’s a great feeling associated with that kind of close, quick contact when you realize there’s not a lot of time and plenty of ground to cover. We ate up the miles and memories hungrily and the week ended with all of us feeling full and satisfied.

That’s what vacation is all about, boys and girls, and in the annals of festive occasions I’d have to say their visit ranks as one of the best house parties of all time.