Page 26 of The Trip of a Lifetime

‘I think I’d feel really vulnerable on the side of the road,’ she said.

‘We can go off road a bit into the woods then,’ I suggested.

‘Oh God, that sounds worse,’ she said, and I sighed.

‘Let’s not worry about that now. We have over 900 kilometres to cover before we need to make that decision. And even if we don’t get that far today, Jasper is only one place en route. We can just stop when we’ve had enough.’

The roads were wide, long and fairly straight in places and it was easy to cover a lot of ground quickly. And we had a lot of ground to cover, that was for sure. Mountains and trees and lakes were our constant view as we travelled. We marvelled at the beauty of the landscape for a while and then fell silent. I would never get bored of the view but there were only so many ways you could gush over it.

Noah told us a little about his life living just outside London with his wife and their daughter. She was in primary school and he missed her terribly.

‘I’ve never been away from them for so long before. We’ve been Zoom calling a lot but to see my daughter’s little face and hear her voice almost makes it harder. Who knew that parenting meant traversing such an emotional landscape,’ he said with a wry smile, but then he caught my eye and must have thought about what he’d said because he added, very quickly and almost apologetically, ‘Of course, I realise how lucky I am. I’m in no way complaining.’

We stopped for a lunch of beans on buttered bread in a lay-by at the side of the road next to a beautiful expanse of lake. There were a couple of picnic tables and benches and nobody else around. We had a gas bottle to heat up a saucepan but there wasn’t electricity for the toaster. We used another pan to heat water for tea and settled down to eat and to enjoy the view.

It hadn’t been all that hot since we had arrived in Canada but that was fine for the travelling and dashing around we’d been doing. It was late May but there was still snow on the mountains and the evenings and mornings had been cold. Erin and I were both glad of the coats we’d brought with us and a couple of times I’d also pushed a pair of gloves onto my hands. We had yet to see any rain though, and with no easy way of getting a weather forecast, we remained blissfully unaware of any potential problems.

Cally turned up shortly after us with sandwiches and coffee for herself and Noah. I really wanted to ask her how the other contestants were doing but I didn’t because there was really only one person whose progress I was interested in and I had promised Erin I would focus on us and our race.

We set off again with Erin driving. She offered and I was happy to pass over the reins to her – well, the steering wheel. I settled back in the passenger seat and was a little embarrassed to realise I’d nodded off. I woke to the sound of Erin and Noah discussing his hobby of speed puzzling. I thought I must still be asleep and dreaming but no, Noah, it turned out, was on a team of jigsaw puzzlers and had competed in an international competition in Paris.

‘That is amazing,’ Erin was saying. ‘I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I haven’t done a jigsaw for ages but I love how relaxed I feel when I’m doing one.’

‘Believe me, there’s nothing relaxing about speed puzzling. It’s actually quite stressful in the moment but the adrenaline propels you to keep going. I love it and my teammates are such great puzzlers.’

‘What did I miss?’ I asked, having decided not to pretend I hadn’t been asleep. What was the point? I wouldn’t be fooling anyone and I was sure that Noah had footage of me with my head lolling.

‘About 200 kilometres,’ Erin said, ‘and that we have a champion jigsaw puzzler with us.’

‘Not a champion,’ Noah said. ‘Not yet anyway, but we’re working on it. We’re going to the world championships in Spain in September. We have a lot to do between now and then.’

It was a world I knew little about but that made me all the more fascinated and I asked him about his best times compared to the current world’s fastest puzzlers. To be honest I wasn’t personally into puzzles of any kind but Noah talking passionately about what he loved was very compelling. It also sounded like, with some luck, he might find himself close to the podium at his next event.

‘So, you’ve been practising puzzles on this trip?’ Erin asked him. ‘I knew I’d seen you in Vancouver.’

‘I’m buying them as we go but I did also bring a couple. If you get bored at the next checkpoint you can always come and help me.’

‘I might just do that.’

Erin was happy driving, that was for sure, and I was happy in the passenger seat. Noah had his camera in the back but had also rigged up his other one in the front to catch all the angles. I could only imagine what an epic task it would be to edit all the footage, not just from me and Erin but from all the other contestants too. Cally was in sight behind us, following on and sending messages to Noah or phoning to make suggestions of beauty spots we could stop at for good footage.

The landscape wasn’t as mountainous on this stretch. Looking at the map, it was clear we were between mountain ranges but once we got closer to Jasper it would change again. And Erin was covering the miles quickly, so I could see that we could easily be in Jasper before nine. I began to look at possible places on our map to stop overnight. The trouble was that the map was so huge it wasn’t overly detailed. We would just have to wing it the nearer we got.

The best bit about having the motorhome was the on-board toilet and I asked Erin to pull over so I could use it. Cally’s car hovered a little way behind us and Noah got out to talk to her.

‘I was just letting Cally know about you planning to camp overnight outside Jasper, but you can’t.’

‘How come?’ I asked him.

‘They had a devastating wildfire in 2024 and there’s a park pass in place for anyone who isn’t just driving through. It means that if you want to stay overnight on the side of the road you have to buy that pass. But if you’re just driving through, you don’t. You can go to a proper campsite though, and there’s a big one just south of Jasper. Just don’t tell Cally I told you that.’

We were back in the mountains again now and closing in on Jasper. It was clear the closer we got that there had been a tragedy here. The once abundant trees were gone and the landscape was littered with leafless trunks. A lot of them had either been, or were being, cleared away.

‘Oh my God!’ Erin said as she drove.

There wasn’t much more we could say and Noah took some footage of the devastation which would no doubt be spliced together with a commentary about what had happened.

We found the campsite and managed to get a pitch. It felt right to be handing over some cash for a night’s stay here rather than parking for free. Our few dollars might help to contribute in some small way to the rejuvenation of the area. We drove around the site to find our pitch and it was clear where all the trees had once stood. There were stumps everywhere. We could only imagine how lush and secluded this area had been before the fire. Now it was an open site and you could see all the way up to the mountains.