Driveway Camping for Canadian Thanksgiving
/My Mom’s Driveway…
October 10 - 12, 2020
For a family that doesn’t all live close together, the pandemic made face to face meetups pretty much impossible. My mom was able to do porch visits with my older sister (they live very close) and occasionally with my younger sister (she’s about 90 minutes away), but we’re over 4 hours away and the drive there and back in one day is a little much.
So, when we learned that we could camp in my mom’s driveway, we decided to try it out for the long Thanksgiving weekend!
By October in Ontario, the days are getting quite a bit shorter and leaving after work for a nearly 5 hour drive didn’t seem appealing. Rather than pull our Holly much of the way after dark, we decided to pack up and leave first thing in the morning. We hitched up early Friday evening, finished packing up as much as we could and parked on the street in front of our house.
We aren’t really “get up and go early” kind of people, so by the time we had showered, eaten breakfast and made the coffee, it was about 9:30 am. We were pulling off the street just after that, which is a very respectable time for us!
The drive on highway 7 was pretty with all of the leaves changing and the time passed quickly. We stopped briefly for Daisy to stretch her legs and for us to fill up with gas. We arrived early in the afternoon and got Holly backed into my mom’s fairly steep driveway just as it was starting to rain.
My mom has a double car garage, which she cleared out and made into an outdoor sitting area, so that we could all gather, keep our distance and stay dry. Despite wanting it to be warmer, it was a little bit cool for shorts (although the guys seemed not to notice the chill!). Later on, when the sun was going down and it became cooler, we brought out the blankets to stay warm.
Thanksgiving weekend is not only a holiday weekend, it’s also when we celebrate my mom’s birthday, since it always falls right around the same time. My younger sister and her family live in Burlington and they made the drive to Uxbridge for the day to celebrate my mom. My niece made a delicious pumpkin cake for us all to share!
Happy Birthday Mom!
We ordered supper from Wixan’s Bridge and ate with Mom in the garage - we had to be quick as it was hard to keep the food hot! After we ate, it was dark and pretty chilly, so we parted ways for the evening. Chris and I turned on the heat in the trailer and then watched a movie on Netflix before going to bed.
For some reason, Daisy was up and unsettled in the middle of the night and I found myself taking her for a walk around the block at 3 am!
We got up in the morning a bit late and I texted mom to meet me in the garage for coffee. We wrapped ourselves up in our blankets and put on our mitts just so that we could enjoy each other’s company! Afterwards, we had breakfast and it started to warm up outside. The day may have been a bit cool, but the sun was out and the sky was bright blue!
Daisy sunbathing on the warm pavement
having coffee with mom in the afternoon sun
Wanting to enjoy the beautiful, sunny day and knowing that Daisy needed a long walk, we headed to the Quaker Commons with my brother-in-law Peter and one of his dogs. The colour of the trees against the deep blue sky was absolutely gorgeous!
Not our typical Thanksgiving dinner this year, since turkey and all of the fixings are hard to cook in a microwave in a trailer on my mom’s driveway! Actually, someone could have cooked it, but it was just a lot of trouble to go through when things were still so restricted. Instead, we shared our chicken fajitas with my mom in her garage.
After supper, we walked over to my sister’s house and sat in their backyard fire pit area while my brother-in-law strummed on his guitar. Such a pleasant, but cold (everyone had a blanket and I even had my winter hat and mitts on!) evening!
My mom had a few things that she needed help with, so on Sunday morning, we worked on sorting them out over coffee. Shortly after noon, we packed up, hitched up and headed towards home. But not before one last photo of my mom and I! We decided that if we wore a mask, we were both comfortable hugging. It was really wonderful to be able to hug my mom after so many months!
Since we were driveway camping, we stopped at the Flying J in Napanee to dump our tanks - this was our last camping of the season and we needed our tanks to be empty to winterize Holly. It was our first time dumping outside of a park that we were staying at but it was a pretty good experience for $10.00. Before setting up, you need to pay and get a code to enter so that you can open the valve. One of the things I was missing was a hose to flush our black tank, but the guy next to me kindly offered to loan me his and I was able to flush the black tank after all. Success!
One of the other things we learned on this trip (three years in and STILL learning!), was that we should let Holly roll up a little on the blocks when we’re unhitching on a downhill. We had a bit of a scare when the trailer rolled forward a teeny bit (although it seemed like a lot!) as we were hitching up! My mom’s driveway is on even more of a slant than ours is. Once we discovered why it happened, we’ll be able to adjust things on future trips.
Ottawa - Uxbridge - Napanee - Ottawa
Towing: 786 km
Driving: 0 km
Battery: Plugged in to my mom’s house
Fresh Water Tank: About 80% used (not a huge deal, since we could easily get water from my mom’s house)
Combined Grey/Black Water Tank: Almost Full!
There was only enough space in my mom’s driveway for our trailer, so even though we didn’t need the car at all, we still unhitched and left it in her visitors parking area.
