On the Road Again 2012 #8

One of my little pleasures of travelling is, after a long day, to find a restaurant where the locals hang out so that along with my beer and a meal I can observe the interactions. Sometimes I am lucky enough to find a greasy spoon and have the chance to have a few words with the waitress, other times it is a Boston Pizza or a Casey's that I sit in. Either way it provides a brief window into that community. I usually am able after my meal to go for a walk around the town and see what kind of stores line the main streets, to see who if anyone who is hanging around the corners. I have walked down the streets of towns from Massey, Ontario to Tofino on Vancouver Island; I have paused at those corners and occasionally walked down darkened alleys in Sault St. Marie, Calgary,Winnipeg or Vancouver; and I have walked along quiet residential streets in towns as far apart as Thunder Bay and Nanaimo all because I am curious about the people who live in those places. My note books and my memory banks are full of those observations. I will never use them but it gives me pleasure to collect them. I did not do any of those things in Peace River, Alberta.

The motel was nice. The room was perhaps the largest I have ever been in. The king size bed was far more than I needed for a single nights sleep alone. I think a family of four or five could have fitted quite nicely on to the bed. It felt overly large and almost uncomfortable. When I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and realized that I my very expensive mouth guard (that the dentist says that I need to wear to save my even more expensive gold crowns from shattering) had fallen out and was lost somewhere in the bed, the bed took on enormous dimensions.

The room itself was also over sized with an electric fireplace in one corner and enough room left over to teach someone ballroom dancing. The television was so far away from the bed that I had to turn up the volume to hear the weather forecast for the next day.

Between the size of the bed and the room in general, one has to wonder who would expect that much space. Surely not the guys on the rigs. Motel accommodation is apparently in short supply and I was told that the big exploration companies front the money to the motel chains so that they can build more, and bigger motels for the workers.

There was no restaurant that I could find that was open except the Chinese restaurant attached to the motel. There were no none meat dishes on the menu except for rice so I thanked them kindly and left. I walked across the highway to a grocery that was open 24 hours and bought a egg salad sandwich and bag of chips and an apple juice. Not quite the meal I was planning on. There may have been, in fact I am quite sure that there were other restaurants in town, I just could not figure out how to find the centre of the down.

Except for the search for mouth guard and the fact that it was a lot brighter at 12:00 than I am use to - I slept well.

p.s. it may have been the best bought egg salad sandwich I have ever had and I don't think it is because I was really hungry not having eaten all day.