Steve Hicks is a car guy. He's also a hippie at heart. And he's always dreamed of cruising the back roads of North America with his wife Mary. Six years ago, he bought a 1973 VW Westfalia with plans to fix it up and deck it out for the road trip of a lifetime. But then a health scare brought that to a screeching halt.
“Preparing for this trip for three years, you have all kinds of dreams of how awesome it will be. You kind of overlook some of the stuff that actually happens. Like, we never ever dreamt that it would rain. In our dreams it was always sunny skies,” says Steve.
“We just do what we want to do; we don’t worry about anything - very stress free - and we’ve slowed down to the point that we don’t know how we’ll go back to work and deal with the daily influx of emails and schedules,” says Steve, an instructor at College of the North Atlantic. “We get up in the morning and wonder where are we going today? Wherever the road takes us. We are slow travellers, the bus don’t go very fast.” The camper’s maximum speed is 90 km/h, so in a typical day Steve drives for about five hours and covers anywhere from 75-200 km, depending on how often they stop.
They may be driving in the slow lane, but the Hickses have covered a lot of ground. They crossed the border into the United States last fall, driving through small villages and farms; taking in the autumn scenery in the New England States. These guys aren’t doing the tourist thing. They always take the road less travelled and they don’t stay in RV parks. “We stay in state parks, national forests, anywhere the bus blends in with the environment,” says Steve.
They finished the fall season cruising the narrow country roads through the Blue Range Mountains in Virginia, taking time to look in the rear view mirror as the autumn leaves tumbled behind the bus. “We plan a day at a time, and even our daily plans can change if we see something and we want to stop…” and even when they don’t want to stop. Like when the bus broke down while driving through a desolate, run-down town in Oklahoma and they needed a tow. They made friends and repairs, and were cruising again in no time.
The couple headed south to Big Sur, a sparsely populated, rugged stretch of the California coast surrounded by mountains and the Pacific Ocean - a dreamer's paradise. “To be one with Mother Earth was awesome. Mary took the opportunity to pick a few strings on her harp as the sun peeked through the early morning dew. It was quite moving. It was the first time since Tennessee that we had a forest around us. There are no words to describe the beauty of harp strings being plucked among the redwoods,” described Steve in his travel blog. It was the perfect romantic setting for the two lovebirds to take some time to connect with nature.
After more than five months on the move, the Hickses took a break and vacationed in Mexico. They headed north back into Canada this spring. Now, they’re making their way east and plan to be back home in Newfoundland sometime in the coming weeks. It’s been a winding road with plenty of unexpected twists, but Steve has his health and the love of his life, and he’s gaining new perspectives along the way. - By Amy Stoodley
