We bought George on our first day in Canada. From the moment we saw him on Craigslist in our bedroom back in Sydney, we knew it was meant to be. I still remember the feeling when I saw him come around the corner toward us, it was like re-uniting with an old friend. He was the one.

We hit the road a few days later. A ticket to Vancouver Island and a blank three month calendar was all we had – and that’s exactly what we wanted. It takes time to find a certain rhythm on the road to make things work without a plan. Reading maps becomes an artform – looking for roads which lead to campsites that others may not find, looking for places which may provide some solitude.

Days passed into weeks and the odometer kept on clicking by. Finding that rhythm, we started to really immerse ourselves into life on the road. We didn’t have a working mobile, we didn’t keep much connection with what was happening in the outside world, except looking to see where the next turn should be. We took advice from anyone and everyone on where to go – often heeding it, sometimes questioning. Bellingham, Washington was where we heeded our best advice.

A guy working a checkout at a local grocery store told us about a fire lookout that is open to stay at, high on a ridge next to the massive volcano that is Mt Baker. After a bit of reconnaissance at the local parks centre, we headed out at 5am the next morning to find the lookout – and hopefully claim it for ourselves that night. It turned out to be a completely unreal 24 hours; hiking around the base of the massive Glaciers that hung off the peak, and looking out from our porch over the beautiful mountains of the North Cascades.

George turned out to be a little bit of a hot head, and had some issues with steep mountain passes. Not ideal when you’re in the Pacific Northwest. After a few situations where we ended up with coolant steaming through our dashboard, and many mechanics scratching their head as to why, we finally got a diagnosis from a small town mechanic running his own shop in the foothills of Mt Rainier. A new radiator and cooling system later he was running like a dream, and no pass became too steep.

We kept on running south for a while, chasing the last of the warm summer sun before we committed to the cold for the winter. I had lived previously in Oregon for a while, and had a few spots through the Cascades that I had wanted to check out since then. Oregon has a special kind of beauty to it – while it is not on the same majestic scale of places like Alberta and Washington, it is more real, and it makes you feel at home. We spent a couple of weeks exploring the waterfalls and mountains around Bend, and that proved to be some of our best time on the road.

October came and the north was calling, so we finally bit the bullet and headed back across the border, not stopping until we reached Jasper. I’m surprised we didn’t run off a highway at some point during that time – we didn’t spend much time actually looking at the pavement in front of us.  The landscapes of the majestic Canadian Rockies are something else, way beyond anything we had seen before. Soaking in hot springs underneath huge mountains, we decided that more time was needed here in the future.

Dusk came for our period on the road however; the days became short and cold, the ever inclement weather that is British Columbia in autumn was giving us a stern warning. It was time to settle down for the long winter months. George had been the perfect home for us, and while he may have been difficult at times, we loved him like we had known him our whole lives.

Elyse and I have now lived through winter in a small town called Nelson, BC. Home is where the heart is, and without much of an idea of our future we have decided to stay here for a while. There is just too much beauty in these mountains here to go looking for more yet, and boy are we excited for the next few months.

Words and images by Elliot Kramer