Umi Shōri
The East Coast Adventure
The begining of July was stressful and anxiety inducing. I arrived back in Canada on June 30th after my two months backpacking my way through Greece, Croatia, and Europe; and promptly headed straight to the bar with my luggage to meet up with some friends for some drinks. We partied again the next night on July 1st and after that the seriousness began.
For a long time I’ve wanted to road-trip to the East Coast but the biggest problem was that I didn’t have a car. Buying a car is difficult and doubly so for a specific model that’s no longer produced. I was convinced to get a Honda Element, made between 2003 and 2011, because it is an ideal shaped car for turning into a camper. It’s boxy shape, known in Japan as a K-car has removable back seats revealing an almost perfectly flat floor and vertical sides. It is possibly the only North American car that can be turned into a camper without significant modification. The trouble is that the Elements are coming on 20 years old so there aren’t many of them still around. Looking through the classifieds, those that remain generally fall into the a) poorly maintained and falling to pieces category or the, b) well loved by niche enthusiasts but sold far out of town and pretty much impossible to reach without having a car in the first place.
For two weeks I rode a rollercoaster of highs and lows checking the classifieds daily and chasing down leads. Let me be the first to say that there are a lot of sketchy people selling cars and really no consumer protection. It didn’t help that I was staying in airbnbs out in the suburbs averaging $60–100 a night or that I felt like rubbish.
One thing I hate about coming back to Canada after backpacking is that three for three I’ve returned to my home country without having a place to stay or a place to call my own. I’ve always come back as a nomad and it really sucks, especially in expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver where I’m paying more for housing than I was overseas.
I was just about to throw in the towel and call it quits when I got lucky with a guy selling a well-cared for Element. The next week was busy as I went through the paperwork for registering the car and getting some repairs done. I was in such a rush to get going on my trip and spend as little as possible that I probably made some poor choices. In hindsight I should have spent the extra money to change the tires from the large rim roadies to an all-terrain better suited for going down dirt roads, lifted the lowered suspension, and removed the camber on the wheels. But I was anxious to get out of the airbnbs sucking my finances dry.
As it stood though, my biggest mistake was locking myself out of my car when I went to pick up boxes I had stored at a friends house which I was going to put in a new storage unit I’d also had to lease. That 640$ expenditure was robbery that topped the 7,500$ I spent to buy the car, do paperwork, get insurance, get material for the camper in the back, and accessorize the car.
On the flip side I have some very good friends and it worked out very well to go down to Evan’s family cottage where I was able to build out the back in three days. His family had all the power tools I needed to get the job done with minimal fuss. It would have been nice to have some time to design and plan the build instead of figuring it out along the way but an engineering YouTuber called Amy Makes Stuff did a similar build that I based mine off as a precedent.
I made a bunch of mistakes with the wood and cutting the foam but the curtains really transformed the space. They’re just cloth on a bungee chord but they work really well. On the flip side, the previous owner had tinted windows which I really appreciate, as well as a stereo and fog lights.
I was somewhat anxious to get going so that my trip would begin. There are a lot of vanlifers that spend years building out their rigs before they ever get going. With only a month left in the summer, I wanted to get out there while the weather was still good. That means that the second phase of the summer travel begins to a part of the country I know nothing about. It’s a little intimidating and I’d love to have someone join me but the build doesn’t even give a much room for the passenger seat since I wanted a bed in the back to fit me (it’s still 2 inches too short).
On the first night camping I found that somethings worked well and others not so much. The storage is pretty functional for being designed on the fly and a last minute ikea trip with Jenna who had excellent ideas for accessorizing makes for a fairly organized back. Likewise the jackery battery is very nice to have to run usb lights and a fan. I also have usb lights to illuminate the interior at night and bought a pack of fairy lights. They took half an hour to set up and then I stepped on the usb plug and promptly broke them.
From Toronto to Ottawa I drove slowly along the winding country roads, less concerned with the speed and pace of my increasingly accumulating mileage and more concerned with memorizing the landscape. Decaying barns beside endless cornfields give way to old restaurants mark the miles where once bustling tourists would have stopped but are now abandoned shells with boards up windows and sagging rooflines. All along the road are classic heritage farmhouses and rustic tractors.
I choose mainly to avoid the highways. The yellow sign: winding road next 90 km. Through lake country is rolling hills up and down and around the other side. In Prince Edward County I stopped to checkout the lakefront. There’s a nice beach area in Wellington across from the Sandbanks Provincial Park, a place I find out you need a prior reservation to spend the day.
Soon the farmfields give way to exposed rock and then small lakes. I stop at Jones Falls, part of the Rideau Canal system, North America’s oldest continuously operated canal. It’s a 202km long chain of lakes, rivers and locks between the Ottawa River and Lake Ontario. The Jones Falls dam is a 91m long, 18m high stone structure. Once the tallest dam in the continent, it tames the once wild Cataraqui River that now bypasses in a series of three locks. These are the first of many locks I’ll come across on my way down river towards the Atlantic Ocean.
I’m aiming for Cape Spear, the eastern tip of North America on the island of Newfoundland. It was first named by the Portuguese (spera, “hope”) which became Cap d’Espoir in French and finally “Cape Spear” by the English. I’ve named my Element Umi Shōri (海勝利), Japanese for Sea Victory. Hopefully along the way I make some good memories and great things happen.
