I splurged last summer for the family vacation. We went to Europe. This summer I budgeted a third of that.
Truth is, I was hoping to avoid the family vacation. Daughter Ruth had trips to Florida and Nantucket with Ole Miss roommates. Lawrence visited friends in Florida and Canada. I was eager to save the money.
But then John mentioned that I never go anywhere with him anymore. Then Ginny started hinting that we hadn’t gone anywhere for a year. When Lawrence’s AC unit in Texas proved incapable of keeping his apartment below 85 degrees, I caved.
I had a plan: Vancouver, where we had a free place to stay. John’s Canadian friends had stayed in our house for many months for free. It was payback time. The airfares were decent. I booked a week in Vancouver to escape the heat.
To me, family vacations are a lot of work in addition to the expense. Traveling is tough and sightseeing every day is exhausting. But the fruit of this labor is lifelong cherished memories with your family. Our family bonds are greatly strengthened by all our family vacations over the years.
The flight wasn’t bad. First to Houston, then to Vancouver. The Houston-Vancouver leg was about four and a half hours. Lawrence got a direct flight from Austin. Ginny flew from Atlanta where she celebrated a close friend’s 60th birthday.
Every trip has bad luck. In this case, we had it all on the front end. We got up early to catch our Jackson flight only to have it canceled because of a bad tire. We rescheduled for the next day.
Ginny had it even worse. Her flight had an engine failure early in the flight and had to return to the airport. Scary. Lots of prayers.
But we all made it the next day. We were picked up at the airport by our Canadian friends Mohammed, Sam and their housemate Ross Dudley, who grew up in Madison County. Ross and Anna, his wife, and their young children were a joy to be around and the nicest of hosts. For one week we were one big happy family.
They picked us up in their 30-year-old Volvo station wagon with an antique Mississippi tag, just one of many ways our Canadian friends scrimp and save. That car sat in my driveway for months while Mohammed worked on it, having bought it for a few hundred dollars.
I told Mohammed if he could make that Volvo functional then he could do anything in life. So it was a pleasure to see the car run perfectly, having made it across the western deserts from Jackson to Vancouver.
Ross has Canadian ancestors and moved to Vancouver to study at Regent College, which is part of the University of British Columbia. Regent is similar to Jackson’s Reformed Theological Seminary.
They live in a group home near the university in a very nice part of Vancouver. The lot the house sits on just sold for $2.5 million. They pay rent on the house which will no doubt be eventually torn down.
Other homes in the neighborhood sell for nutty prices. Square foot selling prices are 10 to 20 times what they are in Jackson. Most of Vancouver is the same, presumably driven by Asian investors, especially the Chinese and Japanese. Indeed, half of all the 2.5 million people in the Vancouver area are Asian.
Canada has a much more diverse population than America. With so much room but a much colder climate, Canada is a popular choice for immigrants battling to come to America, which has more restrictive immigration laws (at least on the books.) Eighty percent of Canadians live in the country’s big cities.
The weather was divine. No rain, clear skies, highs in the mid seventies. One day I got an excessive heat alert on my phone. “Warning: Temperatures may exceed 83 degrees.”
Vancouver is nestled in an island-studded bay, protected from the Pacific Ocean by the immense Vancouver Island. It’s ringed by 4,000-foot mountains. The scenery is phenomenal.
May to September, Vancouver weather is better than Jackson. But Jackson weather is far more pleasant during the other seven months. Considering the entire year, I’ll take Jackson’s weather over Vancouver’s any day.
It is a testament to God’s magnificent creativity that both Jackson and Vancouver are heavily forested yet the tree species are completely different.
Another big difference between Jackson and Vancouver: Vancouver has hundreds of 10-story residential buildings dotting all the main thoroughfares. This causes higher population densities and much more walking traffic. As a result, all the main streets are full of pedestrians, shops and restaurants. People are much more likely to walk or take a short bus hop when going out to eat or shop.
Jackson, with more available land for houses and parking lots, is far more auto-centric. You walk only to your driveway and drive right to the restaurant, which typically has ample parking. It’s quite a different lifestyle.
Vancouver is a great summer getaway. There are tons of things to do. We went fly fishing on a beautiful river in Squamish, just north of Vancouver. We took a gondola to the top of Grouse mountain, overlooking the city where we had a beautiful sunset dinner. We went whale watching. And we spent a lot of time just hanging out in the backyard, playing guitar, talking and enjoying the perfect bug-free weather as neighborhood friends dropped in and out to say hello.
The Emmerich clan, miraculously, didn’t have any harsh words. Praise to God for his patience and mercy as we have all matured!
