About Us

 
This picture was taken at Percé September 2, 2017.
 
 

We are Rod & Lillian Vokey from the West Island of Montreal. We picked up our new 2016 Roadtrek Zion on August 5, 2016 as our key "retirement project". We are a senior couple who have been together for more than 45 years. We have no children and are down to two dogs from a peak of 3 adults and 8 puppies. Through most of our years together we have been wanderers whenever we can.

We started even before we were married doing ad hoc wanders around Quebec and Ontario. We also used to camp regularly with friends at Port Kent near Plattsburgh, NY.

For our honeymoon, we booked flights to/from Britain and a rental car. That was all we reserved for a month. We wandered up through England, spent a couple of weeks in Scotland where Rod developed a lasting taste for malt whiskey then headed back through Wales finally spending a week around London.

As the years went on we got in the habit of vacationing off season by picking a direction and some loose objectives and letting the plan evolve naturally. We were involved in Modern Western Square Dancing for more than 30 years so square dance conventions often gave us an initial objective. They brought us to places like Altoona, PA, Virginia Beach, VA, Syracuse, NY, Troy, NH, Hamilton, ON etc.

One of our classic wanders occurred in 1986 where we headed west on the Transcanada Highway taking the route north of superior. We had Rod's Mom on board as we occasionally did. We stopped a couple of days in Calgary to "solve the world's problems" with Rod's Aunt and Uncle (mother's sister). We then headed through the Rockies to White Rock (south of Vancouver) to visit with Rod's grandmother (mother's mom) and spend a couple of days at Expo '86. We then spent a day wandering around Victoria, returned to the mainland and headed south into the United States. We spent some days in Washington and Oregon. We headed into California for a bit stopping in San Francisco before getting as far south as Santa Cruz. Since we only had 3 weeks, we decided to start back towards the NE. We took the Donner Pass through to Nevada, spent a couple of days around Reno and Virginia City. We followed Interstate 80 on up through Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois then Interstate 94 up to Detroit and back to the old familiar 401.

Our attempts to emulate a "camper van" also go way back. Around 1974 we bought a Jeep Cherokee. These were the days where the Cherokee was a truck - basically a 2-door Wagoneer. It did not know it was an SUV though it helped give rise to that designation. It also did not have to compete with minivans since they had not yet been invented. We made many camping expeditions in that vehicle often sleeping in it when the weather was a bit cold for camping.

In subsequent years we had a Caravan, 2 Grand Caravans and a Windstar in the years since 1991. All were used for various camping expeditions and other wanders as well as daily use.

In the last 10 years we have been a bit closer to home as we had to care for the various aging parents. We are now free to wander again and we have finally acquired the real camper van we have talked about all these years!