Road Warrior - Day 1
Waiting for this morning to come felt strangely familiar. It reminded me of being a kid on Christmas Eve, lying awake in the dark, heart beating a little faster because morning held something wonderful I could hardly wait to unwrap.
Except this time, there was no tree.
No presents.
Just a car packed with art supplies, a road stretching west, and a dream that had finally become too big to keep waiting for.
It’s not every day you get to set off on your dream adventure.
So… what does one pack for a trip out west?
Honestly? At this point, apparently nothing but sketchbooks and art supplies.
Which, if you know me, is actually pretty on brand.
In typical Kelly fashion, my “early departure” did not, in fact, happen early.
Sleep and I have never had what you might call a healthy relationship, and sometime during the morning, instead of simply getting up and leaving like a normal person, I decided there was one thing I absolutely needed before beginning my journey:
A press release -- Because obviously.
Never mind that I had no real idea what a press release actually was. A little frantic Googling later, and somehow I had produced something that looked official enough to pass.
And really, when you think about it, this is exactly what artists do. We create something out of nothing. That’s what I do for a living, we are our own creative magicians. So this morning, apparently, I created a press release.
Feeling accomplished, I went to print them… and got exactly five and a half copies before my printer gave up on life. I stood there looking at the half-printed pages and decided this was perhaps the universe’s way of telling me to stop fighting technology.
PDFs exist for a reason.
So I took the hint, did one final sweep of my packing, and finally—finally—committed to leaving.
There was also, in my abundant spare time leading up to this departure (read: absolutely none), the small matter of designing an eco-friendly clothing line.
The idea was to create something distinctly Canadian, with a healthy dose of sarcasm woven through it. Clothing with a little personality. Clothing that sounded like me.
The plan was simple. Launch the line before I headed west. Use the proceeds to help fund the adventure.
Travel across the country.
Make art.
Tell stories.
Build something beautiful out of the road ahead.
That part has meant more to me than I can really explain.
There is something profoundly comforting about knowing that, scattered across the enormous distance I’m about to travel, there are people willing to open their doors.
Little islands of kindness waiting along the road.
It makes this whole crazy thing feel less like I’m going alone.
And there are so many levels of awesome to this project that sometimes I have to stop and let that sink in.
There is something magical about the beginning of a road trip. The first turn onto the highway. The familiar landscape slowly giving way to somewhere that sets you on the path of what's to come. That feeling that the life you were living five minutes ago is already behind you, and whatever happens next hasn’t been written yet.
I stopped in Sudbury to see the Big Nickel, because really, you can’t drive through Sudbury and not see the Big Nickel. Even did a little sketch.
I took photos. I talked to a few locals. And I immediately started imagining how this first section of my trip would be incorporated into the larger paintings.
Except this time, there was no tree.
No presents.
Just a car packed with art supplies, a road stretching west, and a dream that had finally become too big to keep waiting for.
It’s not every day you get to set off on your dream adventure.
So… what does one pack for a trip out west?
Honestly? At this point, apparently nothing but sketchbooks and art supplies.
Which, if you know me, is actually pretty on brand.
In typical Kelly fashion, my “early departure” did not, in fact, happen early.
Sleep and I have never had what you might call a healthy relationship, and sometime during the morning, instead of simply getting up and leaving like a normal person, I decided there was one thing I absolutely needed before beginning my journey:
A press release -- Because obviously.
Never mind that I had no real idea what a press release actually was. A little frantic Googling later, and somehow I had produced something that looked official enough to pass.
And really, when you think about it, this is exactly what artists do. We create something out of nothing. That’s what I do for a living, we are our own creative magicians. So this morning, apparently, I created a press release.
Feeling accomplished, I went to print them… and got exactly five and a half copies before my printer gave up on life. I stood there looking at the half-printed pages and decided this was perhaps the universe’s way of telling me to stop fighting technology.
PDFs exist for a reason.
So I took the hint, did one final sweep of my packing, and finally—finally—committed to leaving.
There was also, in my abundant spare time leading up to this departure (read: absolutely none), the small matter of designing an eco-friendly clothing line.
The idea was to create something distinctly Canadian, with a healthy dose of sarcasm woven through it. Clothing with a little personality. Clothing that sounded like me.
The plan was simple. Launch the line before I headed west. Use the proceeds to help fund the adventure.
Travel across the country.
Make art.
Tell stories.
Build something beautiful out of the road ahead.
The plan was to launch the clothing line before heading out on the western leg of this trip — you know, casually fund an entire adventure through creativity and ambition. Simple.
Except… not simple.
Between supplier issues, shipping delays, the whole thing stalled out. Hard.
I made the call (a reluctant, slightly dramatic one) to put the clothing launch on hold until I could actually do it properly — instead of rushing it out into the world half-baked.
So, with my brilliant funding plan temporarily shelved, the goal shifted. From “make money on the road” to “spend as little as humanly possible and hope for the best.”
Which, honestly, feels much more on brand for this trip anyway.
This is not a luxury adventure.
This is budget travel with a side order of creative chaos, held together almost entirely by determination and the stubborn belief that the experience itself will be worth it.
The grants I’ve applied for won’t come through for months, assuming I’m fortunate enough to receive them.
So for now, it’s me.
My art.
My determination.
And a questionably assembled food supply.
I have a five-gallon jug of water with a rechargeable pump, which makes me feel wildly prepared and just a little bit wilderness-adjacent, plus cans of soup, chili, KD, crackers, random non-perishables, beef sticks… and, for balance, apples and carrots. Health.
That part has meant more to me than I can really explain.
There is something profoundly comforting about knowing that, scattered across the enormous distance I’m about to travel, there are people willing to open their doors.
Little islands of kindness waiting along the road.
It makes this whole crazy thing feel less like I’m going alone.
And there are so many levels of awesome to this project that sometimes I have to stop and let that sink in.
There is something magical about the beginning of a road trip. The first turn onto the highway. The familiar landscape slowly giving way to somewhere that sets you on the path of what's to come. That feeling that the life you were living five minutes ago is already behind you, and whatever happens next hasn’t been written yet.
I took photos. I talked to a few locals. And I immediately started imagining how this first section of my trip would be incorporated into the larger paintings.
That’s the strange thing about being an artist. You don’t simply travel through a place. You collect it. A colour here. A shape there. A conversation. A face. A ridiculous roadside attraction. A particular kind of light. Everything becomes material for the memory bank.
Then I was back on the road. As I was leaving town, I spotted a sign for the A.Y. Jackson Lookout. A quick Google search told me it was open. Adventure!
Except Google, as it turns out, is occasionally an optimist. Four feet of snow covered the road to the lookout. So there I stood, staring at a wall of winter where the road was apparently supposed to be.
I laughed. I turned around. I guess not every adventure is meant to happen on the day you find it.
And perhaps that’s something worth remembering.
The road doesn’t owe us our plans. Sometimes it gives us exactly what we hoped for. Sometimes it gives us something entirely different.
And sometimes it simply says: Not today.
Up until then, the roads had been fairly clear. Then the snow began.
And it kept coming.
The kind of snow that slowly erases the edges of everything. The kind that turns headlights into tunnels of white and makes the world beyond your windshield feel impossibly far away.
I pushed through to Sault Ste. Marie in the storm, arriving sometime after midnight, exhausted beyond words and running almost entirely on fumes and stubbornness.
I found the last available hotel room. Which, in retrospect, should probably have been my first warning. I carried every last bit of my paint and art supplies inside so they wouldn’t freeze.
Priorities.
Only after everything precious had been safely brought into the room did I actually look around.
Oh.
Oh no.
The room was rough. Not charmingly rough. Not “well, this place has character” rough.
More like; Has this room encountered a cleaning product at any point this decade?
There were burns on the bedspread. Stains everywhere. A bathroom that was questionable at best.
TripAdvisor, I would like a word. This was not exactly the “great for solo travellers” experience I had been promised. This was more of a: Double-check your life choices situation.
I pulled back the sheets on the first bed. Dirt. Actual, visible dirt. Just sitting there.
At that point, though, I was too tired to even be properly horrified.
There comes a certain hour when exhaustion wins every argument. So I adapted. Socks pulled over my jogging pants. Hoodie on. Hood up. Strings tightened until I was essentially sealed inside a human cocoon.
Survival mode.
But make it cozy.
Then I discovered the walls were apparently made of paper, because voices and music were coming through them with the clarity of someone standing directly beside me.
It sounded like I had accidentally checked into a very low-budget nightclub.
So I opened my rain sounds app. Turned the volume up as high as it would go. Pulled the hood a little tighter. Lay there in my ridiculous layers of clothing, surrounded by the sounds of rain and strangers and a hotel that had clearly survived several lifetimes.
Somewhere beneath the exhaustion, the absurdity, the disappointment, and the overwhelming reality of what I had just done, I smiled.
Because this was it.
This was the beginning.
Not the polished version.
Not the cinematic version where the road stretches endlessly beneath a golden sunset and everything unfolds according to plan.
The real version.
The messy version.
The version where you lose half a day writing a press release you didn’t know how to write.
Where your printer dies.
Where your clothing line gets delayed.
Where your budget disappears into the horizon before you’ve even reached it.
Where Google promises you a lookout and gives you four feet of snow.
Where you drive through a snowstorm for hours and end up sleeping in a room you’re afraid to touch.
This is what an adventure actually looks like.
It isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes it’s ridiculous. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.
Sometimes it asks more of you than you thought you had to give.
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe the stories worth telling are never the ones where everything went according to plan. Maybe the magic lives in the detours. In the wrong turns. In the strangers who become friends. In the friends who open their homes. In the paintings that haven’t been painted yet. In the landscapes waiting beyond the next mountain.
In the courage it takes to leave the familiar behind and say:
I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen -- but I’m going anyway.
So there I was.
Day one.
Wrapped in every article of clothing I owned, listening to artificial rain drown out a questionable hotel and the sounds of strangers partying through paper-thin walls.
My dream adventure had officially begun.
And all I could do was laugh, pull the hood a little tighter, and whisper a prayer to the sleep gods: Please… take me away.
Tomorrow, the road west waits.
Then I was back on the road. As I was leaving town, I spotted a sign for the A.Y. Jackson Lookout. A quick Google search told me it was open. Adventure!
Except Google, as it turns out, is occasionally an optimist. Four feet of snow covered the road to the lookout. So there I stood, staring at a wall of winter where the road was apparently supposed to be.
I laughed. I turned around. I guess not every adventure is meant to happen on the day you find it.
And perhaps that’s something worth remembering.
The road doesn’t owe us our plans. Sometimes it gives us exactly what we hoped for. Sometimes it gives us something entirely different.
And sometimes it simply says: Not today.
Up until then, the roads had been fairly clear. Then the snow began.
And it kept coming.
The kind of snow that slowly erases the edges of everything. The kind that turns headlights into tunnels of white and makes the world beyond your windshield feel impossibly far away.
I pushed through to Sault Ste. Marie in the storm, arriving sometime after midnight, exhausted beyond words and running almost entirely on fumes and stubbornness.
I found the last available hotel room. Which, in retrospect, should probably have been my first warning. I carried every last bit of my paint and art supplies inside so they wouldn’t freeze.
Priorities.
Only after everything precious had been safely brought into the room did I actually look around.
Oh.
Oh no.
The room was rough. Not charmingly rough. Not “well, this place has character” rough.
More like; Has this room encountered a cleaning product at any point this decade?
There were burns on the bedspread. Stains everywhere. A bathroom that was questionable at best.
TripAdvisor, I would like a word. This was not exactly the “great for solo travellers” experience I had been promised. This was more of a: Double-check your life choices situation.
I pulled back the sheets on the first bed. Dirt. Actual, visible dirt. Just sitting there.
At that point, though, I was too tired to even be properly horrified.
There comes a certain hour when exhaustion wins every argument. So I adapted. Socks pulled over my jogging pants. Hoodie on. Hood up. Strings tightened until I was essentially sealed inside a human cocoon.
Survival mode.
But make it cozy.
Then I discovered the walls were apparently made of paper, because voices and music were coming through them with the clarity of someone standing directly beside me.
It sounded like I had accidentally checked into a very low-budget nightclub.
So I opened my rain sounds app. Turned the volume up as high as it would go. Pulled the hood a little tighter. Lay there in my ridiculous layers of clothing, surrounded by the sounds of rain and strangers and a hotel that had clearly survived several lifetimes.
Somewhere beneath the exhaustion, the absurdity, the disappointment, and the overwhelming reality of what I had just done, I smiled.
Because this was it.
This was the beginning.
Not the polished version.
Not the cinematic version where the road stretches endlessly beneath a golden sunset and everything unfolds according to plan.
The real version.
The messy version.
The version where you lose half a day writing a press release you didn’t know how to write.
Where your printer dies.
Where your clothing line gets delayed.
Where your budget disappears into the horizon before you’ve even reached it.
Where Google promises you a lookout and gives you four feet of snow.
Where you drive through a snowstorm for hours and end up sleeping in a room you’re afraid to touch.
This is what an adventure actually looks like.
It isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes it’s ridiculous. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.
Sometimes it asks more of you than you thought you had to give.
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe the stories worth telling are never the ones where everything went according to plan. Maybe the magic lives in the detours. In the wrong turns. In the strangers who become friends. In the friends who open their homes. In the paintings that haven’t been painted yet. In the landscapes waiting beyond the next mountain.
In the courage it takes to leave the familiar behind and say:
I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen -- but I’m going anyway.
So there I was.
Day one.
Wrapped in every article of clothing I owned, listening to artificial rain drown out a questionable hotel and the sounds of strangers partying through paper-thin walls.
My dream adventure had officially begun.
And all I could do was laugh, pull the hood a little tighter, and whisper a prayer to the sleep gods: Please… take me away.
Tomorrow, the road west waits.
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