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Side by side
Community forms as the wagons circle every summer
by Virginia Hinkley

"Travelin' along, singin' a song, side by side," was an oldie that I sang for the 14 years that my husband, Bob, and I were full-time RVers. Being full-time RVers takes very compatible mates and a lot of give and take. We lived and traveled in a 34-foot fifth-wheel travel trailer. We were together 24 hours a day. That takes a lot of giving!

We spent our summers in Canada on the shores of Francois Lake, or Lake Francie as the natives called it. Francois Lake is located in the center of British Columbia and is a fisherman's paradise. To get there we headed up Interstate 5, crossed the border and took Canadian Highway 97 north through the Fraser River Canyon to Prince George.
We usually spent a week in Prince George at Sintich RV Park because by that time the fifth-wheel needed cleaning, the laundry had piled up and the cupboards were bare. When all of these things were taken care of, we headed west on Highway 16, better known as the Yellowhead Highway. At the Village of Burns Lake, we turned south on Highway 35 for about 15 miles to Francois Lake. We turned west on the lake road for four miles to Sandy's RV Park and we were home for the summer.

The summers are short that far north, but the days are long. It didn't get dark until around 11 p.m. and fishing started at dawn and stopped at dusk. By the first weekend we usually had made friends with everyone in camp and joined "happy hour" around five o'clock. Evenings were spent around a campfire listening to the fishermen tell their fish stories while the women sat back and shook their heads at some of the exaggerations.
The bald eagles and ospreys were not endangered there! Just 15 miles up the lake there were at least a hundred bald eagle nests in the tops of the trees along the shore of the lake. There was no road to the area and they could only be seen from a boat.

Long about August we broke camp and made our way back to the states where we spent our winters in the Mojave Desert. I loved the life.
Now when the RVs start heading north in the spring, I watch sadly because my husband is gone. But the wonderful memories are still with me.

Virginia Hinkley's e-mail is vhinkley@woods-computers.net.