The Road Trip

	It happened on a dark and stormy night, the worst sort of time to be out in a car dragging a tent-trailer along an Albertan road in the middle of nowhere.
	Our family had been driving for hours since we had left Edmonton that evening. Tornadoes twirled in the purple sky behind us, and black clouds loomed ahead. 
	Mom was looking at the map. “We should be at the Buffalo Canyon Ranch in about twenty minutes,” she said. 
	“If we haven’t already driven past the exit,” I thought. Would we ever reach the ranch? Was it worth all this fuss? How exciting could some horses and a big crack in the ground be?
“This is the last time we’re going to a place recommended by the Quagmire family,” said my younger brother.
In the front seat, Dad was trying to drive. Actually he was trying to stay awake. 
	“Oh look!” said my brother. “There’s a hill up ahead.”
	We all sat up and peered out the windows. This was almost as exciting as the left-turn we’d made a few kilometers back. Our car rose over the slight rise, then gradually descended. My brother declared the area “Baker’s Bump”.
	Finally our headlights lit up a sign by a road. It said “Dry-Island Buffalo Jump Canyon Park.”
	After a good twenty-minute drive from the highway our van drove through the entrance to the ranch and up to a grey house. The door to the house opened and man came out under the porch light and leaned on the rail. A cowboy hat cast a shadow over his face. 
“Hi,” said Dad through the van window. “We made a reservation for a campsite here tonight.” Dad glanced at his watch. It was11:45 p.m.  “We had a bit of a hard time finding our way here,” he added.
	“That’s O.K.,” said the man from the porch. 
	After receiving vague directions, we drove up to an open field.  I surveyed the area. 
Just that morning our family had been in the West Edmonton Mall, a dazzling high-tech world filled with every kind of commercial amusement. The water-parks resembled Florida beaches and the toilets in the washroom flushed automatically.
Now I was standing in a scrubby field bordered by a fence. A weathered picnic table squatted opposite a pair of rickety outhouses. The dark clouds we had been driving toward were now above us. In the dim light I could see a group of cows staring menacingly over the fence. We determined to set up the tent-trailer as quickly as possible.
Then it began to rain. 
Mom and Dad wrestled a tarp onto the trailer while we kids helpfully took refuge inside.
I slept little that night, partly because of the sound of the rain, but mostly because I was worrying about those cows.
The following day, however, made up for the events of that evening. The sun shone brilliantly and the cows munched placidly. After exploring the canyon, swimming in the stream, and riding the ranch’s horses, I was almost fooled into thinking that the rest of our road-trip would be without further troublesome events. The one thing I did know, though, was that for all the dark and stormy nights to come, a bright morning would always be in hot pursuit.