Lucas Camilo

Reading back over my first post about our RV journey I realized that, inexplicably,  I almost got through the whole thing without writing the word “dinosaur.” Which is funny because, as Lucas’s blog posts and the pictures made clear, this trip was all about dinosaurs, and all about Lucas. Fortunately, our distant destinations of Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park were in a beautiful part of the world that Krista and I were also excited to visit. Still, we were driving nearly 1000 miles to get to the badlands of central Alberta and so a lot was riding on one big question: would Lucas actually be into it?

After our rough first night, things quickly started looking up. Our next stop was Banff, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies — still a ways from dinosaur country, but one of the places that Krista and I were most excited to explore. We could already tell that Lucas was into the RVing thing and excited to get out and explore, wherever we landed. This was a relief, especially since Lucas can sometimes be a homebody, reluctant to get out of his normal routine. In fact, the weekend before we left for the trip he was in a grumpy mood, content to lay around the house doing apps on his iPad more than anything else… and it had us worried. Indeed, in the two weeks since we’ve gotten back from our trip we’ve also had some of those same rough times, with Lucas grasping for fun things to do during the final days of summer, and rejecting most of our ideas for adventures outside the house.

But on the road in the RV Lucas was in non-stop good spirits, and open to just about anything we suggested. Meanwhile, we started getting in the travel groove; there may have been check-list of things to do a mile long each time we arrived or departed from a campground, but it kept getting easier and by the end we were working together like a well-oiled machine. The highlight of our time in Banff (aside from the spectacularly located, gigantic RV park on the side of Tunnel Mountain) was the hike we took along the Bow River outside of town. I even got to jump in the frigid, mountain water as we picnicked by the edge of the river.

But the next day is when the dinosaur fun began. Krista and I were a bit sad to say goodbye to the Rockies and drop down into the dry prairies of Alberta, not to mention hit the only traffic jam we encountered on the whole trip driving through Calgary. But in the the sweltering afternoon heat we arrived in Drumheller, and we all knew exactly where we needed to go first: the famous 26-meter, 86-foot tall T-rex that stood in the middle of town. Seeing Lucas’s face when we lowered the wheelchair lift onto the ground below “Dino” made the many hours of driving we had already endured totally worth it. He said “woahhh” and made his best “surprised face” ever. We spent an hour checking out the humongous fiberglass dinosaur (4 1/2 times the size of an actual T-rex) from all angles, and let a restless Ida crawl and splash around in the nearby wading pool. I think the moment of arriving at this ridiculous tourist attraction was, for me, when I really felt the satisfaction and relief of knowing that this trip was going to be totally unforgettable.

Another thing that was making the trip smooth and fun was the fact we were in Canada. Pretty quickly we noticed that there’s a reason for the Canadians-are-nice-people stereotype. Specifically around disability, we often encountered a feeling of acceptance, inclusion and even generosity – but not in a patronizing way – towards people with disabilities that seemed different than in the U.S. For example, we pulled into one campground that we hadn’t reserved a spot for and when the ranger showed up she looked at Lucas and said “where are you from?” I said Seattle and she said “I’ll just pretend that you said British Columbia. We have a policy that BC residents with disabilities camp for free in state parks. Enjoy being Canadian for a night!” And off she rolled. At the Royal Tyrell museum in Drumheller Lucas participated in a special kids activity hour. I mentioned that he was in a wheelchair when I signed him up but didn’t make a big deal about it. As it turned out, they created some special things for Lucas to do knowing that some of the regular activities involved mucking around on the floor in a way that a kid in a wheelchair wouldn’t be able to. Sadly, this hardly ever happens in other places we visit.

Best of all was the wheelchair accessible bus that took us to actual paleontological dig sites in Dinosaur Provincial Park, our next stop after Drumheller.  We put in a request a week in advance in order to have the accessible bus; the wheelchair lift was a little rickety, and it was a hot, bug-filled trip into the badlands… but the two hours we spent with our awesome tour guide Tom was one of the biggest highlights of the whole trip.

Lucas especially loved Tom the tour guide, and he still talks about him glowingly when doing his photo slide-show for friends. Tom epitomized the Canadian attitude around disability that we saw on display at various times — making sure that Lucas and our family were included in everything but without making a big deal about it. At each stop he would have people gather outside the bus and “enjoy the view” while he operated the lift to get Lucas down, as if it were a regular part of the tour. And of course, Tom also knew a lot about fossils and dinosaurs, so he was naturally a hero to Lucas.

It wasn’t until we made our first stop after crossing the border back into the U.S. that we really appreciated the accessibility of our fossil journey in Dino Provincial Park. After a beautiful night camping outside of Glacier National Park in Montana we rolled up to the gate ready to check out the Rocky Mountains on the other side of the border, and maybe even take an accessible hike into the woods. Instead, we were told by the ranger that our RV was slightly too large to enter the park, and that none of the tourist buses or vans were wheelchair accessible. It was a big disappointment, and though we don’t want to romanticize our experience in Canada, we keep coming back to what happened on the other side of the border, and wondering what it is that sometimes prevents institutions and people in the U.S. from trying harder as it relates to disability.

At any rate, the upshot of not getting into Glacier was that we ended up taking a detour and staying in the front range town of Choteau. And as it happened, 12 miles down the road in the town of Bynum was another dinosaur museum (sometimes you get lucky and all roads lead to dinosaurs…)  The Two Medicine Dinosaur Center was quite a contrast to the Royal Tyrell museum, which receives an approximate 7000 visitors a day. During the two hours that we hung out in Bynum we were the only visitors to the museum, meaning exclusive access to the one staff person there. Lucas was wowed by meeting Siesmo the Seismosaurus (which he later blogged about) and it really was in fact pretty cool — a 136 foot long sauropod that, unlike the fiberglass T-rex in Drummheller, was built and modeled after an actual fossil discovery.

Our final dinosaur destination would come 2 days later in Bozeman, and it was fitting that it landed on Lucas’s 7th birthday. We spent the better part of a day wandering around the Museum of the Rockies, a vast display of amazing fossils and prehistoric relics that I had been hyping up to Lucas ever since I peaked my head in a few years back. When we got there Ida was still finishing up a nap so Lucas and I laid for a while under “Big Mike”, the T-rex fossil that towers outside the museum. It was that time in the trip when we were all starting to hit the wall, exhausted at having been on the road for nearly 10 days. And yet laying there staring up at the jaws of a Tyrannosaur I realized I was totally excited to jump into another dinosaur exhibition, while at the same time already feeling wistful at the idea that it would be over all too soon.

Now a few weeks later, on the eve of Lucas starting second grade, we’re all a little nervous about what another year of school might entail for a kid with so many physical challenges (actually Lucas isn’t nervous – when asked the other day what he thought school was going to be like this year he said matter-of-factly, “Awesome. All caps. Exclamation point.”) At any rate, whatever difficulties we encounter this year, we can always take refuge in dinosaurs… and the small triumphs of life, like the determination and love that got us through this epic family journey.