“I think it was something important.” My daughter uttered these fateful words, and so began our travel horror story. We arrived from California the day before. I planned a summer vacation to allow my husband, four kids and I to see new parts of the US on our way to Canada. We flew from California to Minneapolis, Minnesota. From there, we rented a giant SUV with Arizona plates. The car rental company provided us with a car seat for my son, who was six months old, and two keys to the vehicle. Both keys came permanently attached to each other, on one ring. From Minnesota, we drove to our resort near Riding Mountain National Park in Canada.
The resort was near the charming little town of Wasagaming, Manitoba. My daughters and I left my husband in charge of the boys and drove off to explore and see Clear Lake. It was just after 8:30 pm, but in early summer the sun had not begun to set. Hoping to get in a little exercise, I put on my roller blades after parking the car. I handed the keys to my daughter, and she placed them in the pocket of her hoodie. A lady at the store told us water from melting glaciers filled Clear Lake. When we reached the edge, I encouraged my daughter to test the water. She found it to be extremely cold. It grew dark by about 9:30, and we decided to head back to the resort. “It was the key. It fell out of my pocket and into the lake,” my daughter announced.
Some people returning on their boat lent us a flashlight. We frantically searched the water for the two keys to our rental SUV. We later learned the shore dropped off steeply not far from the edge. The rocks beneath the water along shore were also home to crawdads. In the growing darkness, hobbling on my roller blades, I tried to decide on a course of action. My other daughter moaned in the background. The bathrooms were locked and she really had to go. Even the soda machine on the dock seemed to stop working after dark.
We called the Mounties on our cell phone and a dispatcher advised us we were not experiencing a real emergency. She recommended we call a towing company. Darkness settled in as I called my husband back at the resort with the boys. Without a car he couldn’t help us. With the shops closed, the empty streets of Wasagaming echoed with eerie sounds. When we heard yelling and the vicious bark of a dog, my daughters half-pulled, half-carried me along the pier. We had no idea where to go for help.
When headlights approached in the distance, we hid behind trees to avoid being seen. My daughter called my husband. “Someone’s coming!” she whispered frantically. It turns out my husband called the resort. Slightly embarrassed, we looked around the tree and saw a mini-van, with the resort logo, pull up to the curb. We made it back to our cabin just fine. The next day we had the car towed to a dealership 50 miles away and got a new set of keys made. Our travel horror story gets lots of laughs now, but I still haven’t gotten over the fact that the Mounties let us down.