by DONALD DEER
Special to Whitewater News
It was about 10:00 PM and it had been several days since they left Halifax.
“We’ll have to pull off the road as the smoke is getting too thick in the truck. Unfortunately we’ll not be able to make it to the trailer park. Here’s a driveway we can pull into and see if we can make it to the lake”. At the end of the driveway the driver could not tell in the darkness if the road went to the lake so he decided to park behind that white Coverall.
Meanwhile in the adjacent house my wife Lise said: ” There’s a truck that pulled up beside the house. They certainly can’t be delivering propane at this time of night!”
” I’ll go check and see what’s happening.”
Looking through a window I could see a vehicle that looked like a big rig with a sleeper on the back. There was a window near the top of the truck with a light on inside. What was this vehicle doing hiding behind my Coverall?
After a phone call to the local OPP to investigate the situation an officer arrived. As the officer shone the spotlight on the vehicle both he & I realized this was an army truck. Why would an army truck be here this time of night? Especially an army truck with European licence plates.
After several minutes of conversation between the officer and one of the occupants of the truck the OPP officer came inside and explained the situation to us and left it to us to choose what to do. We chose to go out and introduce ourselves to the family in the truck. As the officer left he stated that this was a new one for him.
They explained that they were from Germany, had an electrical issue with their vehicle, that generated a lot of smoke in the cab, and so they had to drive into the nearest driveway. The vehicle they were driving was a converted German army ambulance that they had made into a mobile home.
The father is a surgeon in Germany and they are on a six-week holiday to travel across Canada to the Yukon. His wife is originally from Croatia and they had decided that this summer they wanted to explore Canada with their twin boys and daughter. They had their vehicle converted in Germany to a camper and it was shipped over to Halifax where they started their journey 10 days prior to arriving in Cobden.
We invited them in to stay the night but they were very comfortable in their camper but did accept breakfast the next day so they agreed to join us. They brought baguettes and cold meat to share for breakfast and insisted on sitting on our deck, overlooking the lake, to eat breakfast. He explained that they had previously travelled in Africa with another converted army ambulance but with ISIS in Lybia it was getting too dangerous.
After several hours of conversation they decided to make preparations to go on their way. He made a call to Germany to have the defective part for his Mercedes truck to be shipped to Winnipeg. He then filled up his water tanks on his camper and the family said goodbye.
We now have an open invitation to stay with them in Hamburg Germany.
A very pleasant ending to a situation that at first was a little unsettling.
