Personal travels are Hossack’s signature
Round about now, solo RVer and Canadian author Joei Carlton Hossack is somewhere between Red Deer, Alberta, and Vancouver, B.C.
When reached by cell phone, she had just finished up a month in Edmonton doing a combination of book signings, writing and sightseeing.
Hossack has penned seven travel memoirs. Six are still in print, including her most recent, “Chasing the Lost Dream.”
“My books are not travel guides,” she says, “although they contain information about places to see and things to do that are not found in the typical guide.”
Hossack calls her books “personal adventures.”
“When a gray-haired old lady travels by herself,” says the 63-year-old, “the adventures are many; the people are warm, welcoming and helpful; and the situations range from extremely funny to extremely frightening.”
Hossack began RVing in 1989 with her husband, Paul. They purchased a small camper van in England and traveled for 2 1/2 years throughout Europe and parts of Africa.
“Sadly,” she says, “he died unexpectedly of a heart attack on that trip in a campground in northern Germany. He was only 52.”
Because there were so many places in the world that they had planned on visiting, Hossack decided to continue to travel alone.
“I felt I had to see them for both of us,” she says.
The first summer on her own was spent volunteering on three archaeological digs in England.
The following year she took five months to explore Turkey, the Greek Islands and Cyprus.
In 1994 she started writing about her experiences, and three years later she self-published her first book under the Skeena Press label.
By 1998, Hossack was on the road, RVing
full time, and drove her motor home from Florida to Alaska.
She has crisscrossed Canada and the United States many times and estimates she’s driven “several hundred thousand miles.”
Last year she decided it was time to establish a home base and she purchased a condominium in Surrey, B.C.
The avid RVer still spends about half her time “out there” in her 1997 3/4-ton F-250 Ford diesel pickup with a 10-foot 2004 Adventurer camper.
In a perfect world, Hossack says, her life would have three parts to each day: sleeping and eating, work and recreation.
“My life on the road is way off kilter,” she says.
“Sleeping and eating still comprise 30 percent of my time, however,” she says, “working is about 60 percent and recreation is about 10 percent.”
These days, according to Hossack, book-signing tours take up the vast majority of her road trips. She spends her time scheduling, doing signings in stores, lecturing and driving from town to town.
“Of course,” she adds, “I always make time for more writing.”
She is working on two books, including her first attempt at fiction writing.
“It’s part memoir, part ghost story,” she says.
“Since it takes place in a farmhouse that my husband and I owned in the 1970s, much of the detail is true. It is great fun working on it.”
Two Hossack ‘must-sees’
“In southern British Columbia, Hossack often travels along the Trans-Canada Highway 1. One favorite stop is Revelstoke, B.C.
Situated on the banks of the Columbia River, Revelstoke has some of the most spectacular scenery in British Columbia.
“It is an absolutely gorgeous place and a wonderful little town to bicycle around in,” says Hossack. “It is surrounded by beautiful, snow-covered mountains.”
The town is flanked by the Selkirk Mountains to the east and the Monashees to the west.
“Besides all the beauty,” Hossack says, “there was music in Grizzly Plaza every night and I loved it.”
“A second town not to miss is Drumheller, Alberta.
“It is spectacular,” says Hossack. “Drumheller is in the heart of the Canadian Badlands and has the most fantastic dinosaur museum in the world.”