A Memorable Trip To Canada

Feb 3, 2019 By Isaac, 11
iliketurtles's picture

I traveled to Banff National Park and Jasper National Park and here’s my advice: Don’t read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen if you’re going to Canada.

For anyone who hasn’t read Hatchet, it’s about a teenager Brian who rams a plane into a lake in the Canadian forest. In the Canadian wilderness, Brian encounters a bear, gets stung by a porcupine, and even gets hit by a tornado. Now you know why it was impossible to sleep.

The first few days of my Banff vacation were a blur, arriving in Canada at 2:00 am, going sightseeing with summer snow flurries (not an oxymoron in Canada), hiking with the occasional presence of horse droppings, fooling around on a glacier, and daring my friend Stephen to do push-ups on the skywalk (the flying twig that we saw turned out to be a four-inch blue dragonfly).

Right when I was going to rate Canada a 5/5 on TripAdvisor, my naive five-year-old brother thought it was a marvelous idea to horse around near the shimmering blue Jasper lake surrounded by gigantic boulders. You guessed it. The kid tripped and banged his forehead hard on a rock, and suddenly the peaceful environment was filled with high-pitched screams. I’ll skip the blood part for you.

Surprisingly, I felt a little happy; finally, it wasn’t me who was in trouble. The last few days I was yelled at for nailing my dad in the head with a snowball, stepping on an unstable log while soaking my shoes, and beating Stanley, Stephen’s little brother, in a snowball fight.

My dad drove us (while occasionally going over the speed limit by 20 kph) to the Jasper Hospital. My brother was all right so my dad and I ditched him and went hiking. We met up with Stephen’s family at the end while they were starting to head back. I told my dad we should just see the fifth lake and be done with it but he insisted on looping around all five lakes and how hard could that be?

Well, turns out we got lost in a loop... but my incredible brain power led us back onto the right trail before Hatchet could haunt me even more. We finally came back to the U.S. The thrilling adventures and natural wonders of Canada outweighed getting lost, stepping in horse poop (don’t tease), and my brother getting hurt, and in the end, Canada remained victorious!  

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Praks-Sunil's picture
Praks-Sunil December 19, 2021 - 12:24pm
good job :)
german sheperd's picture
german sheperd May 7, 2019 - 7:41am

cool trip!

iliketurtles's picture
iliketurtles March 2, 2019 - 5:32pm

Thank you for your feedback on my article. Good point about the skywalk and glacier name. I was terrified when I went on the skywalk, and I even did some push ups on it for a dare from my friend Stephen. He was too scared himself ?. Were you scared when you went on the skywalk and glacier? How long did you “last” on it? I was only on the skywalk for three minutes before getting spooked when thinking about a potential earthquake.

However, regarding your other suggestion, I purposely used a lot of conjunctions for emphasis; it is a literary device called polysyndeton where you use excess amounts of coordinating conjunctions to join phrases. I was trying to create the effect of exhaustion and a sense of being overwhelmed. Maybe it didn’t work out as well as I thought. Good catch, though! 

 

kaiwenzhang's picture
kaiwenzhang February 28, 2019 - 5:51pm

I thought your article was well written, well organized, and entertaining. I especially liked your sarcasm in your fourth paragraph where you talked about TripAdvisor and how your brother thought "it was a marvelous idea to horse around...". I also laughed when you talked about your "incredible brain power [that] led us back...". I liked your sarcastic tone because it was unique and funny. But you could remove your last sentence in the fourth paragraph where you wrote "...skip the blood part...". I felt like it was unnecessary and the edgy humor kind of went too far--by the way, shouldn't it be "bloody," not "blood"? And even though I enjoyed your story, I felt like you could add some more descriptive information about the places that you visted rather than mostly personal stories. I have also traveled to Canada and Banff with friends, but I never related the trip to Hatchet. That was probably because we never got lost in the 3-4 hikes we took. By the way, how is your little brother?

iliketurtles's picture
iliketurtles April 13, 2019 - 4:33pm

Thank you for your feedback on my article. You are correct about the use of "bloody" instead of "blood", and yes, maybe my edgy humor went a little too far. In retrospect, I myself see it as a missed oppurtunity to add some more details about the settings. My brother is now six years old and has a small protruding scar on his forehead which will hopefully smooth out as he grows. What were your favorite sites or experiences in your Canada trip? 

kaiwenzhang's picture
kaiwenzhang May 1, 2019 - 7:30pm

Thank you for your response. I loved Banff's spectacular waterfalls and Jasper's hiking trips as well as the local dishes from Banff's downtown restaurants. It was refreshing to hike alongside the huge waterfalls and receive a shower while doing it.

 

Erikw's picture
Erikw February 16, 2019 - 2:24pm

Your article was riveting, especially because I also visited Banff last year when I was an 11-year-old. Your sentences were funny, and they made me want to read Hatchet. However, a couple of those sentences were a bit lengthy. For example, in the last sentence of the final two paragraphs, you used two "and's," rather than a semicolon or separate sentences. When you explained fooling around on the glaciers and skywalk, it might have been helpful to include where that was (probably Athabasca Glacier). That was one of my favorite sites. Other than that, your article was extraordinarily well-written and conveys every emotion that I personally felt when I visited Banff and Jasper.