Summer is my favourite time to explore the countryside and tour the province. There are places I've never been and places I'm always glad to see through my windshield.
There are places that don't seem to have enough stands of trees to set my mind at ease, places I won't stop because they are always too dirty and places I am grateful for every time I drive down a certain stretch of road.
My mother remembers when I was young and had such a scent sensitivity to outhouses I would try to spend an entire weekend at a campground without having to use the facilities. Decades later, after several bladder infections, an uncomfortable experience with kidney stones and the birth of two babies, my body has changed and when I need a comfort break I would like it to be comfortable.
I have pulled into rest stops so dirty I wondered if the people who stopped before me were accustomed to sharing facilities or even used to indoor plumbing or even outdoor simplicity.
I no longer cringe at the site of an outhouse, as long as it is more than a hole on a rough board and it is clean. I feel a little better when there are separate and marked stalls and last week I got a giggle out of a sign taped to the wall beside a ladies' room asking "Do you see this sign?" it demanded customers follow the gender specification and followed with another sign above the toilet repeating the need to keep the throne dry.
I appreciate a dry seat and if I unfortunately miss a little dampness before sitting I try to tell myself it is just an overactive flush mechanism.
There are places I count on for a comfortable rest stop and places I would never want to stop again. There are even entire countries I don't want to visit because their facilities are so different.
Having a place to stop and freshen up helps me to feel welcome. The carefully tended tourism information booths in the region make a big impact on my attitude towards their communities and it is less for their offerings of advice and maps than for their clean well-kept areas to take care of a person's basic and immediate human needs.
I hate to think I judge a town by their toilets but in a way it is probably true, I don't need a fancy t-shirt, beautiful art display or take-out meal on every trip down the road, but I do need to know if I need to go, there is place where I can be comfortable.
