I’m proud to say I backed this trailer rig up and deployed the tent singlehandedly. Pam LeBlanc photo

I did it! And yes, I’m bragging!

Yesterday, I backed my Woolly Bear trailer down a long, narrow driveway and set up camp entirely on my own.

A friend had alerted me through social media that I might bump into a woman named Marilyn Harlow of Oregon, who is traveling the country with a similar rig, when I got to Village Creek State Park near Beaumont.

I spotted her as soon as I arrived.

“It’s my sister,” she hollered, even though we’d never met and she had no idea I was coming. She explained, as she busily uncoupled her trailer from her truck, that all outdoors-loving women were bound by Mother Nature.

Marilyn, 70, has been traveling the country in her car-top tent and Teardrop trailer since October 2017. Pam LeBlanc photo

I told her I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when it came to backing up a trailer, and to please not laugh as I tried. My first night out, I explained, a guy in the neighboring slot took the wheel and did it for me. I was new at this.

Instead of laughing, Marilyn, who just turned 70 years old this week, offered me some solid advice about backing up a rig, then let me alone to try it myself.

It took 17 tries, but I did it. I backed that sucker in just perfectly, deployed the trailer-top tent and crossed my arms with satisfaction. Then Marilyn trotted across the street with a stool and helped me put on the rain fly, because the skies were turning dark and rain was coming. (It’s a good thing she did; it poured.)

Flowers are blooming at Village Creek State Park. Pam LeBlanc photo

Texas marks state 12 of 48 for Harlow, who hit the road in October 2017 after selling her condo in Oregon.

“I had a beautiful condo and lived in wonderful neighborhood, but couldn’t afford to do anything but pay for that condominium and live that day-to-day existence,” she said. “Which wasn’t bad, but I love to travel.”

She bought a Teardrop trailer and a roof-top tent, and calls the set-up her two-bedroom apartment – she sleeps up top if it’s nice, but if it’s really cold she can bed down in the enclosed Teardrop.

“I simplified my life,” she said. It feels good when everything is bought and paid for.

Marilyn’s setup is similar to mine, and she gave me some tips before I tried to back up my rig. It worked! Pam LeBlanc photo

She was on her way to the local library, but promised to chat more when she returned. After I went for a hike around the piney park – part of the facilities are still closed due to storm damage two years ago, but should reopen this summer – I dropped by to say hi. She pulled up a chair for me and we talked about women and camping.

“I like being outside. I like eating outside, being, breathing, walking outdoors,” she said. “It’s especially nice when the sun shines.”

Sometimes, though, women get the idea that they can’t do it by themselves. That’s wrong.

“My message is that women do not be afraid to be alone in the world. There’s nothing that I’ve feared out here, and especially in campgrounds. I’ve never felt so safe in my life,” she said.

She doesn’t make reservations as she goes; she wants flexibility. She gets advice about where to stay from people she meets along the way.

Her next stop is Louisiana. After that, she says, she’s turning left at Mississippi and heading north toward Wisconsin.

Early on in her adventure, people helped her when she needed it, and she did.

“I had a lot of different angels along the way,” she says. “There’s many things I didn’t understand about leverage and leveling. They were there for me and showed me. I’ve learned over time that I can do it – It’s learning that and getting past it, both mentally and physically. The confidence comes in doing It.”

Yesterday, she was here for me.

Heather Harrison, left, Sheila Reiter and Pam LeBlanc pose by their canoe before a training session on Lady Bird Lake on Sunday, Feb. 24.

My three-woman Texas Water Safari team chalked up a short training session this morning on Lady Bird Lake.

Besides the first spin in the actual canoe we’ll put on the water at this year’s race, a 260-mile jaunt from San Marcos to Seadrift on the Texas coast, it served as a chance to do some planning, lay out expectations and talk about how we’ll handle stuff that goes wrong, because it invariably will.

The paddle itself felt great. I’m the least experienced member of the team. Both Sheila Reiter and Heather Harrison have logged multiple Safari finishes, but I just started paddling in the last year. I’m hoping my training as a swimmer will somehow come in handy when digging a paddle into a river for three days straight. So far the rhythm of paddling reminds me of the bilateral motion of swimming freestyle.

Highlights of today’s spin? An aggressive swan that wanted a peek inside our canoe,  turtles stacked on logs like dinner plates, bright sunshine and crisp air.

We single bladed, or used paddles with just one blade on each end. We’ll do some double blading during the race, too, but that involves lots of splashing, and since it was 45 degrees when we started, we skipped that today. That didn’t stop me from sloshing plenty of water on Reiter, who sits up front. (She yelled, I stifled laughs.) I sit in the middle and Harrison steers from the back seat.

My favorite thing about today’s session came during the post-paddle debriefing, which involved talking about the horrors of past Safaris. My teammates described one long, terrible portage gone awry as “the worst day of my entire life.” They also described boats flipping in the bay near the finish, core muscles that gave out, dry heaving and staggering around on the banks.

Just typical Safari stuff.

Our number one rule? Laugh – about the funny stuff, about the stuff that goes wrong, about everything.

Pam LeBlanc shows off her Junior Ranger patch in this 2008 photo taken by her husband Chris LeBlanc at Yellowstone National Park. She became a Junior Ranger at Grand Teton National Park.

A story about a 103-year-old woman sworn in as a Junior Ranger at Grand Canyon National Park recently caught my attention.

Most Junior Rangers fall between the ages of 5 and 13, according to the National Parks Service website, but people of all ages can participate.

I say go for it if you love the parks.

Ten years ago, when I was 44 years old, I was sworn in as a Junior Ranger at Grand Teton National Park. My husband chuckled as Ranger Fozzy asked me a series of questions, then bestowed upon me an official Junior Ranger patch.

Go ahead and laugh if you want, but I love the national parks, and believe that programs like this can help everyone better appreciate and protect what Mother Nature has given us. We have to take care of them, and by sharing our love of them, we let others know that they should care too.

Plus, I wanted that patch.

It all came back this week, when I read Good Morning America’s short story about Rose Torphy, the 103-year-old who rolled her wheelchair into a park store during the government shutdown to claim her own Junior Ranger patch. She’s older than the park itself, which celebrates its 100^thbirthday this year.

Torphy has three children, 18 grandchildren and 10 great-great grandchildren. According to her daughter, she’s been wearing her Junior Ranger pin proudly ever since – and telling those who ask her about it what it means.

The National Park Service’s Junior Ranger program teaches participants to protect national parkland. Its motto is “explore, learn and protect.”

Prospective junior rangers complete an activity book and promise to act as park stewards.

Way to go Torphy.

The Chimney Corner Lounge at Sunshine Ski Resort serves poutine, a pile of French fries topped with cheese curds and hot gravy. (Their version includes short ribs, just to make sure it sticks to YOUR ribs.) Pam LeBlanc photo

Texans eat breakfast tacos and nachos, Canadians prefer poutine.

But if you’re going to partake of the famous food, gird your loins. The dish, a favorite here in the land of sub-zero temperatures, snow-laden trees and incredibly beautiful mountain scenery, features French fries, cheese curd (read on) and hot gravy.

I ordered up dish of poutine last night with my burger at a great little hole-in-the-wall joint called Eddie’s Burger Bar in downtown Banff. I could have made a meal out of just the poutine.

But, honestly, I’m still trying to figure out the “why” of poutine.

Why take a perfectly good pile of fries, toss them with a handful of lumpy, tiny-dumpling-shaped globs of cheese (that’s the curd part), then suffocate them in dark brown gravy? It turns into a soggy mess.

I forgot to take a picture of last night’s poutine, but when I stopped for lunch at Chimney Corners Lounge on the mountain at Sunshine Ski Resort today, the guys at the table next to mine had ordered up a gourmet version of poutine topped with short ribs. (I ordered an amazing Sunshine Salad, loaded with broccolini, portobello mushrooms, carrots, arugula and pickled onion.

They were filming the food with their professional video cameras, so I horned my way over and asked if I could take a shot myself. They filmed me, narrating that “the poutine has attracted visitors.”

I’ll stick to the breakfast tacos, thanks very much.