“I played hockey with a Canadian guy who lives in Santa Rosa,” Harry said. “He wants us to stop in. Bob’s got oil money, so I’m sure his house is amazing.”

This Bug trip was Harry’s idea, and I had promised to go along with whatever he dreamed up. “Okay,” I said, “I’m ready to visit an amazing house.”

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and wound our way up the coastal road, dodging bikers on the narrow pavement. The mountains shot up on our right, and on our left the edge of the road fell steeply to the ocean. The slope and sharp curves had me gripping the Bug’s door handle, but the vistas were beautiful. The afternoon sun glittered on the water and surf frothed onto the beaches. Had there been places to pull over, we’d have stopped to drink in the scenery.

Once we reached Santa Rosa, Gertrude’s phone voice directed us to turn left at the Charles Schultz Museum, passing by Snoopy’s doghouse. Behind the museum a statue of Charlie Brown dressed in hockey gear stood by the Schultz ice rink.

“Schultz was a big fan of hockey,” Harry informed me, always a conduit of vital information.

“Ummm,” I hummed, expressing restrained enthusiasm.

Gertrude said to take a right at the rink. She had never let us down, but could she really mean to direct us into a trailer park?

“This can’t be it,” I said.

Harry pulled over and checked Bob’s address. A look of near panic gripped his face. Gertrude was correct.

“You’re a good sport,” he said. “It’ll be all right—you’re a good sport.” He was talking to himself as much as to me.

The trailer park was tidy—cheerful even—with flowering trees blooming around the metal homes. When we stopped in front of Bob’s doublewide, a boyish looking fellow came out to greet us.

“You found it!” A Canadian with a wide smile, Bob shook our hands vigorously. “Let’s get your bags,” he said. “You’re spending the night.”

He wouldn’t take no for an answer. It looked like we were staying overnight in Bob’s Amazing Trailer.

I’d never been in a doublewide before. The rooms were larger than I imagined. The living space was nearly the size of a tennis backcourt, divided by a long sofa. Behind the sofa Bob had set up a game area with foosball, ping-pong table, putting green, and a small crib for when his daughter visits with her baby. The sofa faced a flat screen TV as big as the foosball table. “For watching hockey,” Bob said. The kitchen had a bar and stools, and a large table and six matching chairs occupied the dining room. Outside there was a covered deck on one side of the doublewide, a sunroom in the back, which he was using for storage, and a small yard. Bob also has an RV that sleeps six, which he stores in the trailer park’s communal lot for weekend excursions.

The trailer’s previous owners were elderly, Bob explained, and eager to unload the home before moving into assisted living. He got the whole shebang for eleven grand. If he did have tons of money, as Harry suggested, he held onto it through extreme frugality.

Bob had put fresh sheets on the guestroom bed and gave us fluffy towels for our compact en suite bathroom. I had to admit that it was a clean and cozy space.

We had barely set down our bags in the guestroom when he directed us back outside to his king cab truck—washed and waxed—for a tour of the area. After winding up Route 1, the Bug deserved a rest and so we climbed in and Bob drove us to Armstrong Redwoods State National Reserve. We strolled among the massive redwoods, some fourteen hundred years old and fifteen feet in diameter. My feet made no sound on the soft forest floor as I absorbed their reverence. Bob was lucky to live near enough to visit them for a stroll among these mystical giants.

Harry’s Canadian friend does not lack for enthusiasm, and after we’d had our fill of  hugging trees, he hurried us back into the truck to show us the seacoast. He’s an aggressive driver and barreled around the curves, balancing the truck’s tires on the edge of the cliff. I was glad to be sitting in the back, swallowing to calm my churning stomach. Finally Bob pulled into the parking lot of a seafood restaurant.

“Let’s have dinner,” he said. Once my stomach settled, I realized that dinner would be a good thing.

He chose a table by huge windows overlooking th ocean. The food was good, and I got to know Bob a little better. He grew up on a thousand-acre farm in Saskatchewan and learned to play hockey skating on the farm’s frozen ponds. When his father died, Bob inherited the land, which he leases to an oil company for their pumps. As a retired teacher, he also gets a retirement pension. He may not be as rich as Harry thought, but he seems to be doing fine. Besides, immigration laws require him to leave the country for half the year, so the trailer makes sense as part-time quarters. It also makes sense that he’s just a few minutes from the Schultz ice rink. For Bob, living quarters are less about where he sleeps and more about where he chases the puck.

Bob picked up the tab for dinner and then drove us to the rink. Schultz allowed his wife to design the interior, which she made to look like  little Swiss village. Above the ice, high windows are bordered with green shutters, and window boxes trail green ivy. A group of men in white shirts and power ties were having a meeting in the conference room as a huge stuffed snoopy watched from where he was propped in a corner. If any ice rink can
be called adorable, it’s this one.

After a good night’s sleep, Bob woke us in the morning with a plate of banana bread slathered with Canadian honey and sliced pineapple sprinkled with cinnamon—delivered to us in bed.

“Cinnamon is good for you,” he said.

In all the places we’d visited, neither of us had experienced such gracious hospitality.

“If you can stay longer,” he said, “we can take the RV to a beach campground.”

It was tempting, but we had a lamp in the Bug that needed to be in Seattle in a few days. Besides, Bob was packing for Russia to play in a hockey tournament and from thre to Hawaii for a week with his girlfriend who works at a bank in San Francisco.

Before we left, Bob handed Harry a bag filled with bottles of water, peanuts, and bananas. Then he gently offeredme a little figurine of Soopy that says, “I can’t stop loving you.” Our Canadian friend has a heart as big as Saskatchewan.

Once we were back in the Bug, I told Harry, “I’m glad we stopped at Bob’s. He’s so—” I searched for the right word. “—nice.”

“‘Sask Bob,’” we called him at the rink,” Harry said. “I knew you’d like him.”

It’s impossible not to like Sask Bob. He’s a bundle of hockey-playing, Canadian farm-boy kindness and love.