ENFIELD — The camping Bob McQuade found in Pennsylvania Dutch country wasn’t the kind he usually preferred.
A full-time traveler in the years after the sale of his custom picture frame business and art gallery, McQuade pulled into Lancaster, Pa., last October in search of a campsite before heading out in pursuit of the perfect photograph. What followed on his travel blog, www.ramcquade.com, displayed a generous sense of humor mixed with a dose of reality.
“Now this is camping at its finest!” McQuade quipped amid pictures from inside his recreational vehicle of other tight-packed campers and RVs. “Aw, the glory of beautiful sunrises, the scent of pines, the wonder of the wide-open spaces, yes, all but a true wilderness experience. I guess I need to return out west, this type of ‘camping’ is certainly not for me.”
McQuade, the one-time owner of Red Roof Frame Shop locations in Enfield and West Lebanon and an avid adventurer, photographer and painter in his retirement years, died on Nov. 16 at the age of 72 from multiple myeloma.
Fond of New England autumns, McQuade also grew to love the Pacific Northwest and other parts of the country once he committed to what he called “full-timing.” Accompanied by a pair of small, white Maltese dogs for companionship and almost always attired in blue overalls, McQuade motored around in a bus-sized 2004 Allegro Class A motor home — towing a 2012 Toyota Prius for side trips — throughout the Midwest, South, Southwest and particularly the West, packing his blog with pictures of the landscapes, flora and fauna he encountered.
“That was his way of communicating genuinely, when he had people in his gallery, when he was selling art or working on drawings,” said Kathy Findholt, McQuade’s sister, who splits her year between Summerville, S.C., and Canaan. “Bob made a big impression.”
Born in Shelburne Falls, Mass., in 1947, McQuade lived in Enfield for more than 30 years. A former University of Massachusetts student — “He never finished; he had a half a term to go,” recalled his brother, Mike McQuade, of Gilmanton Iron Works, N.H. — who once played professional golf in Florida and South Carolina, McQuade worked in building trades and resort management until starting Red Roof in the early 1990s. He kept the business going for 20 years, adding gallery space in the Enfield shop to display the work of other Upper Valley artists.
“He was funny; he had a dark sense of humor, which I also share,” said Sheryl Trainor, of White River Junction, the office manager at Lebanon’s AVA Gallery. “He was passionate about art. I don’t think he ever realized how good an artist he was. He was very confident in his photography; it was amazing, but he also painted in watercolors and acrylics. He always seemed a little insecure about those, but if you’ve ever seen them, he had no right to feel insecure. They were wonderful.”
Writing on his blog, McQuade said he knew for a long time that he wanted to try the “full-timing” lifestyle. Selling his shops gave him the funds to pursue it.
“Today, I officially became homeless and unemployed,” McQuade detailed in his blog’s debut post — entitled “Lift Off! Liberation Day” — on July 21, 2013. “While I suppose I should feel some kind of remorse, I must admit that it is more like relief, not regret.”
A trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons and the photographic pursuit of birds migrating westward highlighted McQuade’s first year on the road. The next year, he started in the Florida Panhandle and continued through a loop of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Utah. Then, in 2015, the big trip: From Yuma, Ariz., McQuade ambled north to tour the Canadian Rockies and Alaska, spectacular photographs filling his online journal.
He was to return to Alaska two years later, having won a state lottery to capture up-close images of grizzly bears, when his health began to fail.
“He found out in Bend (Ore.); the doctor there said there’s a treatment for (myeloma), T-cell therapy,” Mike McQuade said. “He could do it in Portland after they got him into remission, only to find out he’d have to have a full-time caregiver such as a spouse. He didn’t have that, because he was traveling alone. It got put off for a year or two until it really got bad last year.”
As Findholt put it, her brother’s penchant for perfectionism created a distance with his siblings over the years. Communication often meant monitoring his blog. It’s what brought them all together in the end.
The treatment first suggested to McQuade in Oregon was secured last spring in Little Rock, Ark. (A third sibling, Bill, lives about three hours away, in Springdale.) Having achieved semi-retirement herself, Findholt packed up her things and met Bob there, the two of them moving into a dormitory apartment near the hospital to make his recovery easier.
“He desperately needed a caregiver; he didn’t want to be in a hospital for three months,” Findholt said. “He said, ‘If I have a caregiver, they will do this transplant and it gives me a shot.’ … I was going to close up my apartment to go to New England, but instead I went with my dog and cat and headed to Little Rock where Bob was. The rest of it was amazing.”
“(She) was simply invaluable to me, especially during some of the dark days I spent in the hospital,” McQuade blogged on Sept. 5. “Don’t know if I would have made it without her.”
McQuade returned to the Upper Valley last fall, visited friends and road-tripped around northern New England, then pointed southward. After Pennsylvania, his goal was to photograph wild horses on Virginia’s Chincoteague Island before settling down in Florida. He collapsed a day after arriving in Virginia and died shortly thereafter in a Maryland hospital.
Findholt has her brother’s ashes now. She said she may deliver them to Chincoteague the next time she heads north.
“He was very artistic, always,” Mike McQuade said. “I talked to him once about watercolors he was painting. He had the gallery in Enfield and had showed someone else who did waters. He took a lesson, within the first week or two did his first water and sold it a week later for $5,000. He was an amazing, talented man.”
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.