Archives for April 2007

I was just telling you about the road trips that I used to take with my parents when I was a kid. Well, we drove out west too. Not once, but at least three times. One of my brothers lives in Vancouver, British Columbia and we’d drive from Ottawa Ontario all the way out to Vancouver. I guess for Americans that would be like driving from New York to Seattle. It’s about 2000 miles each way!

I think on all of those trips we brought our pop up trailer. I actually have one of the last pop up trailers that my family owned. Chris and I really do have to take a road trip sometime with it. Oh we’ve taken it camping but we haven’t taken it on a long trip where you repeatedly stop and set up each night like we did on those long trips out west and back!

Ontario is the largest province in Canada, and as far as North America goes it might be the biggest province/state … I could be wrong but I think it’s bigger than Texas … if not it’s close to the same size. If you are driving from Ottawa in the South East all the way to the Northern tip of Ontario it can take more than two days if you aren’t pushing it really hard. By this I mean two to two and a half 10 hour days as opposed to 14 or 18 hours days of driving!

Going through the other western provinces is much faster. The prairies can be driven through in one day, and once you hit the Rockies in Alberta count another days travel or so to get to Vancouver.

The three times we drove out west we drove through Canada on the way there, and then through some of the US states on the way back like Washington, Montana and Idaho.

I think we only drove through Montana twice but it stuck in my mind. I really liked the scenery, the farmlands and the small towns that we drove through. I think I must have seen a lot of cows in the fields as we drove through Montana because when I remember Montana I always seem to picture cows. LOL You know, if I ever struck it rich I’d get myself a ranch in Montana. Maybe I’d contact bozeman montana real estate to see what kind of properties they’d have for me.

I think that after we’d hit Idaho we’d always head back into Canada for the rest of our trip home. It was a long time ago and I can’t remember exactly what areas we passed through, but surprisingly, even as a teenager I enjoyed those trips. They were long but enjoyable.

I think through all those summer vacation road trips with my family I’ve seen most of the USA – except for several of the most southern states, and all of Canada except for the Territories and NewFoundLand. That’s a lot of traveling … in a car!

I was just thinking that it might not be that economical to take trips like that these days with the gas prices being so high, but for some of the time period that my parents and I did our road trips gas prices were also high too, and my parents were very frugal so I guess it was still cheaper to travel that way – especially if we were renting cabins, camping or staying in our pop up trailer.

Did you go on road trip vacations with your family when you were a kid? Or do you go on them now with your family?