2 - A snow day.

Saturday 16th January saw another major snow storm which made an ideal day to stay at home, light the wood burners and dream of warmer weather and spring adventures.

This is after the storm!

We propped the map up on the kitchen table, got our laptops ready and began to plan out route.

We have found an app called Tripit that allows you to organise your trip and also makes routes for you. AND it works on computer and phone. So we are using it to record our plans as well as an excel spreadsheet. 

Thomas has his graduation ceremony on Saturday 4th June and as we will already be in Halifax we might as well head off from there and him and Pam can return to our house to housesit and plan their own adventure. (We will have to remember to take photos leaving Rose Bay that morning!).

Out first day will be a relatively short day as we won't leave till after the ceremony and an early meal so we will just head over the border into New Brunswick and stay outside Moncton. Then things get interesting!

It looks so pretty in the sun!

We'd rather not just follow the Trans Canada Highway and we want to visit the real French Quebec without going to Quebec City or Monteal. So we will have to cross the St Lawrence River at Riviere Du Loup which means going on a ferry - exciting! Then we get to drive from Saguenay to Val D'Or. Now on a large map of Canada it appears this journey doesn't look too far - it may take 4 or 5 hours, lots of time to stop and get a few caches - no problem. In actual fact we are talking nearly 800km! Not for the first time - or the last, we are startled at the size of this country.

So this part of the journey will be taking a couple of days! We want to be able to stop and experience the country and not feel we have to be up at dawn and driving until after dark!

Anyway we have got as far as Lake Louise with our planning so far. It's really a bit vague and based around having time to geocache and explore as well as drive. We've also been looking at places on our route for over night stops! We'd like to avoid large chain hotels and experience smaller, family owned businesses and so we've been using Tripadvisor to help us.

Now on the camino we stayed in small, basic accommodation but some of the places we have found on Tripadvisor are mind blowing! If a review starts 'the room was clean' then you have to wonder, as shouldn't any room be clean? We decided to give the motel with 'feces (sic) on the wall' a miss too. AND look at this place in Winnipeg http://mariaggis.com now which room should we choose?

Planning is so much fun, and there are so many places we want to visit - we may have to do this again!

1 - An Idea!

Written on Wednesday January 13^th

The first big storm of the year.

The power is out but Gary has started the generator for the first time ever so we have some electricity – it’s 8.55 and hopefully the power will be back on by 10.30.

Our adventure began during the Christmas holidays. 

Thomas and Pam were planning what they were going to do between finishing university and starting work. They had already decided to visit England for a couple of weeks but they also wanted to drive across Canada. Their problem was that they would need to hire a car and if they started in Vancouver and drove home then leaving the car in a different place would costs a lot of money. They needed a solution.

That’s when Gary had his idea!

What if we drove to Vancouver in one of our cars, 
then they could drive it back!!!!!!

They get their adventure in a safe car and as a bonus we get an adventure too!!!!!!! (too many exclamation marks I know but I feel they are warranted! )

AND – think of all the geocaches we will find – a nice line of smilies across the second biggest country in the world – how cooooooooooolllllll!

So now the fun part. We get to plan our trip.

In front of me, pinned to a board, is a map of Canada – Nova Scotia looks so small is so small! That’s a lot of country to drive across.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of places aren’t where I thought they were – I thought Winnipeg was a lot further north and Ontario is huge!

So, some ideas;

We will start right on the east coast - home - and drive to the west coast – Vancouver or Victoria Island?

We don’t want to visit Toronto but we do want to travel through Quebec.

We’ve got 3 weeks.

We might pop into America if the prairies are as boring as everyone says they are, but we really want to stay in Canada.

We don’t want to stick to the Trans-Canadian Highway but might have to.

We want to visit some spectacular places.

And, of course, we need to get a lot of Geocaches.

I have a book by Mark Richardson called Canada’s Road it’s about ‘A journey on the Trans-Canada Highway from St. John’s to Victoria'.

So that should give us some ideas, Also I have found a website called http://www.canadianbucketlist.com  which will also be useful.

As I said, I have pinned a map of Canada to a board so that we can mark our route onto it as we identify the places we want to visit.

Mark Richardson starts his journey on the official eastern point of Canada – in Newfoundland. But Rose Bay, being slap bang on the edge of the Atlantic, will be our starting point. 
Mark begins his book describing the adventures of previous trans-Canadian adventurers:

Thomas Wilby, (apparently a snooty English journalist) who in 1912  was chauffeured across the country - he didn't speak to his chauffeur at all!

Perry Doolittle who drove a Model T Ford across in 1925 and actually had to drive along railway lines because there were no roads. He was the founder of the CAA (Canadian Automobile Association).

Alex Macfarlane drove in 1946 and was the first person to drive the whole way on all-Canadian roads. He was presented with the Todd Medal to celebrate his achievement.

I’m going to see if I can find out more about their experiences. It might be fun to compare their experiences and observations with ours.