Advertisement
Count down began a long time ago, but now the reality has hit… 2 weeks of work and we are outta here! It has been a long and amazing journey already and we haven’t even left Calgary. Before we start on all the details and adventures of this trip let me just go back to how we got to “t-minus 2 weeks”
When I returned in September 2007 from my trip to Africa I swore that the next big adventure for me would be to see my home country- CANADA. That is in capitals for one reason and one reason alone, it’s a huge place and huge places need huge letters. The big epiphany of traveling Canada came to me from listening to friends I had met from Ireland while in Africa. Liz and Steph could talk for hours on the places and history of Ireland. They knew facts and distances and dates and names of lots of significant Irish things and I knew so little of Canadian things. They asked even the simple questions, “how big is Canada?”… well, it’s the 2nd largest country in the world, but I couldn’t tell them the square kilometers (Canada actually occupies an area of 9,984,670 square kilometers). “What is the population?”- at the time I said about 35 million people (Population is actually about 34,409,066, so I was close). I could also tell them that we had the longest “friendly” boarder in the world, that Canada has the longest coast line thanks to the Baffin Islands in the Arctic. I tried my best to emphasize that it is really difficult to know all the details that they did in a country that is so vast. Our longest flight in Canada would be from Victoria (British Columbia) to St. John’s (Newfoundland) probably clocking in around 7.5 to 8.0 hours (if there was a direct flight), at the time Liz and Steph thought their longest flight might be around 1.5 hours. So yeah, Canada is huge and I wanted to see and know more of where I am blessed to come from.
So last year I planned to head out across Canada in my SUV. I would sleep and cook and eat all out of the back of my truck. I had my route planned, to hit a portion of every province and territory in Canada, to drive the entire way and to take well over 4 months to do it. But, life has a way of changing your plans. The first thing life changed was my relationship status; I’d been single for over 5 years and was in no way looking to be in a relationship when I was about to head out on my adventure, but I’m not complaining, life put Brian (Also known as BJ) in my plans.
I have known BJ since grade 10, so that makes us friends for 12 years. We have been in a relationship now for just over a year and recently got engaged in April. I am completely thrilled that things don’t always go according to my plans, I cannot wait to share this trip and all its good, beautiful, bad and ugly moments with BJ. There is no one else I could pick out that I would want to do this trip with. Thankfully BJ is game and is just as stoked to discover all that our home has to show to us.
The second thing life changed was my timing. I was going in the summer of 2010 and there was nearly nothing that was going to stop me. I made it more than clear with BJ that I was doing this and that he could either come, drop in along the way, or just had to be okay with me traveling without him. I even sat down with my boss and requested time off. And then- wham!- life got it’s way. Things at work changed the same day I asked for time off and my boss requested that I take on more responsibilities, BJ and I had good talk and he really wanted to be able to do this trip with me, so life won and Road Trip Canada was postponed until 2011.
Finally in the first few months of 2011 BJ and I firmed up all of our plans, chose a route to cross Canada and sat down with our workplaces to request the time off. I am fortunate enough to work for an amazing company and an even more amazing boss who understands my need to travel. When I requested the time off from work I went in with very little expectation, I knew that what I was asking for was going to be a difficult thing to grant, but she came back with an offer of 87 days of leave. I could not believe it!
BJ also works for an amazing company. He was granted the leave from work and all the guys he works with immediately sat down and came up with lists of places we had to see and things we had to do in their home provinces.
Now we are at the countdown. For the last couple of months BJ and I have been compiling all of the items we will need for the trip. First off was the purchase of our rooftop tent. You heard it, ROOF-TOP-TENT. I had seen these amazing foldout all canvas construction tents that sit on the top of your vehicle while in Africa and thought that that would be such an easy way to travel through Canada. You don’t have to be in a campground, easy setup and nothing to haul or tow behind your vehicle. While looking into these I came across a new version that is a hard shell tent and opens in about 5 seconds flat, so we got one . Our home for the next 85 days will be the Autohome Columbus Variant roof top tent! I think this is one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me, the challenge of sticking it out on the top of the SUV for 85 days. The goal is to not stay in any hotels, unless we are in a big city where camping is not a viable option.
Other than the tent we have all of the other usual items for camping: stove, bbq, lantern, cooler etc. We are bringing along a laptop and some other electronics, so to keep these charged we have the Eliminator battery power station- an amazing device. You can not only use this for powering your electronics but it is also a radio, light and it will boost your car. So with all this we are hoping that we have most of our bases covered. At least we know that we can get anything we have forgotten along the way.
So with just two weeks left BJ and I just have to make it through the last bit of work, take the rest of my personal belonging to storage and finally pack up the truck. I cannot wait!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0436s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Can't wait to read your blogs.
Many will be following along on your travels and enjoying your photos.