There’s something very special about not having to pack all your stuff into a small cabin-sized suitcase and deal with the unhappy people who work in airport security.
There’s bliss in being able to take your sweater off and throw it onto a pile of disposable coffee cups and random junk in the back of your Jeep without having to worry about getting dirty looks from other passengers.
Roadtrips for us usually means “let’s-find-creepy-obscure-things-in-America.” You’ve been warned.
United States
New Hampshire: Let’s Visit the Ocean (2-days)
This was a self-driven “must-see-the-ocean” trip. We were barely able to cross the border (cranky pants border guard) and then COVID-19 spread its un-awesomeness. We drove through mud, visited Portsmouth, saw the ocean, stood on a beach, found another beach, stood on that beach, ate some donuts, and went home. [Blog Posts]
Vermont: Small Town America (2-days / 215 miles)
Vermont is beautiful at any time of the year; and, makes for an easy weekend road trip from Montréal. On this road trip, we saw plenty of odd roadside attractions, wilderness, great food/coffee, and we almost rolled backwards off a mountain. I can’t get that moment out of my head. [Journey Map] [Blog Posts]
Civil War Journey: Mississippi & Alabama (2-days)
This little road trip didn’t get the airtime it needed because it was squished between two monumental drives: Denver to Omaha… and Calgary to Montreal. It also came just before “The Move.” But it shouldn’t be forgotten because the Southern US is nothing like you see in the news! [Blog Posts]
Overnight Denver to Omaha
I’m not ready to talk about this road trip. It was weird beyond my standards.
Route 66: Arizona/California Loop (4-days / 904 miles)
This journey started after work on a Thursday (Hollywood to Hesperia). From Hesperia, this route takes Route 66 to Kingman AZ… through ghost towns, desert, and old winding, bumpy, twisty roads. Route 66 is often less than 100 feet away from the interstate… but while the interstate is crowded and full of cars, the old highway doesn’t see a lot of traffic. The journey then goes south to Yuma (to find the lost Missions), and back West to Hollywood via Bombay Beach. [Journey Map] [Blog Posts]
Hollywood to Ventura: Quintessential California (2 hours / 70 miles)
This little drive along the coastal Route 1 is the “California” that I associate with California: sandy beaches, mellow people, cars and vans with surfboards strapped to the top, sandals, colourful wraps and towels, dodgy-looking beachside motels with neon signs, scooters driven by barefoot guys in Bermudas, and old wood panel vans. [Blog Posts]
Hollywood to Coachella: Palm Springs Weekend
This road trip was a learning experience for both of us because this was our very first trip to a desert, the Coachella Valley Preserve in the Colorado Desert. The name is a misnomer because much of this part of California’s desert extends southwest in North America but doesn’t creep into Colorado. [Blog Posts]
Wine Country: Santa Rosa
The distance between San Francisco and Santa Rosa is roughly an hour without traffic. From Mountain View, it is about 2-hours with the drive to SF, the pass-through, and then the drive North. I love the drive through San Francisco, especially when it’s done along the Skyline Hwy / Great Hwy heading towards. This particular part of San Francisco is windswept, covered in sand, and simply unique. [Blog Posts]
Route 49: Gold Country
For this road trip, we passed through gold country… along the Sierra Nevada… a place where ghost towns, houses, mining apparatus, and remnants of the days of the Rush sit empty and crumbling along the roadways as if one day everyone simply stood up and left. Route 49 is the highway that runs through most of the historic mining towns from the Gold Rush era. [Blog Posts]
Hell (a.k.a. Fresno)
The driving part of this road trip was far more interesting than the actual destination. We were warned ahead of time that Fresno is an odd and strangely unpleasant place. To sum up the city: it’s hot (110F/43C during our visit), barren, derelict, dusty, and run down… not in a cool ghost town kind of way. [Blog Posts]
Big Sur: the Monterey Coast
Over the July 4th long weekend, the potential for beaches, beautiful scenery, and seaside weather drew us South to the Monterey Coast. The area between Carmel and San Simeon is loosely known as Big Sur. The route is comprised of winding roads lined with cliffside pullouts, scenic bridges from the 1930s, unique vegetation, and tourists. [Blog Posts]
Canada
Montréal to Nova Scotia (1,381km / 14-Hours)
Driving through New Brunswick is an easy weekend road trip from Montréal. For this particular journey, our destination was Nova Scotia, but we meandered through New Brunswick and spread the drive out over two days. [Journey Map] [Blog Posts]
Calgary to Montréal (3,534km / 4-Days)
The running joke for most of the cross Canada trip was that it took one day to cross Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. But three days to cross Ontario. The amazing thing is that people do this drive all the time. It took us 4-days to get from Alberta to Quebec. It took my cousin 2-days because he didn’t stop… and he kept going until he passed out on the floor of his house. [Blog Posts]
Nova Scotia: The “Harbour” Road trip
This road trip was called the “Harbour” road trip of Nova Scotia because we (very literally) went to a map and found all of the places within a 1-hour radius of the Annapolis Valley that had the word “harbour” in the name and then drove to each of these places to see what is there. [Blog Posts]
Vancouver to Calgary (971km / 11 hours 50 mins)
It’s a journey that many in the west have done multiple times. If you stay focused and do quick stops, the drive is roughly 10-12 hours from city-to-city (971km on the TransCanada). However, travelling with a 7-year old is a bit more organic and our journey took 15-hours because we meandered and made a play, pee, food or coffee stop every two hours. [Blog Posts]
Vancouver Island: the Last Visit
This was a rather bittersweet road trip. We’d spent the majority of our lives flying into Comox to visit my grandparents, and this time we drove to the island from Vancouver to retrieve what was left of my grandfather’s stuff after he passed away. It’s likely this would be our last time to the island. [Blog Posts]
Calgary to Whitehorse (2,400km / 2-days)
One long weekend we decided to drive from Calgary to Whitehorse to see our friends Duke and Jonelle. The distance from Calgary to Whitehorse one way is 2400 km; to put this into perspective: imagine driving from Calgary to Vancouver, double the distance, and add in tons of wildlife. We did the drive there in 28-hours and the drive back in 24 hours. [Blog Posts]