This time last year, we were feverishly packing our bags and preparing to head to Puerto Rico. This year I’m sitting at our small breakfast table crowded with maps, sipping my gazillionth (actual unit of measurement) cup of coffee of the day, needling my way through webpage after webpage of info on Canada.
Every year we make an effort to leave the US. All those years ago living in Europe, traveling and exploring other countries opened our eyes to how much of our own country we’d yet to see. With the adventure van, exploring the US is made easy. It is however near to impossible to ignore that international travel itch, so once a year we try and do our best to scratch it. Last year that same itch took us across the Caribbean to Puerto Rico, where we fell in love with the people, the food (yum), and the culture!
The short list for this year’s dream destinations included, Iceland ( we’ve literally been talking about it forever), Isla Holbox Mexico, Costa Rica and Alaska. Canada certainly wasn’t on the list, or even anywhere near it. But for reasons we can’t quite share yet ( keeping secrets is killer) we opted to save some dough in our travel kitty and take a loop around the Great North, well part of it anyway- Canada is a big place.
The Route:
Admission of guilt, we try so hard to be excellent planners but most of the time we’re not. The conversation that birthed this whole trip started with DJ mentioning that he’d never been to Niagara Falls before, and me telling him how there was a State Park in NY near there I always wanted to go to… one thing rolled into another and here we are talking travel plans!
Here’s the basic plan:
- Day 1: NC to NY
- Day 2: NY to Canada (eh?)
- Day 3: Exploring the Canadian side of Niagara
- Day 4: Niagara to Mont Tremblant
- Day 5: Mont Tremblant Adventuring & Rock Climbing
- Day 6: Mont Tremblant to Washington, DC ( bye bye Canada)
- Day 7: Washington DC back to NC ( we’ve got to see a man about a dog, our dog.)
With such a busy travel schedule, and so much to do and see, the last thing we want to be doing is spending time shopping for missing items, or even worse not shopping at all because our accounts were frozen because we forgot to call the banks and let them know we won’t be in the US ( it happened to us once before in Rome, its a real thing they’ll cut off your cash flow). So we’ve thrown together some quick lists of things we’ll need to prepare and make sure we don’t forget.
Prepping:
- Documents For Canadian Border Crossing- we’ll give you all the details on this in an upcoming post!
- Let The Bank Know We’re Out Of The Country
- Check Cell Phone Coverage- are we covered in the Canada?
- Make Copies of Important Documents ( Passports, Driver’s Licenses, Van Registration, etc.)
- Research Border Crossing Restrictions- Can and Cant’s
Must Have Gear ( Aka Crap we can’t forget):
- Hiking Boots & Gear
- Camera Gear
- Warm Clothes & Extra Blankets- yes it’s summer, but its still Canada 🙂
- Rock Climbing Gear
- Passports
Are we forgetting anything? I’m sure we are! Got recommendations? Drop us a line!
Something to think about…Unfortunately, since our blog posts are about 3 weeks behind our real lives by the time you’re reading this our adventure will have come and gone! If you want to keep us with us in real time check out our Instagram @venture_wild. But still -we’d love to know what you think. If there are places we should have gone and what we should have seen along the way! Let us know in the comments below. And thanks, thanks for being here we appreciate you- in case you didn’t already know!