What If.....?

My packed trunk moving
 across the country

When packing for a road trip, it is always best to be comfortable and be prepared. Unlike a trip where you get on a plane to your destination, a road trip you can pack more in your car. I don’t know about you, but I always over pack. I like to be prepared for all occasions be it weather, emergency or be that person that brings the most random thing that, who knows you might need it in a pinch. Everyone knows the essentials when travelling but not everyone thinks about the What If’s?

• ·         What If your GPS breaks and you don’t have reception in the middle of nowhere to use your phone?
• Always bring a road map as backup. Go to CAA ahead of time and get maps and a TripTik. They highlight the whole trip for you and let you know about construction and what to look out for.
• ·         What If you lock your keys in the car?



My packed front seat moving
across the country

• Always travel with your spare set of keys. Keep your spare key in your purse or wallet and make sure you take it with you when you exit the car. (I might have locked my keys in my car with it running when I went into Tim Hortons on a road trip once. Had the spare key in my purse luckily.)
• ·         What If you have an allergic reaction?
• Always carry some Benadryl with you. Travelling with a little travel pharmacy with you doesn't hurt. I usually bring all the contents of my medicine cabinet as you never know what you might encounter on the open road.

Think about the What’s If’s on your next road trip, you might surprise yourself with what you bring that was a life saver. What is the weirdest thing you have brought on a road trip?

Capturing the Selfie

To selfie or not to selfie, that is the question. The rise of modern day social media in the last 15 years with MySpace followed by Facebook, has generated a new form of taking pictures. The reaching your arm out as far as you can and use your digital camera and take a picture of yourself. This form was used for photos for profile pictures on sites. Today, it is a common occurrence in everyday life. Just because you can does not ALWAYS mean you should.

I admit that I have been "that person" who when they travel have taken selfies because it was the thing to do. Looking back on them I have learned...I was not meant to take selfies (my arms are not long enough). Taking selfies doesn't capture the whole scene that you are trying remember. As mentioned in other posts, I have traveled both alone and with friends and have learned that there are better ways to take the pictures while traveling of yourself. Here are a few photo tips I recommend from trial and error myself.

• If you are travelling with at least one other human being, let them take your picture. It will be better quality, aligned properly and it will be more visually appealing. Your travel companion can also capture the moments leading up to the actual picture, like if you are trying to put your feet in the ocean, they can capture the almost fall in trying to balance yourself. Although humiliating, great memories are captured that way.

Trying to put my feet
in the Bay of Fundy

Actually putting my feet
 in the Bay of Fundy

• If you are travelling alone, have a camera with a timer on it. Balance your camera on a tree branch or on top of your car and set the timer to run into place. It will seem as if you had someone traveling with you.

• If travelling alone, have a travel companion you can pose in the picture you would like to be in and pretend it is you. The storyline and comments from your travels will seem unique and entertaining if they were pictures of a knome or a large stuffed animal on social media or in photo albums.

Angus at the Alberta-Saskatchewan
border 

Angus checking us into our hotel
for the night.

On your next road trip, remember these tips and see the reactions you get when you get more creative with your photos then just the selfie.  

Setting The Mood

No road trip is ever complete without your favourite tunes. Driving down the highway with the windows down cranking your jam is one of my favourite parts of road trips. Picking the right tunes is a chore in itself. Picking the right music will determine the kind of road trip you are going to experience.

When thinking of what music to put on your iPod for the trip, think of having many different genres and artist to select from. If you are in your car for 8 hours a day getting to your destination, you can get tired of the same music playing over and over again. Picking a lot of different genres will allow you to play to your mood at that moment of the day. Feeling mellow and in the moment enjoying the scenery, you may play more subdued music or feeling bored and need a pick me up, play some upbeat classic music that you can car sing to and rock out to.  Always put some of your guilty pleasures that you don’t let others know about. Especially if you are travelling alone, who’s going to stop you....no one, have fun with it!

Stuck on what kind of songs you should be looking for, here is a list of few websites that have compiled some of the best tunes to play on your next road trip.

20 Essential Songs for your Road-Trip Playlist

Top 100 Songs You Need To Take With You

Top 500 Road Trip Songs

You sometimes forget what songs are out there until you see lists like this. What are some of your favourite songs to rock out to on long road trips? Are you a car star?

It's Not Always About the Destination

While on road trips it’s not always the destination that’s important, it’s also what you see along the way.  When planning my cross country move to Calgary, my friend and I sat down and planned our route, hotels and then started looking up all the different ‘Largest Things’ in Canada. No road trip is ever complete without seeing the largest monument or statue in the country/world. A drive that could have taken us four days we stretched out to seven days to fit all the largest things into our drive. We mapped out how to get to them and had all the addresses written down that we followed. We mainly stayed to the Trans Canada Highway and did not venture too far out of the way because we did not want to waste too much time.

Sometimes as you drive you find random things to stop at like my friends and I when we drove all over Nova Scotia. We were driving down the highway and looked to the left and saw

a random large Native American statue. So of course we had to stop.

Another fun thing that I just heard about from a co-worker when I told her about this blog was Geocaching. Geocaching is a scavenger hunt across the country. People have hidden boxes you can find with treasures that other people have left. Once you have found the box, you sign the guest book, take the treasure and leave your own treasure for the next person to find. You can plan road trips around finding these which kind of sounds fun. I will have to definitely remember this when I go on my next road trip. 

To Stay or Not To Stay

The next big decision in your road trip planning is what hotel you want to stay in. If you are going on a road trip with no set destination in mind, it is hard to plan your route and plan where you will stay each night. If you have a set destination, it is best to plan your stay before you leave, distinguish how long you want to drive each day and factor in the daily stops along the way.

Benefits of booking your hotel stays earlier is better rates, ease of mind at the end of a long day of driving and checking to see if the hotels are sold out before you get there.  If you are to stay in a small town along the highway you can usually just pull in and get a room, but the big cities can sometimes be difficult to find a room some nights. There can be big corporate conferences in town or festivals that take up the rooms. For example, in Calgary majority of hotels are sold out Monday thru Thursday because of corporate meetings and conferences happening with the large oil companies. Weekends you should have no major issues, unless it is the two weeks of Calgary Stampede.

St. Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia (Bay of Fundy)

If you use websites like Expedia, Travelocity or Hotels.com, majority of the rates you will pay is non-cancellable or non-refundable, so if you are to book with those sites, you have to be 100% sure you are staying there. Your best bet is to book through the hotel website itself. Most hotel rates on their websites are the lowest rates you will find. Always read the fine print to make sure of the cancellation policy before you book anything.  

Before You Start....

Before you head out on your journey, there is one thing that you must know very well, your mode of transportation. Be it a car, motorcycle, RV or bicycle, your mode of transportation is the most important part of a road trip. Be comfortable with your vehicle, know the good and bad sounds, know how many kilometres you can go on the highway before you need to fill the tank, take your vehicle into the shop for an inspection, check the oil, air pressure in your tires, fill up on windshield fluid, etc. There is nothing worse then driving down the highway and your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.

Purchase a CAA membership while traveling, even if you get it just for the journey and you cancel it. It is worth paying the membership price then having to find a tow truck and spend a few hundred dollars to get the car towed.  While travelling it would be better to splurge on the CAA Plus membership because if you need a tow it will tow you up to 250 km before they start to charge you for every kilometre after that. The basic membership will only tow you up to 10 km, it could get expensive with the cost of repairs.  As the Scouts say, Be Prepared. 

Where To Begin?

Once the words ROAD TRIP! are spoken, the mind starts spinning with ideas of where to go and what to do. Your first task is to sit with a map in front of you and start planning. The destination is always the hardest part of the whole process. We all dream about where we want to travel to, but where do you start?

When thinking about your destination, you will want to keep into consideration who you are with, what you can see along the way, and how many stops for the night you might have to make.  Make sure you have enough time to get to the destination, do everything you want to do while there and get back home. There is nothing worse than spending money and time and not being able to do everything you want to do.

If you want to go to another province and adventure there, consider flying there and renting a car. It will allow you to have more time at your destination to see and do what you want. It may cost a bit more, but you will save time in the end. I did this when I went to Nova Scotia and PEI with my three friends. It’s an adventure wherever you are with friends.