Just like Willy Nelson, we’re fixin’ to get on the road again...goin’ places that we’ve never been; seein’ things that we may never see again.
After our Alaska road trip in 2011, we set our sights on the Canadian Maritime Provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island – as our next big journey. Circumstances, or maybe it was simply what we considered to be more attractive alternatives, conspired to lead us elsewhere for the next two years: the Greek Isles and Italy in 2012, the Camino de Santiago in Spain in 2013. But the Maritimes can be put off no longer – this is the year. So beginning May 12 we’re off to Canada for another extended road trip in the Tiger, our faithful 19-foot motorhome.
As I began planning our route for this journey, I knew we wanted to follow our preferred practice of avoiding long stretches of driving along soulless Interstate highways and staying as much as possible on what William Least Heat Moon calls the blue highways. Even avoiding the Interstates, the most direct route would be across the heartland of America and up through New England. But my eyes kept getting drawn back to that big bunch of states up north that we’d never been to: North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They comprised a big hole in our Map of Colored In States; all around are states cheerfully colored in with bright colors, but that big white area was really bugging me. And way over there in the northeast corner of the map is Maine – another white blotch begging for a dose of color. Our first post-retirement road trip back in the fall of 2008 was a leaf-peeping tour of New England, but we skipped Maine on that trip and have regretted it ever since. Obviously there was no way we could miss Maine this time since it’s right next door to the Maritimes – we’d have to go through Maine either coming or going this time, no matter what.
But back to the overall route making. As I began penciling in potential routes, it dawned on me that if we went north to check off that bunch of states, we might as well keep going right into Canada pick up some of the white areas on that other map, our Map of Colored In Provinces. That map was pretty sparse – only Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory had splashes of color: BC from a trip to Victoria a few years ago and again from the Alaska trip, and Alberta and Yukon from the Alaska trip as well. But, as my map clearly indicates, it’s just a short jog from North Dakota over into Montana, then up into Saskatchewan and east to Manitoba. From there we could cut back into Minnesota, across Wisconsin and Michigan’s upper peninsula, and re-enter Canada at Sault Ste Marie. That puts us in Ontario, giving us an opportunity to stop by and visit friends from last year’s Camino family. So Peterborough and Ottawa were added to the itinerary.
After Ottawa, we’ll cross into Quebec and follow the south bank of the St Lawrence River up to northern New Brunswick, then over to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, back into New Brunswick, and finally into Maine, putting us back in the US for keeps. From then we’ll wander down the east coast to Alexandria to visit our son, Russell and his wife Carol, and to Columbia, South Carolina to visit my brother John and sister-in-law Charlie. Crossing the country from there, we’ll head back up to Virginia and pick up US 50, “America’s Highway.” We’ll drive US 50 all the way over to Kansas City, and then because we’ve driven most of US 50 across Kansas at least twice, we’ll turn right and follow the Missouri River north to US 36 and take that blue highway across northern Kansas and back home to Colorado. So that’s it folks, a bit more than 9000 miles if we don’t deviate from the projected route. We’ll finish the 50 states, and add seven Canadian provinces as well.
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