Now that everyone has confirmed dates with me (see previous post), it’s time to lock in exact dates and locations.  But that’s not as easy as it sounds.  As I mentioned, Terego won’t let me book until 30 days prior.  And while I do like KOA, it ain’t cheap, so it tends to be my fallback rather than first choice.  But navigating provincial park websites is not easy.  I miss the book.  Remember the book?  It had all the Ontario Provincial Parks laid out in a table with amenities, site maps, etc.. all updated annually.  Now?  Now online I have to click 5 or 6 times on a variety of dropdowns, then open at least three different tabs, and click back and forth between two windows.  I know, I know, whine, whine, whine.

But I have booked the most important reservations: the ferries to and from Nfld, and the campsites at either end of each of those trips.

Oh, yes, and the Kiwanis campground in Saint Andrew by the Sea, where we’ll be meeting up with my American travellers.

Okay – I’ve lined up my who-I-am-travelling-with-and-where-and-when (everyone has finally committed – sort of). 

Two weeks in early July with BN in the Bruce Peninsula, Manitoulin, and Muskoka

One week solo in eastern Ontario and attending a conference in Montreal

Ten days in Charlevoix & Lac Saint Jean with LL

Two weeks solo in eastern NB and northern NS

One week in PEI with MB

Two weeks solo in Cape Breton and Newfoundland

One week solo in Halifax and southern NS

One week in southern NB and Bay of Fundy with LL & my American friends

One week in the Saint John river valley with LL, then boot it home in 3 days, back in time for Thanksgiving.

I’ve mentioned before the drawbacks of buying an RV from a dealership 90+ minutes away from home.  I could have had the motorhome winterized in October at a dealership in the Hamilton or Guelph area, but I had repairs that needed done under warranty.  I could have had it ‘de-winterized’ – made ready for this year’s trips – closer to home, but I am still finding things that need repairs, so yet again, off I go to Barrie.  It’s a 10 minute walk to the GO station, a 1 hour trip into Union, a 40-minute wait, then a 2-hour GO up to Barrie, followed by a $38 Uber to Heidi’s.  I do like the GO, so a nice ride with a good book is not the worst thing in the world.  But it is a full day’s journey.

I noticed last year that HH does not have much representation in Quebec, and also in the rest of Eastern Canada.  But there is another association: Terego.  Terego is a Canadian firm out of Quebec that does exactly the same thing as HH: for a fee of about $100 per annum, I have access to places to stay at farms, wineries, museums, etc…  In fact, some venues have registered with both HH & Terego.  Registering with both does mean I’m paying twice as much for this service as normal, but for this year at least, while I’m headed east, I think the added cost is worth it.  Only hitch: Terego doesn’t start accepting reservations until 1 month prior to a given date.  So right now, I’m having trouble booking my east coast trip, as I can’t get any venue to commit. And everyone online says you must book early, particularly in Newfoundland and PEI.  The stress, dammit.  (Please don’t let me be destined to spend most nights in Walmart parking lots in Gander & Summerside.) Sigh.

My sisters & I are going for a week to Prince Edward County (did you know it’s technically an island, but the name ‘PEI’ was already taken), Kingston, and Gananoque in June.  I’m trying to make this a trip they both will enjoy, as well as showing them some of what my life on the road will be like.  So I’ve booked three nights at a provincial park, two nights dry camping (boondocking) in a winery, and three nights at a very nice KOA near Kingston.

This has been the easiest trip to plan: I know the area, I know my sisters, and after 60+ years with me as their big sisters, they know to just do what they’re told.

Some of the things factoring into planning my big trip:

My sisters aren’t retired, so can only get away certain weeks (understandable)

My retired friends have families with demands on their time (of course)

Several of my friends have already booked other trips, but want to join me at come point on my travels (I get that)

I have a conference in Montreal I want to attend in mid-July (my choice)

And what is quite possibly the biggest challenge of all?  People who think they’re being accommodating with sentences like: “Oh, anytime works for me.” “I don’t care where I go.”  “There’s nothing in particular I want to see, you choose.”  In my Scotland blog, I talked about one of my visitors, a woman I didn’t really know well, who turned out to be one of the best guests.  This was because, while she was easy-going and accommodating, she started our visit by saying, “You know what I’d really like to do while I’m here?” And proceeded to list 3 or 4 perfectly do-able, interesting-sounding, activities.  Now that’s actually helpful!

For the last month, I have had maps and calendars taped up on my office walls – Google maps, Rand McNally road maps, blank calendar pages filled with location options, and lines showing hours of driving crisscrossing the maps.  It’s starting to look a bit like a war room just before a major incursion. 

Speaking of incursions, DJT has just wandered into Iran, and now my gasoline budget for this summer has gone through the roof.  Splendid.

But back to spreadsheets.  I now have a colour-coded, carefully laid-out, 2 page (legal length) Excel spreadsheet set up for the dates July 6^th to October 13^th.  This has become my master planner, my bible, my cornerstone of travel planning.  Each morning, before I do anything else, I try to make at least some progress on firming up our travel plans. 

It’s a work in progress.

This will be the year of all things east.  I intend to spend this summer in eastern Quebec, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland (Labrador is too hard to access).

My sisters plan to join me for one Ontario trip (well, one sister does, the other is less of a fan of camping but will have a good time nonetheless).  I have several friends who want to join me at various points along the way, so it should be a fun summer.  Can’t leave until after our club’s annual summer picnic in early July, which is just as well, as I’m not a big fan of Ontario’s springtime blackflies.

I like travel planning – one friend is so confident in my skills that when she was still working, she would just leave it to me to check out cities, and book restaurants and tours. The choices (all of which I have registered for) are: Provincial/National Parks, KOAs, private campgrounds, and Harvest Hosts.  I learned last year that Harvest Hosts does not have great representation in eastern Canada, particularly Quebec, so I have signed up with a similar Canadian-based service called Terego  A bit of duplicating costs, but worth it for this year at least.

I am so lucky – I have great friends.  My friend Jennifer has offered to let me keep the motorhome in her barn over the winter.  The barn is massive – hubby Ivan repairs sports cars in it, stores at least 3 recreational vehicles for himself and friends, has hundreds of cardboard boxes that our club uses for its annual book sale, and still has room for my monstrosity. 

What a load off my mind.  We made sure my 11’3” rig would fit in his 12’ high doorway, I stripped the place of every hint of food that might attract mice, and I waved good bye to it for the next 6 months.

My rig has two closets: the big one at the foot of my bed, and a narrow one in the bathroom, perfect for guests.  The rail of the smaller one is the kind you find in hotels, with inverted triangular holes for the hangers. LL used it on our Quebec trip.  She had hung at most (and really, I mean at most) 5 items on the rail.  On day two of the trip, she opened the closet to find the rail (not just the hangers, the entire rail) had fallen out of the top of the closet.  Some engineering genius had thought that two 2” screws, sans anchors, screwed into the ceiling (therefore vertically supporting the rail) would be the strongest way to affix a clothes railing in a moving closet. 

So when I had the RV in for generator repair, I told Terry I also wanted a bunch of minor repairs done (squeaky window, stuck door latch, fallen railing, etc..)  When I got to Heidi’s, I went looking for the clothes railing.  I looked in the long storage space under the bumper, in the bottom of my big closets, in the deep drawers under the benches – nothing.  Where on earth would I have stored it?  I never did find it, so Terry wasn’t able to replace it.

I got the rig home and – oh, remember when I mentioned it was a ‘narrow closet’?  –  well, guess what I found lying in the key dish on the table?  The 6” railing.  Six inch railing.  I had had it in my head that because I was looking for a clothes railing, I was looking for a long pole, having completely forgotten that the closet is a maximum of 6” wide, and the ‘clothes railing’ could fit in the palm of my hand. Sigh.

(If you squint real hard – you’ll see it in the ziploc baggy.)