This week was sort of a turning point for us. We had very much hit the end of the ‘novelty’ period and were starting to learn some hard truths about living for the foreseeable future ‘on the road’.

We have moved through 3 provinces this week (5 in total since we started) and done a lot of miles!!   I write this at the end of a lovely stay in Ottawa but before that we had a not so great couple of days in Quebec and a couple of hard days on the road. More of both those destinations in another post or two to follow… But for now here is what we have learnt this week….

Lesson no. 1. It is NOT a good idea to travel for several days in a row. We know this from our European trips so not sure why we had to learn it anew! Having had a disappointing campsite on Monday we then spent all of Tuesday driving again to get us to Quebec. This made it 3 days in a row of doing little more than driving. Not a good plan as it leads to very tired and grumpy campers.

Lesson no. 2. It is NOT possible to see everything. Now this one is entirely down to me. I read the guidebooks and surf the web as to where we should go and what we should see. The result is a sort of panic about missing something. It is completely ridiculous to think that we will be able to see it all. I have to accept that and make a slightly less demanding route and timetable. So walking round Quebec city after 3 days of non stop driving was never really going to be that great a day out!! However, a day at the campsite letting the kids swim might have resulted in a happier crowd the following day!!

Lesson no. 3. We need days off. We need days when we don’t sightsee or drive. We need to just chill out and read / sunbathe / the kids need to play and ride their bikes. Again we know this stuff but had forgotten it. Partly the problem is that we are covering such huge distances and there is so much to do in each province!!

Lesson no. 4. We have to stop thinking like tourists. There are of course going to be bits in every town that we want to ‘tick off’. But we can’t arrive in each new place and start working our way through a “Quebec in a day” type itinerary. It is exhausting. We have to pick a couple of things to see in each place and just enjoy them at our own pace and somehow accept we will not have seen and done everything!

Lesson no. 5. This is NOT like Europe. We keep picking up the map and thinking ‘right we will just nip off the highway here and see this, then pop along to this place where there’s a nice looking campsite’. NO NO NO. The distances involved are just too large to do that. We did a 150 round trip in the ‘wrong direction’ earlier this week because it just looked a little way on the map. Yes yes I know maps have scales so you can actually work that stuff out but sometimes if a town promises something exciting – like a Famous Smokehouse where you can get incredible smoked salmon it is very tempting (actually totally worth it in this case – yummy!!). We’ve done 1500 miles already and for those of you following our route with highligeter pens on the maps we left you, you’ve not done much ‘marking’ as yet have you as we have probably moved 2 cms!

All these lessons seem to come back to the same thing. We are in a vast country. There are infinite things to do and see. We are not on holiday but (all together now) an ‘Educational Family Adventure’ and we are human beings who need rest, play and recuperation too. We (esepiacally me) need to rememnber that we will NOT see everything.

So after a weird sort of week of analysing why and how the ‘wheels have fallen off’ and chatted to lots of people about how they ‘manage’ their route etc. we are now feeling enlightened and inspired and ready to carry on.

Tomorrow we are meeting Dad and Carol in Niagara Falls for 4 nights which we are really looking forward to!