RetirePrep, month 2e: We like to move it, move it
Okay, I described bundling trips, a series of one-off trips, and some possible cruises that interest me. Then, I went a bit off the grid with walkabout options for Canada and the West Coast, including how I could handle possible trip logistics. If that all worked out, I would have options for the Atlantic Provinces, the East Coast of the US and inward to the Mississippi all the way back up to Southern Ontario, and the mid-West.
A lot of trips in some sort of trailer in that second half of the month.
But Andrea and I are considering another option. To be honest, I’m not sure how it relates to the others.
We like to move it, move it
I jokingly called it move it, move it (thank you to the Madagascar movie) as it would involve temporarily moving to various provinces and potentially territories for an extended period of time.
So, for example, let’s say I look at the Newfoundland trip. Instead of driving all over, what if we drove to Labrador and just parked the trailer there for a week? We could do a series of day trips, have a home base, maybe even stay two weeks. Then perhaps we head to Newfoundland and park somewhere near Gros Morne for a week or so. Or two weeks in Deer Lake or two weeks in St. John’s. We could even just consider a month in Newfoundland and Labrador, with only short hops in between rather than the rolling tour I outlined earlier.
But what if we didn’t have the trailer? What if we just rented an apartment in St. John’s for a month? What would that look like? Treating it like we “moved” to the province for 4-8 weeks.
My dream would be to move province to province, spending a month here, six weeks there. We could spend a month in each capital and then a few weeks getting to the next one. The goal would be a leisurely visit to the capitals and regions where perhaps we do something every other day, as opposed to a friend’s itinerary of 3 things before lunch every day. Less touristy, and more “move into the city” to get more of a feel for it.
As I said, it could be with or without the trailer. I could see combinations that would have us spend:
- 4-6w in Newfoundland and Labrador;
- 4-6w in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton;
- 2w in PEI;
- 3w in New Brunswick;
- 3-4w in Quebec (near QC, Saguenay, GaspΓ©sie);
- 4-6w in Southern and Northern Ontario;
- 3w in Manitoba;
- 3w in Saskatchewan;
- 4w in Alberta
- 5w in BC;
- 3-4w in YK;
- 3-4w in NWT; and,
- 2w in Nunavut.
So, adding it all up, drumroll please…ba da ba da ba da…44-53 weeks of living in other parts of Canada. So, yeah, about a year.
I was initially wondering, if we were also thinking of moving out of our own house, would we sell and put a bunch of stuff in storage and then travel for a year? We could rent apartments and short-term housing for a month here or there and spend a year in a suitcase. But Andrea would rather go do, say, 1 of them and then come back to Ottawa; maybe do another in the year and come back to Ottawa.
This takes me back, again, to the question of what form it might take. Are we doing AirBNB in different parts of Nova Scotia, for example? Or would it make sense to take a trailer down to NS and park it in different spots as a home base? With shorter duration, one side of the argument is that short-term accommodations are more affordable; however, you could also live in a trailer for a month here or there. Assuming, of course, that we get a trailer that is not marriage-ending too small or frustratingly too long for pulling.
I confess too that if I have the trailer, I love the idea of saying, “Hey, how about a month in (x)” where x is some location within relative 5 or 6d driving where either we could travel down together or I could drive it down and Andrea would fly to join me. Like Florida. Or the Grand Canyon (notwithstanding my fear of scorpions and snakes getting into the trailer). And then have a month around the location, with an SUV to get around and the trailer to sleep / cook / poop in.
In the end, I don’t know what we’ll do; we’ll have to wait and see what our interests and health are like at the time. Maybe we have a good trailer option, and we flock to it, or maybe we try it and say, “Meh.”
Either way, we’ll see more of North America one way or another or another or another.
And I think that’s about it.
Did I miss anywhere that you want to go?
