With Covid vaccinations rolling out worldwide, the end of perpetual lockdown is in sight. Many of us are dreaming, planning and even venturing on road trips. While international travel may still be on hold, adventures by road offer exciting possibilities.
For the next two weeks the Friendly Friday Challenge is to post articles inspired by ROAD TRIPS past, present or future.
The last time I went on a road trip it was around Vancouver Island in British Columbia. For those who don’t know Canada’s geography, British Columbia is a province on the North West Pacific coast. To get there, it is a five-hour flight from Toronto, followed by a ninety-minute ferry ride from Vancouver (the city) to Victoria on Vancouver Island. It’s a trip I normally make by plane but it’d be an awesome cross-Canada drive. Something that I’m planning for the future!
For our Vancouver Island road trip, we rented a car and drove to Sidney, Sooke, Duncan, Nanaimo and then went across the island to Ucluelet and Tofino. Along the way we had breathtaking scenery and stopped at the many folky, arty and cultural spots.
Welcome (Coombs) 
Kody the Spirit Bear (Sooke) 
Canada’s Oldest Chinatown (Victoria) 
Totem City (Duncan)
In Canada, we are not opening non-essential travel between provinces, much less to the US. So, while I might think about a future road trip there, the next best thing is armchair travel. In my mailbox this week, Goodreads suggested this reading road trip of books set in every state across the USA.
My last great armchair read was Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui. In it, the author travels across Canada to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them.
Although it looks like a cookbook, it is really a memoir about Chinese immigration in the 1970’s. It follows Ann Hui’s Toisan father and her parents’ legacy of Canadian Chinese, chop suey style restaurants. It’s a well written, braided story that moves between her family and the people interviewed on her trans-Canada trip.
Do you have a story to tell about a road trip? Read or real? Taken or planned? By train, plane or automobile? What’s your favorite road trip song? What’s your favorite food discovered on a road trip? Tell us about it!
I look forward to seeing your post on ROAD TRIPS. You have two weeks to publish your response to this challenge, after which Amanda will pose a new one. Remember to include a pingback to this post, so that I can find you. Full instructions on Friendly Friday can be found here.
Toronto, Canada. May 2021
Late to this week’s challenge? It’s never too late ! Check out Week 2 of the ROAD TRIP challenge here!
The Sandy Chronicles 
I’m just thinking about it but it really hard to go on this time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So true for many of us. But we can always plan for when we can 🙂
LikeLike
Great idea for a theme and you’ve brought back some great memories of our own visit to Vancouver Island in 2002 🙂 But I’ve gone even further back for my contribution this week, to 1991 and out first ever US road trip: https://www.toonsarah-travels.blog/california-dreaming-our-first-us-road-trip/
We’re currently dreaming of a mega road-trip in 2022 – possibly Route 66 or possibly Chicago to New Orleans. Watch this space!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fabulous post Sarah. How things have changed since 1991. GPS takes away a lot of the stress of roadtripping in foreign places. Even just walking around cities. I’m sure your 2022 trip will be grand.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One more thing Sarah — not sure if you read Paulie’s blog but he’s currently on a Route 66 road trip and bloggin live about it. He’s very good and I recommend you check it out at https://lifeinmyyears.com/2021/05/22/route-66-california-bottle-trees-and-ghost-towns/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks – I’ll definitely check that out!
LikeLike
I came here especially to thank you for this link, Sandy. This way I learned of Paulie’s blog. He doesn’t only travel well but writes really well too. Just great.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for letting me know Manja. I enjoy Paulie’s blog posts. He writes well, is well informed and has very definitive opinions 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
You should do the cross Canada trip. I think that would be very interesting. The cross Canada train journey is supposed to fantastic too. And Vancouver Island is a great place to drive, too. I drove up to Malcolm Island once and out your way, to Barkley Sound. Fabulous place and a fun drive. Here’s a shorter road trip on my island: https://grahamsisland.com/2021/05/23/road-trip-to-hawaii-tropical-bioreserve-and-garden/
LikeLiked by 1 person
A cross Canada trip to BC is on our bucket list Graham! I started to look at routes and was surprised to see that the shortest route was through the US. Great traveller I am. Funny how oblivious we can be, about our own hometown 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Take the long, winding route. More fun!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for dropping by my post and your kind words. Yes, it was a memorable road trip with lots of vistas. Glad you like the photos.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sharing a road trip I took in 2019: https://lisalim13.wordpress.com/2021/05/23/road-trip-to-pembrokeshire-wales/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great vistas of land & sea Lisa! It must have been a great roadtrip through Wales.
LikeLike
I’ve had one of those disastrous hard drive failures so rather than writing anything new I thought I’d finally publish a bunch of road trip posts that have been hanging around just waiting to be published. The first is in France, the city of Dieppe on France’s Opal Coast: https://elizabatz.com/2021/05/23/the-city-of-dieppe-on-frances-opal-coast/
LikeLiked by 1 person
I sometimes dream about roadtripping across France. Now with your posts I have somewhere to start!
LikeLike
We used a book called ‘Back Roads France’ which was a lot of fun with some out-of-the way places…
LikeLiked by 1 person
2020 was supposed to be our year to take a three-month road trip across Canada, dipping down into the states every so often. It didn’t happen obviously, but maybe this year in September the world (or at least Canada) will start up again. At the very least, with a road trip you can always get back home, unlike a lot of my friends who were stuck in far flung places in February/March and took a few months to find a flight home. Right now we can’t even go over to the Island, let alone the rest of the country!
The armchair traveller idea is not a bad way to travel during this time…
LikeLiked by 1 person
… we Canadians will need to start compiling books by province … 🙂
LikeLike
Here’s an unusual one for Saskatchewan: A Geometry of Blood, Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape… I have a few even more odd ones for Vancouver. Maybe it’s a plan!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thinking. Thinking. Thinking…
LikeLike
We spent a good amount to time in a and around Vancouver several years back. Such a beautiful area of the country. Thanks for the fond reminder.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a spectacular place for sure.
LikeLike
I would love to travel across Canada on a road trip, this sounds fascinating. Although I have been to Canada, half a day in Windsor, just across the river from Detroit, doesn’t really count in my opinion.
I love the open spaces and small country towns.
If there is Asian food to be had along the way, even better.
LikeLike
Windsor is probably not representative of the rest of Canada 🙂 Once we open up the border I hope you do get to see more.
LikeLike
Wow road tripping across the US by book could take me a while 🙂 We don’t have much opportunity to road trip at the moment, so I will delve into my archive of travels to see what I can come up with! As I am not a fan of driving, my road trips have usually been as a passenger, with someone else taking the strain of getting me to my destinations!
LikeLike
It’d take me a while to read through them all too. Although I would never try to drive coast to coast in one go either, so maybe reading slowly, one book at that time is OK 😉
I look forward to seeing your post!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looks like a road trip I would enjoy myself :
Here is mine:
LikeLike
I enjoyed your family road trip too! Up until recently, it seemed to be a thing to have mulit-generational ‘road’ trips on cruises. I wonder if that’ll ever come back? Maybe car road trips will become the norm again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Trains!
LikeLike
I do like traveling by train but not all places are as well served as Europe. Here in Canada we do have trains but I’d guess that it’s the least popular way to travel for vacation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same here, which is a shame. In the UK it’s all down to poor service and expensive tickets. If there was going to be real change in the way we travel, trains would have to be cheaper and more reliable.
LikeLike
A road trip from Toronto to Vancouver will be quite and expedition. I look forward to all of the blog posts you will share from such a long drive through varied, beautiful scenery. Below is a link to my post that relates to a road trip to Everest Base Camp – Tibet from Lhasa.
LikeLiked by 1 person
To Mount Everest – now THAT’s a roadtrip to remember. Fabulous post! I enjoyed reading.
LikeLike
I love the idea of reading books across the United States. It might be easier to read across Canada or Australia, though – fewer states. I finished Liesbet’s book Plunge, which was fabulous about her “sea trip” around the world. I just finished blogger, Robbie Cheadle’s newest book, A Ghost and his Gold, an historical fiction set in Africa. Now I’m reading Colleen Chesebro’s Guide to Writing Japanese Syllabic poetry. I look forward to seeing what people have to say about their road trips. Bon Voyage.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Armchair travel is fun, isn’t it. We might have to compile the Reading Roadtrip for Canada & Australia – I can’t say I’ve ever seen one. That might be an idea for another Friendly Friday project 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
There you go. That sounds like the name of another challenge to me. Armchair Travel Challenge. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
My wife and I were on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. From Port Alberni we took a boat that went along a river to the Pacific Ocean. The sights from the boat were gorgeous. High cliffs. Eagles. Heavy forests.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Was this the Port Alberni ferry that serves Barkley Sound & the Broken Islands? If so, then you might have stopped off Ucluelet too. The area is a nature lovers delight.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Probably it was that ferry. Can’t recall exactly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for taking me along on your road trip, Sandy. I really couldn’t refuse. It’s been a while too.
LikeLike
Always glad to see you on Friendly Friday Manja! What a marvelous drive thru the Italian countryside 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll enjoy this one!
LikeLiked by 1 person
👍
LikeLiked by 1 person
Road trip fanatic here. In Australia, this is what we do. I am going to join in on this one. Fancy there being so many books on road trips – makes me think we should combine our travel blog posts into a book.
LikeLike
Making a book … now, that would be a major project! You don’t think small Amanda 😉
LikeLike
Plenty of ideas but thin on follow through on most.
LikeLike
Ha Ha !
LikeLike
Australia have many many amazing roadtrains and space for them too. 😀
LikeLike
We do, Drake! They are a bit scary to overtake!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I thought road trains was a typo but then I looked it up. OMG I’ve never seen something like that! I can just imagine what it’s like to overtake. In BC they have logging trucks on the mountain hi-ways, and those are long (and scary) enough for me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember my trip to Vancouver Island in 2015 . Now it seems centuries ago
LikeLike
Covid years makes it a century ago 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person