More what?

Energy.

It was my initial thought when I left on Monday morning for this great trip across the country that I would blog every evening.
Yeah. Right.
I’ve never drove this hard before.  At least 10 hours a day behind the wheel not including stops.  Including various stops, I was looking at 12 hours a day at minimum.  And by the time I got everything unloaded and into a hotel, that last thing I was capable of was not opening up a laptop, let alone actually type something out.  Even now I feel like I’m pushing it, and today was much shorter than the rest of my days this week.  But here I am.  Finally.  Already in Victoria.  And without pictures.  Those will be forthcoming.

Let me talk about Ontario for a minute.
It’s huge.  First north.  Then west.  A lot of road time.  Being raised in the GTA, you don’t really get an appreciation for the giant that Ontario is.  Something else you don’t realize is how mountainous it can get as we continue your trek north.  It’s not the rockies, but they’re still huge.  Luckily it wasn’t snowing through our journey as I’m pretty sure those roads could get treacherous.  It also doesn’t take long journeying north before you start to notice the importance of time start drifting away for a lot of people.  The rush of life dissipates and it’s really kind of nice.

A PD version of the Trans-Canada Highway shield. Version PD du panneau representant la route transcanadienne Trans-Canada highway 1 Route transcanadienne 1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Moving on to Manitoba.  Upon arrival to the boarder, you’re greeted with a really nice sign, and really rough roads.  The Trans-Canada is very wide and infinitely straight ahead.  It stays that way for quite some time until you get closer Winnipeg at which point there are more straight roads, but also smoother.  You might recall the phrase “wide-open spaces.”  This is Manitoba.  It is seriously flat.  No hills anywhere (except for trash hills).  I can’t reiterate enough how expansive this open space is.  It’s awe inspiring, but it really starts to get old once you hit Saskatchewan.

Ah, Saskatchewan.  The province that bares the brunt of a lot of our jokes.  How boring you are.  How inappropriate the name of your capitol city is.  More of the same until start getting closer to Alberta, at which point your driving up and down hills but continuing in a straight line.

Alberta.  Now this land was a little more interesting.  The land lumps continue, but you start seeing something that you just don’t see in Ontario.  Random oil pumps, trying to syphon the crude out from the ground.  Plenty of cows also hang around these things.  And this, too, goes on for a long time.  Oh, and before I forget, cheap(er) gas.  Cheapest I saw (and bought at) was $1.08.  That didn’t last long though.
As you approach Calgary, you can begin to see the Rocky Mountains in the distance.  Snow covered, and immense.  And they only get bigger as you continue along Highway 1 into Canmore and Banff.  Then the fun driving begins.

If you’ve ever flown before, you’ll be highly familiar with the ears popping.  This happened numerous times through the Rockies.  Our cat, Mac, wasn’t very appreciative of this part of the trip.  The constant change of air pressure caused him some grief which lead to our own grief in the form of cat cries.  Driving through, again, the immenseness of these mountains can’t be understated. So tall. So large. So… legendary (sorry, was watching the first season of “How I Met Your Mother last night”).  For all my worrying, the drive actually wasn’t that bad.  There was only a stretch of about 2-4 km where there were a lot of 40km/h turns that were kind of sketchy.  Other than that, it was all beauty.  That is, until after Kamloops.

I stopped in Kamloops, BC because I thought the trip after that would be a piece of cake.  And it sort of was.. with the exception of all the high cross-wind warnings that I saw, and the high cross-winds that I drove through along the high altitudes of the rest of the Rockies.  I think dealing with these winds was the worst and most tense part of my entire drive.  Having the cargo rack on top of my Escape made it all the worse because I could feel that extra bit of push trying to knock me over.  Still a lot of altitude changes and meow-ings.  Being on the British Columbia side of the mountains saw the Rockies in a different colour.  Green.  Lots and lots of green.  Alberta side–all white with snow.  BC side… green with white caps and avalanche warnings.
Eventually the altitudes and the mountains subsided and the drive became a hillside journey with lots of rivers and more trees.  British Colombia was easily the most beautiful part of the drive.  This drive eventually gave way to the ferry to Victoria and my final destination.

Nearly six days of travel with 5000kms under my belt, I’m happy to say that the trip was worth it.  Having the opportunity to see the country as I did and not have to drive back.. how could I not do it?
Most of us barely get out of province.  We choose to fly off to other vacation destinations instead, and never get to know our own country. Now I can honestly say that this country holds so much beauty.  So much in fact, that we could spend all our vacation times throughout our lives and still not see everything this great land has to offer.  Soapbox rant over.

Ultimately, I strongly recommend making this trek at some point in your life.  Preferably less rushed than mine, of course.  My only suggestion would be to rent a car to drive out, then fly back.  Trying to drive through the prairies more than once will bore you to tears and may cost you your life.