Road tripping with Kids - Alberta to Ontario: The Pre-Planning
It’s been 5 years since we were back in Ontario to visit family. My husband, Josh, his direct family is from Ontario and my extended family is. Last time we were back there was when our daughter was 1, since then we’ve had Mowat and Kalie-Jett is about to be 5 (how?!), so we are long overdue for a visit!
Now prior to kids, Josh and I drove across from Alberta to Ontario a total of 8 times (16 if you count there and back as separate), so we’re pretty seasoned in the long drive and have worked out stops and how to structure driving days. The new thing this go round will be doing it with kids… and i’m sure you’re wondering: why not just fly?!
Well to start, flying with car seats sucks haha. They are so inconvenient to haul around. The air from planes always lands us with a cold and feeling sick after travelling, and we LOVE road trips. Driving across Canada is an adventure! And we get to dictate where we stop, what we eat, how long we want to be somewhere. And this way we also have a vehicle when we are back there.
We’ve spent quite a few months planning this trip out, and now we are a short 12 days until we leave and really into the prep stage so let me give you a run down of what we have in terms of plans and what we are expecting may happen.
FIRST - WHAT WE AREN’T GOING TO DO:
We are not going to book hotels, BnBs or camping spots.
We will not be having a set km or time we have to travel each day
We aren’t going to be eating out (we’ve done this for the drive before and i’ll explain this below)
We aren’t going to drive straight through
We won’t be relying on movies for our kids entertainment
You may read those and think “wow, they’re making it hard on themselves!” but in actually, we are loosening up the reigns on control to some extent. We aren’t booking any room & board because that adds in a deadline for how far we need to travel, and if we book something and then decide to continue driving, it isn’t really the easiest to cancel that accommodation. We don’t want to set a strict travel time because we have no idea how the kids are going to do… They could be great day 1 and we could drive 12 hours, or they could really struggle and we only make it 6 or 8. Undoubtedly we are going to have an internal battle to just get there, but we need to overcome that and focus on what’s going to be best for the kids.
We’ve done the drive straight through thing. One year we actually had 5 of us go back to Ontario for Christmas, and we just rotated drivers. We drove 36 hours straight, right through the night, and let me say I do not suggest it. I don’t care how well you do with staying up all night - it sucks and you will be left feeling like a sleep deprived zombie for the first 3 days of your trip. Don’t recommend. Likewise with food - the goal is to drive the 3.5-5 days and not feel like shit when we’re doing it, so while we will be checking out local cafes and grabbing some baked goods every now and again, we aren’t hitting any drive thrus.
NOW, WHAT WE WILL BE DOING:
First off let me say that these are all loose plans, like I mentioned we aren’t going to have a strict plan because we want to make sure it’s an enjoyable trip for everyone. So here is our general outline:
Travel time
We have a few options for this in regards to how far we want to travel each day and where we want to be stopping during the day and the night. We aim to start our days early, leaving our accommodations around 4am and getting to our stops the latest at 5/6pm.
Okay here’s Option 1:
Day 1 - Gull Lake to Regina: 8 hours; 810kms. This would put us at 1-2pm arrival time which would leave tons of room for pit stops along the way and lots of afternoon time to stretch our legs, let the kids burn off steam and get settled for the night.
Day 2 - Regina to Kenora: 8 hours; 791km, again we would arrive around 1-2pm, so a nice ease into the trip and a more gentle approach
Day 3 - Kenora to Sault St Marie: 13hrs; 1170km. Obviously this would be a big push day, landing us in the Sault around 6-7pm.
Day 4 - Sault St Marie to Home: 9hrs; 892km. Another solid day of driving, we would get to our destination around 2-3pm, which honestly is a nice time because there is daylight still for playing and stretching, a solid meal to help frame the day and then a lead in to bedtime so we can immediately start to adjust.
What I love about this option is that there is tons of time each day, aside from day 3, to play, stretch, explore playgrounds and parks and stay active in between drive times. Sitting in a vehicle for that long means stiff hips, tight backs and built up energy, so the ability to have loads of time to move and stretch is a very intriguing thought.
Now, Option 2:
Day 1 - Gull Lake to Brandon: 11hrs; 1171km. Big push right off the get go! This is the day of excitement in the trip because it’s LEAVING DAY and we always want to make good miles on the first day. This would land us in Brandon around 4/5pm with short stops in between.
Day 2 - Brandon to Thunder Bay: 10hrs; 926km. Okay, ontario makes up 24hours of the total 36 of the drive, so once we hit ontario time seems to slow down. Landing in Thunder Bay isn’t the ideal place for us - we’re not a fan of this city - and we would arrive around 3/4pm with meadiumish stops.
Day 3 - Thunderbay to Sudbury: 11hrs; 1003km. Again another hefty day of driving. I’m anticipating the kids to be rather cranky on this day and ready to get out of their seats for an extended period of time.
Day 4 - Sudbury to Home: 6hrs; 532km. Arrival day! We would arrive mid day and have the whole afternoon to play, get settled, run around and visit.
So option 1 - 4 full days of driving, option 2 - 3.5 days of driving.
Stops
We’ve been along the stretch of highway from AB to ON quite a few times, we’ve gone the Northern ON route and the Great Lakes route and honestly it’s a bit tomatoe tomata. With kids we are taking the Great Lakes route because we feel there are more stops and playgrounds along the way.
Now our tried and true is stopping before towns to use the washroom, we are backroad pee stoppers (lol). Sorry but when you’re driving that long it’s just a lot easier and a lot less time consuming to stop on a gravel road, pee in the bush, do a bunch of jumping jacks/squats/running around and then get back in go. This may completely not be your thing and that is fine, but we have found this easiest. There’s less concern with other vehicles being in the way, finding a clean bathroom, and allows you to stretch a bit without the worry of traffic.
If we need to fuel up, we do so on the other side of the city. Having done this trip so many times, we’ve learned that packing jerry cans of fuel is another very handy way of staying on time and moving smoothly through the trip. It’s also nice financially to just fill up the truck, fill up the jerry cans, give our arm to the cashier and be on our way for another 1200 kms.
We are planning on finding playgrounds for lunch time to get some playing in for the kids, and maybe stopping at some of those ‘largest thing in the world!’ monuments.
Accommodations
We are aiming at keeping this trip low cost, and if you know us you know we love to camp and aren’t afraid of a little cold weather. The previous times we’ve done this trip we have slept in our vehicles. We’ve reclined truck seats, and we’ve also built out full beds in the back of our old GMC Jimmy. Obviously this is different with kids.
Our first plan is camping. Now it’s the end of March so we have found a couple of year round camp grounds, but there is also HipCamp that we can search and find locals who have yard space available for us. Backup plan 1 (because it is going to be -10C) is sleeping in the truck. We have an avalanche and can actually fold the back seat down and open up access to the box. Our fuel will be on a hitch trailer to ensure there is no fumes or smell and our double thermarest fits perfectly. We did this for a wedding with just Josh and I - our heads on the truck seat and our bodies pointing back into the box. It may be tight with kids…we’ll see.
Back up to the backup: hotel. We’ll find something relatively cheap, because we’re only going to be there for a short amount of time. But the bonus is that we could find a hotel with a pool and that would be a great activity to wear the kids out. It would also allow us to feel a bit more clean and human for the drive. However, we’d be looking at around $100-150 a night and most hotels wants a CC deposit for risk of damages. We want accommodations to be easy and straight forward, so this will be a last ditch backup.
If you’d like to read more on the specifics like which campgrounds we have lined up and the cities we are staying over in - you can do that here.
Food
We are not fast food kind of people, I haven’t eaten McD’s since July 1, 2014 haha, so fast food isn’t really in our vocabulary these days. The goal for this trip is to maintain feeling good and also feeling happy. Poor food leads to poor energy which leads to poor mood and attitude from the kiddos. We will maintain our routine with our meals and shift into more of a camping style with cooking. We are bringing our double stove, propane, cast iron pans and cookware, and we will stop at playgrounds to make our lunches, pop the tailgate (or a table, we’re debating on bringing one) and cook up our breakfast and dinners. This may seem like more work, but trust me when I say that its a nice way to maintain some structure and not feel like shit by the time you get to where you are going. If you want to read up on our menu plan and snack list you can do that here.
Kids Entertainment
I’m not opposed to screen time and movies by any means, but I know that my kids attitude goes up when they watch too much tv. Plus - hi, we are driving across 3 provinces, there is SO MUCH to see and take in! Why would I want them nose deep in shows? As a kid we drove down to Disney land , I think I was 6 or 7, and we didn’t have tv or portable dvd players (remember those?). We had disposable cameras, car games, colouring, books and activities as a family to keep up entertained. Now our kids are young, so I anticipate needing to pull out a show or two along the way. But we’ve stocked up on non noisy toys, interactive independent play game, colouring books, and we also have a leap frog reader that the kids both enjoy playing with. I figure if come 2-3pm the kids are cranky and we are wanting to push to the next destination I will throw a movie on the laptop and call er good. All day tv? No way, there’s too much life for them to experience in this drive.
Estimated Cost
Alright, doing this affordably is the name of the game. So ideally we are just spending money on food and fuel and since we are cooking our own food then this really doesn’t affect the cost because they are our everyday groceries essentially. We are driving our avalanche with a 100litre tank, so fuel cost looks like:
3600km x 600km to a tank = 6 times to fuel. 6 x 1.30 = $780 x 2= $1560 in fuel cost. Now the price of fuel will fluctuate of course, we’ll have jerry cans to fill up and the road gets more windy in Ontario so this is going to adjust of course.
If we need to get a hotel each night then we are looking at around $400 added dollars, too many for my liking haha, but we have budgeted that in just incase.
Other aspects we’ve taken into consideration is our bills. We are going for a total of 4-5ish weeks, which means we need to have money saved up for bills while we are away, and have money for bills when we return due to the lag in work start and work pay for Josh. So we have a good buffer saved for this.
We’d like to keep spending to a minimum while we’re back, if we keep it at $1500 max i’ll be happy. We need fuel while we are back there, food and groceries and some extra spending money of course. Thankfully there is room at Josh’s parents place, as well as his sisters, so we don’t have to worry about the cost of accommodations while we are there.
So that is essentially where we are for our pre-planning. I’ve written up what our food and menu looks like here, the specific toys we are packing for the kids, what we are packing for truck and tent camping and what working on the road looks like. During our trip i’m going to aim to write up a summary for the day as well - so stick around while I log the reality of what worked, what didn’t and what I would do differently!
I hope you find a bit of guidance in this post. Make sure to share it with your friends who are road tripping, and let me know what you may have done or be doing for your own road trip.
Happy adventuring!
Cheryl
