{"id":9353,"date":"2014-05-09T12:08:21","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T17:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=9353"},"modified":"2014-05-09T12:21:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T17:21:31","slug":"roadtripping-mapping-a-route-from-ottawa-to-pei-and-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/09\/roadtripping-mapping-a-route-from-ottawa-to-pei-and-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Roadtripping: Crowdsourcing a route from Ottawa to PEI and back"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> love that it’s finally May so I can say NEXT MONTH we are going to PEI. *insert happy dance here* It will be late next month, true, but it makes it seem so much more immediate now than it was six months ago when we booked the cottage rental for our first ever trip to Canada’s most lovely province.<\/p>\n

I’ve been trying to get a big blog post out with all of our plans, but my busy schedule<\/s> utter inability to focus on more than a paragraph at a time dictates that I parcel this out into smaller bites. And I am so paralyzed by all the possible route choices to and from PEI that I can’t get past them to think about the actual PEI part!<\/p>\n

So, let’s talk about driving to and from PEI, shall we? This is my working route so far, but I would love your input.<\/p>\n

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I know it’s theoretically possible to drive Ottawa to PEI in one day and have a few friends who have done it. If it were just Beloved and me in the car, I’d do that for sure. The boys, although they are pretty good road-trippers, I think need that little bit of a break, so we’ll push as far as Woodstock, NB on day one, which is 9.5 hours, and then do the final 5.5 hours to the cottage on day two, leaving us plenty of time to explore PEI as we arrive. That part is pretty much locked down, but I am open to your suggestions. We stopped at Grand Sault when we drove out to Nova Scotia <\/a>a few years ago, but I wanted to push just a little farther down the road for our first day of driving.<\/p>\n

It’s the trip home that has me stymied. I hate to backtrack on the best of days, and we love exploring, and the Trans Canada drive is b-o-r-i-n-g, so we thought we’d shake it up by driving back through the United States. This is where you come in. I need your suggestions and advice, especially if you’re familiar with the New Brunswick-Maine-New Hampshire part of the drive.<\/p>\n

Currently, if for nothing else than to put a pin in my endless dithering, I’ve got us booked at a place near Berlin, New Hampshire on the last night of the trip, so we drive 10.5 or 11 hours from PEI through NB, across Maine and into New Hampshire on the first day, and then home on the second day. Google Maps suggest I follow the Trans Canada past Fredericton and enter the US at Houlton, Maine but that seems like it’s superhighway all the way. Great for efficiency, lousy for scenic. My instinct is to dip down and go through Saint John. It only seems a difference of a few minutes but looks like a more straight and less super-highway route.<\/p>\n

When we drove out to Bar Harbor in 2007, we followed Route 2 the whole way, which is pretty much Main Street of every little town in Maine. We loved it, but it was the opposite of efficient. I was thinking about doing it again, but then feared it might be the equivalent of driving from here to Windsor on Highway 2 so you could avoid the 401 – you could do it in theory, but why on earth would you torture yourself like that? So maybe we’ll pick up the I-95 and follow that around, which is longer but faster because you don’t stop every 10 minutes for a red light or duck crossing. Your thoughts on i-95 versus Route 2 straight across?<\/p>\n

I’ve also been agonizing on places to stop in the US on that last night. I seriously considered Bangor, Maine as it is more or less half way. Okay, truth, I actually considered Bangor mostly so we could revisit the stalking of Stephen King<\/a>. Mea culpla. Bangor’s also nice because we don’t have to haul ass quite so quickly out of PEI and can meander a bit on our way, but it leaves us with hella drive from Bangor to Manotick on the last day. I’ve tentatively settled on staying in New Hampshire largely because the hotel had a nice family suite with a pull-out couch as well as a couple of queen beds, not to mention an outdoor pool and a bouncy caste, and we’ll put the lion’s share of the drive behind us on the first day driving out of PEI, but I’m open to the idea of stopping earlier in Bangor or Augusta or just about anywhere else loosely on the route. Thoughts?<\/p>\n

And as if those weren’t enough choices, on the final day I still have to decide whether we follow the Google Maps advice and head home via Montreal, which seems about the equivalent of stabbing a hot poker into your eye, or take the longer way and ramble up through upstate New York and cross at Cornwall. My instinct says avoid Montreal at all costs. Nancy or Angela, you got thoughts on that?<\/p>\n

I have a sneaking suspicion that I am making this far harder than it has to be. I love the car and driving but have no particular love for “the slab” as the bikers call it, so I’m amenable to a scenic route – but adding hours on to the trip doesn’t seem fair to the kids.<\/p>\n

Any experience here? Would love to hear your favourite routes to PEI and back, or any amazing places you might have stayed anywhere between Lake Champlain and Bar Harbor. Would you stick to the slab or put up with the stop lights on Main Street every couple miles down the highway? And stay tuned for more about planning for PEI, including one 15th anniversary and one 150th anniversary and a whole boatload of Anne of Green Gables!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love that it’s finally May so I can say NEXT MONTH we are going to PEI. *insert happy dance here* It will be late next month, true, but it makes it seem so much more immediate now than it was six months ago when we booked the cottage rental for our first ever trip … Continue reading “Roadtripping: Crowdsourcing a route from Ottawa to PEI and back”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ottawa-to-pei-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9357,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions\/9357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}