plan of map, napalm?

Things are starting to come together for a family trip across Canada and the US next summer. Likely we'll drive west in Canada ending up in Victoria, BC, and then take a ferry to Washington State. From there head back east through north eastern Oregon, Idaho, northern Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois and then back into Ontario, then home to Quebec. It isn't clear in Canada if at Winnipeg will we go north to Saskatoon and then Edmonton, or going south from Regina to Calgary. We'd like to do the Jasper-Banff drive, so possibly we'd go Winnipeg-Regina-Calgary-Edmonton-Jasper-Banff-Vancouver.

As far as we can tell we have three options we are considering:
1. Rent an RV - the most expensive option as we've found they cost about 1700$ per week and on top of that is fuel and the fees for camping it and a limit of 2500km above which we pay more per km.
2. Buy a tent-trailer and camp; this is the original vision that my wife and I had - to camp - but option three is becoming more appealing as we think about it. This is especially true as we haven't hardly ever camped as a family.
3. Go to Hampton Inn hotels. This hotel chain has a superlative breakfast, so every morning we'd have good breakfast options and would also be able to grab a few apples and bananas and yoghurts that we can bring with us. With free Wifi we'd also be able to stay connected so I can document the trip as we're doing it and we could do research along the way. Staying in the same hotel chain would also give us points to get free or discounted nights.

We haven't worked out exactly when during the summer months we'll go, but we're thinking that we'll take four weeks off of work to do this trip. I was fortunate that when I was eleven years old, my parents took my brother, sister and I on such a trip. My wife did it when she was nineteen. By doing it next year, our youngest, V-8, will be seven years old, which is old enough to at least have the memory of having done the trip.

As we get closer to next summer I'll be posting here more about how the plan is working out.

Oh, and yesterday I raked some more leaves. In past years I raked the bulk of the leaves in the back yard into the back of the back yard and just let them compost there. This year I am bagging them, so I think the count will be higher than normal this year.

Yesterday's leaf bag count: 14 bags
Total Leaf Bag Count for Fall 2015: 49 bags.