If you don’t have a burning preference for where you make camp and you don’t  have young children to worry about then you can still wing it daily in a pre Covid style, wandering aimlessly around the country planning only where to go each day while already on your way. However, if you desire to stay at the most sought after campsites and hike in the most desirable National Parks then you need to plan and book these spots increasingly far in advance. As much as I have mastered the skill of roadtriping, the more important skill I have honed is the ability to plan an epic road trip. Since October, I have probably put in over 100 hours in planning and have already booked nearly a third of our stops. I have already missed out on one major reservation for being behind on planning, a rookie mistake, and the most difficult and important sites to nab are still ahead.

In the beginning it starts with a vague idea based on something Amy said would be amazing. Although I don’t think we could ever see all that the west has to offer, the time has come to head east. This will, regretfully, steer us away from the family that sparked our trips in the first place and remain a highlight each year. Amy and I kept being drawn toward the idea of making our way Northeast across the Canadian islands that, having known nothing about, were almost mythical to me. Hearing names like Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland have always seemed mysterious and charming to me but until I really got deep in to planning I had only a vague idea of what this Summer will offer. The area, is without a doubt, the most uncharted area for us that we can get to by bus. The five ferry’s that will take us across this area are the keystone to building a successful Atlantic Canada adventure, and will at times, take over nine hours. I have already learned my lesson once while booking our return trip from Newfoundland which disappointingly had no more room for a small bus. With the next ferry leaving three days later, I was forced to rearrange the trip and drive us for two days to a new port across the island where no one had yet beaten me to the scarce space.  

What started as Amy saying, “wouldn’t it be incredible to check out eastern Canada,” has since become an endless sprawl of notes filling up three spreadsheets, multiple maps, and endless open tabs. Each year I start with a blank map and add every single thing I have ever heard of that I want to see. Locations like Fundy Bay and activities like seeing Puffins dotted the map. When you were young, do you remember hearing that they found evidence that actually Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first to discover America but that some Viking named Leif Erickson got here first. I remember, and since elementary school it has festered and grown into a need to see this spot and try to understand what that trip would have been like. I type it in, it’s pretty far north, much further than I was planning to venture originally, especially if you don’t want to be driving constantly. Either way, I added it.

Next I give Google and chat gpt a chance to tell me what I should see and I add all that to the map, I add every single national park and any noteworthy provincial parks, finally I join each local sub on Reddit and ask the locals for the secret sauce and advice. I post questions like “what’s the most beautiful spot to backpack to and spend the night in all of Eastern Canada?” I compare answers from human intelligence and artificial intelligence. I added to the map things like Bonavista, the Cabot Trail, and Gros Morne. Eventually, I have a map filled with unlimited fun, I decide which ones are deal breakers and which ones are redundant and make my first best fit line through the dots. Our best trips are dominated by Nature and Geology and this trip appears to be featuring both, a recipe for success. 

I create a new map and spreadsheet that breaks the drive into bite sized drives never surpassing three hours in length; the length we have figured out changes the day from a fun adventure to an undesirable chore. Without fail the trip always exceeds what is possible, even for an entire summer, and I begin to scale back to reasonable expectations. I notice there is a clear line of really amazing dots leading clear up to my Viking Landing spot. The dream becoming a possibility. After weeks of adjusting and researching, I have what could be considered the first rough draft of summer. This brings me a great feeling of accomplishment but the hardest work is yet to come. 

A new spreadsheet must be created to keep track of when every campsite, ferry and activity will allow a booking. In a seventy day trip, I might have fifty individual days that require me to be online booking at a precise time. Often these places only allow reservations up to six months in advance to the day, meaning I could have weeks in January where I need to be prepared every single day to book a spot at the exact second spots are released, or risk losing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity and also throwing a wrench into the whole flow and plan. Most of the time, planning the trip brings me huge amounts of joy, figuring out where my kids will spend their birthdays, finding unique  gems, unraveling where to backpack, and discovering new places I never knew existed. Other times, it’s quite stressful waiting at 7am to see if I clicked at the exact perfect second only to reload and find that every site was taken in under two seconds. It must be how gambling addicts feel, the highs of winning that click far outweigh the few disappointments I am stuck with every year, but with super careful planning, these can be limited, I just can’t make a single mistake. This spreadsheet becomes my life for a the next few months as I check and double check that every single night is covered, that the best campgrounds were selected and that the best campsite there within was claimed. I realize, I am part of the problem but this is the game now and I intend to not experience jealousy or FOMO knowing that I likely may never return to this area again. 

And this is where I am currently, booking that which can already be booked and otherwise color coding each line of a multi page spreadsheet making sure that the bright red cells are dealt with rapidly and that orange ones keep my interest. Each day more cells are turned green and are given an attached copy of the proof of reservations. Other spots get upgraded to red. This year only has five purple cells, indicating that first come first serve rules apply, adding another layer of nerves to the gamble but a proven worthwhile one. 

This year, Fitz has taken an interest in helping me plan and book. We spent Saturday morning anxiously digging through blogs and forums trying to decide where in Kejimkujik National Park we could find the most isolated and remote campsites to canoe to and spend the night. We found an area that will require us to spend three days navigating from lake to lake in the wilderness, several times, removing the canoes from the water and carrying them to the next lake. Each portage taking us further from civilization and further into wilderness. In the end Fitz made the decision that the effort will be worth the challenge and we found a company to rent us canoes and a shuttle to the start and turned those cells green. We then made a plan at where to stay each night and now we wait anxiously for February 11 at 7am to see if I can click just right to claim these, we made a list of back up sites, as it’s better to be prepared. Fitz has fun typing in all the information and now he has some ownership in the plan and is looking forward to shocking his siblings in the same way I am always trying to get Amy to have that look of surprise amazement.