middlepat
Dis Dad Member #325
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2005
Hi All,
So this is the start of a non-Disney trip report from our family's road trip to visit my family in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Before I get ahead of myself, lets give you all some background...
Our family:
We are a family of 5 from Arlington Heights, IL, a suburb of Chicago. I grew up in Canada and moved to Chicago after college, where I met my wonderful DW.
We are:
Me - Brian (38) - Lead singer and driver of the Winnebago.
DW - Erika (not 38) - Mother to 3 beautiful girls and chief navigator (remember this for later)
DD1 - Mary (8) - Master of the Nintendo DS and keeper of the snacks
DD2 - Shannon (7) - the Queen of all Drama
DD3 - Megan (3.5) - the Hot Potato as she always keeps us hopping.
The Plan:
A few months back, we were talking with the kids about our family in Canada and they told us that they missed their cousins as they hadn't seen them in over a year and a half. DW and I talked this over and we thought it would be fun to do a cross country road trip. So we starting planning a 2 week extravaganza where we would see some of our country's National Parks, spend a week with family, and cover nearly 4500 miles in the process.
The Route:
So as we sat down with our handy dandy road atlas, Google maps, and AAA TripTik tools, we started to draw out the routes we could take between Arlington Heights and Edmonton. As we looked at the maps, our plan was to try to find interesting stopping points along the way, as well as keeping the driving manageable for each day. After considering a number of different routes, we decided on including the following sites:
The Corn Palace
Buffalo Grasslands and Badlands
Mt Rushmore
Jewel Cave
Old Faithful
Mammoth Hot Springs
Coming up next, departure day.
So this is the start of a non-Disney trip report from our family's road trip to visit my family in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Before I get ahead of myself, lets give you all some background...
Our family:
We are a family of 5 from Arlington Heights, IL, a suburb of Chicago. I grew up in Canada and moved to Chicago after college, where I met my wonderful DW.
We are:
Me - Brian (38) - Lead singer and driver of the Winnebago.
DW - Erika (not 38) - Mother to 3 beautiful girls and chief navigator (remember this for later)
DD1 - Mary (8) - Master of the Nintendo DS and keeper of the snacks
DD2 - Shannon (7) - the Queen of all Drama
DD3 - Megan (3.5) - the Hot Potato as she always keeps us hopping.
The Plan:
A few months back, we were talking with the kids about our family in Canada and they told us that they missed their cousins as they hadn't seen them in over a year and a half. DW and I talked this over and we thought it would be fun to do a cross country road trip. So we starting planning a 2 week extravaganza where we would see some of our country's National Parks, spend a week with family, and cover nearly 4500 miles in the process.
The Route:
So as we sat down with our handy dandy road atlas, Google maps, and AAA TripTik tools, we started to draw out the routes we could take between Arlington Heights and Edmonton. As we looked at the maps, our plan was to try to find interesting stopping points along the way, as well as keeping the driving manageable for each day. After considering a number of different routes, we decided on including the following sites:
The Corn Palace
Buffalo Grasslands and Badlands
Mt Rushmore
Jewel Cave
Old Faithful
Mammoth Hot Springs
Coming up next, departure day.