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| *Travel Tips>>>Edmonton Travel Tips |
I am planing to drive to Edmonton from Toronto with 2 kids, anybody who can share experience?? |
Travel Info driving in the end of April 2007. Any clues about stay, road conditions and any precautions etc. Any thing that can be helpful in travel planing? Travel Tips Might help if I knew how old your children are but I lived in Edmonton for 17 years and trucked B.C. to Quebec for even longer. The weather the end of April can vary greatly along your route so be prepared for ice and snow. I would suggest you take the northern route through Hearst, Cochrane to avoid the hills along the Lakes and the snow squalls . You meet the Trans Canada in North Bay and the routes merge in Nipigon, about an hour east of Thunder Bay. Going through Winnipeg, take the south ring road(you by-pass the city) and in Portage La Prarie(15 minutes west) the Yellowhead Highway meets the Trans Canada. If you take the Yellowhead, you will go through Saskatoon on your way, the Trans Canada goes through Regina. As far as places to stay, it'll be too cold for camping so you'll be staying in hotels which are all along the routes. To drive straight through from Toronto to Edmonton will take you (with 2 drivers) 2 full days, 18 hour days on the road. Because of moose through Ontario, I would suggest you start your day early, sunrise is good, and stop around 6PM. If you did this and left Toronto at 10 Am say on a Monday, by 6 or 7 PM , you would be in Hearst, lots of hotels, Tim's, McDonalds for the kids. Leaving early tuesday, you can easily get a few hours west of Thunder Bay by early evening, try for Dryden. Hotels, Tim's and McDonalds ( as well as others) there. Early start on Wednesday would put you almost to the Saskatchewan border by early evening, Russel, MB or Yorkton, Sask both have decent hotels and food. This would out you into Edmonton by suppertime on Thursday, reasonably rested. As far as planning, lots of juice for the kids, fruit, snacks, books , charged up game-boys will all help. Make sure your spare tire is good, have an extra blanket or 2 in the trunk as well as a candle, a pen. Check weather each day before you leave as through northern Ontario, it is usually at least an hour between towns and storms can catch you off guard. Good luck, be safe. From Saskatoon to Edmonton is double lane divided highway so if those kind of roads are more comfortable for you, stay on the Trans Canada all the way to Regina before heading north to Saskatoon. Portage to Saskatoon is the same as through much on Ontario, 2 lane Highways, although in MB the speed limit is 100km, 110km from Saskatoon to Edmonton. Others The younger your children are, the earlier you should get on the road and the earlier you should get off the road - no later than, say, two or three o'clock. It is not uncommon for local flooding conditions to persist on the TransCanada highway around Winnipeg so be prepared to take extra time. Bring lots of up to date maps as new roads are constantly being built, though not at the same rate as older roads are crumbling! Bring things to occupy your children, such as books, games and the like. If possible, have them take turns sitting up front (in appropriate car seats, of course) and let them help you navigate. As ghastly as it may sound, if they're young enough that Barney still has their appeal and you have a tape or CD player, then you may have to tolerate listening to the same goop for hours at a time. Finally, when you get off the road for the day, try to stay at hotels that have some kind of way to unwind at the end of the day. The end of April in the prairies may look like winter still, so hotels with swimming pools usually work. After sitting in a car for hours watching the same bland terrain, they'll be itching to get up and get going so make sure they get exercise. Good luck! MoM of three who's been there I did it with my parents way back in the 80's. We took a motor home and camped our way through it all; and stayed at Conservation Authority Campgrounds. We drove through Saskatchewan in one day - the longest yellowest and flattest day in my life!!!! We stopped an Winnipeg and took pictures with the World's largest Pysanka (Ukrainian Easter Egg) and in Wawa Ontario, with the rock mines, we also spent 1/2 a day at the Royal Canadian Mint (sorry I forgot what city it was) and saw how our money was printed and other money from around the world. The drive through Ontario is a long one she be prepared to look at allot of pine trees!!! It should take about 5 days, so be prepared to enjoy each others company and take lots of stops and take pictures (they may all look the same but in years to come each area will bring back a slightly different memory)- we did and now that my father is passed I treasure them more than ever and share them with my kids. We drove through Ontario a year after we had all those forest fires (so sometime in the summer of 1982) I couldn't believe a the devastation and just looking at rock and burnt trees, for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. I'm guess the most direct (fastest) way is from Toronto, go through Sarnia, and then west to Flint, MI, Chicago, Minneapolis and north to Fargo, ND. Continue north to Regina and up to Saskatoon. Follow the Yellowhead west to Edmonton. For about a 36 hour total travel time trip, invest in a portable DVD player -- this should keep the kids busy watching movies. It helped us driving from Winnipeg to Edmonton, down to Calgary and back to Winnipeg last summer no sure about the travel side of things but when we were there we stayed in the fantasy land hotel in the big mall it was worth the experience what a great hotel for kids with the themed rooms and things |
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