It has become my practice (the last four times at least) to review our holiday after we return home. Some of the review is factual - how many miles, how many cities etc and some of it is a brief review of the whole experience. I think I can sum it up in a few words:
I am amazed that something as complex as planning this holiday worked so well with everything turning out so positively. I know I can be accused of being somewhat retentive in doing the planning to the amount of detail I do, but it liberates me to take full part in the holiday, rather than worrying about any of the details. Still, even though it did work out so well, there is always the lingering doubt that something won't work out. Well, thanks be to God, everything was planned, and everything worked out as we hoped. Most of all I'm amazed that Drew puts up with all my knit-picking detail and nagging to make sure things are done, way before they need to be. He is a very tolerant fella.
Highlights
There are two highlights that are very close to each other when I review this holiday. The first is completing the visits to all ten of the Canadian Provinces. I feel so glad we have achieved this . The second is our trip to the Icefields Parkway - with those amazing views and a chance to walk on the Athabasca Glacier - it was amazing. There were lots of other pleasant memories, finding Winnie the Pooh's home, visiting Abbotsford, so, so many amazing sights. All in all it has been a great holiday full of fun and laughter.
Food
We have eaten well this holiday. I mentioned in response to a comment from my sister that I think Lark, in Seattle, was my favourite meal but Woolsey Creek Bistro, in Revelstoke, came a close second and Tommy's Not Here in Sudbury and Peasant Cookery in Winnipeg would be competing for third.
That being said almost all the meals were good - The Salmon n'Bannock for its innovativeness and links to First Nation culture. The four fish places (Maddies and the Landing in Marblehead; Ocean's Edge in Belfast and Vancouver Fish) were excellent at fresh, well cooked, fish and shellfish.
I have great memories of the Texan (Ottawa), the Mexican (Banff) and the Thai (Regina) too. That's the great thing about food, it can be very different but equally good.
Drew says we didn't have enough Pizza and burgers in our holiday this year, so I must try and correct that for future holidays.
Travel
It is amazing to think that over the last three weeks (well 15 days of the period) we have travelled 4,164 Miles in the Car - I drove 2280 miles (55%) and Drew 1884 (45%). In time terms we were 83h 31m in the car. 50h 43m with me at the wheel (61%) and 32h 47m with Drew driving (39%).
But even though there has been a lot of driving there has also been quite a bit of walking, more than in previous holidays. We have managed an average of 10,889 steps a day that is 228,665 steps which is roughly equivalent to 108.27 miles in total for the holiday. Our longest walk being in Vancouver and our second in Winnipeg.
Our longest day's drive was 432 miles between Thunder Bay to Winnipeg (second longest was 363 between Winnipeg and Regina and third was 361 on the Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper and back). In time terms the longest in car day was the Icefields Parkway (7hr 53m), second was Thunder Bay to Winnipeg (7h 46m) and third was Revelstoke to Vancouver (6h 49m).
The car kept an account of our petrol consumption over the period and we managed 44.5 mpg (in US Gallon) which is the equivalent to 53.44 mile per gallon (using the Imperial i.e. UK Gallon). Not a bad amount for such a big car - evidence of the benefits of hybrids. Petrol prices ranged from 72p per litre to 90p a litre in Canada and 48p per litre in the USA (this compares favorably to £1.259 per litre on our return to the UK).
It has been a great trip.
My App
You will know, dear readers, that Mr B (aka the Pilot) can be ‘a touch’ retentive (some would say a damn menace!!!). This is demonstrated in a number of ways!!
On our first voyages to these parts he insisted on having a paper sheet that detailed a) time of departure / arrival b) driver c) location d) end time e) start distance f) end distance. You stopped to take a photo of a lovely looking tree, the details had to entered into the sheet. 21 days of non-stop data entry. Cries of ‘I’m on holidays’ went unheeded/ignored. All in attempt to know that a person did 54.3453% of the distance vs 45.3223 of the time. Is it, dear readers, any wonder I am in the state I am???
This dire situation was somewhat remedied when Steve Jobs Esquire (which some minor input from a team of 5,000 software and product engineers) developed the iPad. I having acquired said device developed a spreadsheet capturing said details.
This appealed to Mr B due to it a) capturing all the data and b) it appealed to his love of a good spreadsheet. This served as a good halfway house. It saved time, but from my point of view not enough. In a post on a previous blog (Jack has instructed me not to provide a link in order to improve your self sufficiency) I highlighted my intention to develop an app.
For this trip we have been running both spreadsheet and my app. The initial view is that said app works. It uses GPS as a background service to not only measure the distance being driven but also saves the complete tracks and allows those to be viewed on google maps. It allows time and journey stats to be gathered in real time, complete with charts. It allows the notes to be added for each journey we take, petrol costs to be detailed. If we forget the device we can manually insert the details. It still requires us to entire a journey end point but when we get back I plan on using google to gather the location automatically. It does all of this much more efficiently than Mr B’s little system.
In short, dear readers, I DEMAND THE FINEST BAGELS AND DONUTS IN ALL THE LAND FOR VICTORY IS MINE.!!!!.....!
(he says while awaiting the next ‘what I meant to as ask was….’ From Mr B).>>
I can only complete this post by saying perhaps we are both tolerant of each other!!
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who have made this journey with us, with comments on the blog, on Flickr and on Facebook - they have been a great help and encouragement both for informing the journey and for the reporting of it here on the blog.
See you all next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment