A summary of our Canadian adventure

New Zealand is almost over and that’s when I thought: I really need to write a blog about Canada haha. Better late than never!

A few facts and nice things to know about our trip in Canada:

We were in Canada from the 1^st of June till the 2^nd of October. In total 124 days.
We drove a little over 10.000 km (6300 miles)
We stayed with 22 hostfamilies (the same as in the U.S) a total 61 nights (which was more then the U.S. where we stayed with 22 hostfamilies for 49 nigths), 20 AirBnB’s (39 nights), camped in 12 different campspots (16 nights in the car) and we did a housesit via Trusted Housesitters for a total of 10 nights. We paid an average of €19,19 per night.
We drove through 7 provinces: New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta en British Columbia
We drove through 5 timezones.
We saw Moose (3 times, and 3 times mother and child), a wolf twice, bears (on the other side of a river), kiler whales, bighorn sheep, dolphins, seals and a whole lot of deer and rabbits in the wild.
We stayed with lots of different people: Native Canadians, with Mennonites, a police women, different farmers (with different crops), at the parents in law of a famous ice hockey player and many followers of Jesus.

And did you know that…

..there is a language police in Quebec? They make sure French is the first language. Everywhere you have 2 languages, but French always has to be the first on a sign. If not, you will get a fine.
…everyone cleans after their dog poop and that Canadians, in contrast to Americans, walk their dogs.
..we got pulled over by the police here too? We took Liv out of her car seat, because she was really upset and someone saw this and had called the police. We got a (ridiculous low) fine.
..Canada is a little healthier than the U.S.? At least that is our feeling.
..Canadians wave you goodbye (the Dutch way haha)
..you have people in the supermarkets that put your groceries in bags for you.
..a lot of hosts, where we stayed, feel like friends now and we hope a few of them will visit us in the Netherlands!
..the fires in British Columbia were the worst ever this year and the smoke had never been so bad.
..Denny shaved his head for the first time (and I hated it)
..a lot of people have a Hummingbird feeder and we all liked this very much
..we had a bite to eat in the highest restaurant of Canada.
..we got to keep our license plates of our Canadian car. A really cool souvenir.
..Liv really started to speak English here.
..we walked through the first rail way tunnel of Canada.
..they have splash pads everywhere and Liv loved that (and so did we)!

Personal message

The trip through Canada was a lot more relaxed than through the U.S., because we had more time (4 months instead of 3 months). It was really nice to stay for 3 nights in a lot of places so that there was also time to do nothing. It took a while before Liv started to “like” driving the car again. We tried everything to see what would work so she would not complain being sick. Our final conclusion was that she wasn’t car sick, but just “car tired”. It was too much driving in just a short time. We drove shorter distances in Canada and stopped more frequently and that worked.

Everyone said that the middle of Canada would be boring, but we liked Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The only “boring” part was the first part of Alberta, but other than that we liked it all!

It did stay cold for a long time. We wore our winter coats till mid-June and from August 1^st we came in the smoke of the forest fires. That was very surrealistic. You don’t have any views, the sun turns orange and can hardly shine through the smoke. Therefore it’s a lot colder that it supposed to be. If the smoke was really bad, you would have a headache, a sore throat and burning eyes and the whole day it would feel like the evening. I thought rain would be “the worst” if it comes down to weather, but smoke beats that for sure! Because of the smoke it took a lot longer than expected to visit the highlights Banff and Jasper, so there was less time for British Columbia. We would love to come back to BC (+Alaska) and visit in thoroughly. Hopefully we will have less rain on Vancouver Island then, so we can visit more of this island too 😉

We stayed a lot with people with animals and Liv loved that! She took the dogs out, petted cats, cuddled baby rabbits and rode a horse a couple of times.

All in all Canada was a fantastic experience with the national parks Banff, Jasper and Mount Robson as absolute highlights. We also loved the farmstays we had and we learned a lot about the life of a Canadian farmer.

I hope we will go back one day!

Here some photos of Canada and after that some photos of our hosts