travel dates: July 2024 We stayed at KOAs for both of our stops in Quebec partially because both Montreal and Quebec City have well-reviewed, conveniently located KOAs and partially because we kind of wanted some familiarity and sense of knowing what to expect. And, indeed, both KOAs were very much….KOAs, with all the amenities we […]
Three Days in Montreal with Kids and Teens
Sometimes there’s a stop on a trip where nothing seems to go quite right, and Montreal was that place for us. And, yet, Montreal is still probably the single city from our Canadian Cities itinerary that I’d be quickest to return to, which I think is a testament to what a very cool city it […]
A Review of Wesley Clover Parks Campground in Ottawa, Ontario
travel dates: July, 2024 I was pretty excited to stay at Wesley Clover Parks. For one thing, I like the name. Also, we’d had a stay booked here several years ago that we’d had to cancel because Canada was closed for Covid, so there was quite a bit of built up anticipation. And it’s just […]
Things to Do in (and around) Ottawa with Kids and Teens
travel dates: July 2024 A fun thing about spending a summer exploring Canada is that sometimes you find yourself touring Canada’s historic Parliament building with one other couple from New Jersey, and you both have a lot of questions about Canadian politics. After this aforementioned tour and a lot of time on Wikipedia, though, I […]
Upper Canada Village and Upper Canada Campground
travel dates: June/July, 2024 Dragging my family to living history sites is something of a hobby for me, so of course Upper Canada Village was on our itinerary. Upper Canada Village bills itself as one of the largest living history sites in Canada and says it aims to “depict life in a rural English Canadian setting during […]
Visiting Boldt Castle: A Brief Return to the US and the Gilded Age
travel dates: June, 2024 I’ve been to a lot of house museums in my time. Like…so many. Every house has a story to tell. But, really, every house has lots of stories it could tell (this is true of most things in the world. The world is a bit of a sprawling mess, and people are the […]
Visiting Kingston, Ontario + a Quick Rideau Acres Campground Review
travel dates: June, 2025 Ah, Kingston! Birthplace of famed Canadian rock band, The Tragically Hip. Here, unnecessarily, are my three favorite Tragically Hip songs: Wheat Kings, Bobcaygeon, Poets. These are actually perhaps the only Tragically Hip songs I can even name. I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to get more into the band, […]
Two Days in Toronto with Kids and Teens
travel dates: June, 2024 By the end of our first day in Toronto, I’d had an epiphany: the second “t” in Toronto is silent. “Just like Atlanta!” I thought. Also like Atlanta, Toronto can feel sort of…generic big city-esque. There are tall buildings, and people hurrying around doing business things, and they’re not always as […]
Hamilton, Ontario with Kids and Teens: HMCS Haida and the Royal Botanical Gardens
travel dates: June 2024 I didn’t know anything about Hamilton, Ontario before we started planning our Canadian cities trip, but I started looking into it when I realized that Bronte Creek Provincial Park , our campground of choice for exploring Toronto, was actually closer to Hamilton than to Toronto itself. And it was a Canadian […]
Bronte Creek Provincial Park near Toronto: Campground Review
travel dates: June, 2024 We’d never been to Toronto before our summer, 2024 trip…but we had planned to go to Toronto more than once. Or at least thought about it. We considered a stop there on our canceled 2020 trip. And then again for our 2021 trip that actually happened…but happened without the Canada parts owing to […]