The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Now that we are home, we looked back on our vacation to see what worked and what didn't work. Here are the results:

Good: Rival Hot Pot Express. This little electric pot enabled us to heat up water in our hotel room. We could make oatmeal, cup-a-soup, hot chocolate, hot tea, or even coffee if needed.

Good: The car roof top carrier. This basket type carrier enabled us to pack all the luggage on top of the car, leaving the inside for the food box, cooler, electronics, and other items used during the car ride. I especially liked that the luggage did not rest directly on the roof of my car. The carrier was connected to the crossbars, which kept the weight of the luggage distributed to the frame of the car, not on the roof. See pic of my car all packed and ready to go. We had four suitcases up on top.

Good: My car. The Honda CR-V ran like a champ. My gas mileage was not all great because of the weight in the car, but I still averaged about 23 mpg.

Good: Air mattress. Since we had five people and most hotel room only sleep four, we brought an inflatable air mattress for the fifth person to sleep on. The mattress inflated with portable air pump and less than three minutes. In the morning, the mattress rolled up small enough to hide in a suitcase. We never had a problem with it leaking air and it was used every night.

Good: Food box and cooler. We were able to keep our food costs down by buying grocery store food, like deli meats & cheese, bread, hot rotisserie chickens, potato salad, etc.

Good: Power strips. We took two power strips to use at the hotels. Hotels are notorious for having too few electrical outlets in hard to access areas. The power strips allowed us to recharge our electronic gear without having to swap plugs in the middle of the night.

Bad: Cramming three people in the back seat of my car. We had five people in the car, which meant three had to be in the back. We would "shoe horn" in. It was tight. But we all switched seats and rotated so the same people (children) were not always in the back seat. Equal opportunity to be crammed...

Bad: Five people in one hotel room. Many rooms are not very big and five people living in one room can get ugly (Hmm... should this be under "ugly"?) But we all lived through it.

Bad: Internet. Internet availability was spotty at best. At our chalet in Banff, we could not get internet in our room and had to go to the hotel lobby. Even then, the internet connection was from the hotel across the street. We had three hotel rooms (out of seven) with WiFi in our rooms.

The ugly: The pace of the trip was grueling. We should have planned more relaxing time, but once we got all the way out west, it seemed a waste to spend a day doing nothing. So, we need a vacation from the vacation. . . lol. . .