2022 road trip with bikes

On the 4th of July we returned from our longest road trip yet.   Jack and I both took some family road trips as kids but we've never done any long drives together, even without the kids in tow.      This trip was a ten night, counter-clockwise loop from Seattle to Idaho to Alberta to British Columbia.   

Quantitative Overview

• driving distance from lodging to lodging: 1476 miles  -   daily activities added more miles.
• gas bill: 1196 - yikes
• miles biked: 85  - pretty good for a family trip :)
• longest ride: 36.8  - a one-way, mostly downhill ride!
• trips between Banff and Canmore: 8   We should have stayed in Banff itself.  Once I forgot the cabin keys at a restaurant and we had to turn around at 11 pm and drive back to Banff again to get them.
• bike rides: 6  - one was just Jack and D, while I drove the car down the road
• bears observed: 5  -   2 Grizzlies and 3 black bears, one of which we saw on the side of the road as we biked past it...
• swims: 4  -  Radium Hot Springs, the hotel pool, Okanagan Lake (Kelowna)  and Hillcrest aquatic center in Vancouver
• national holidays: 2  - Canada day on July 1 and the 4th of July on our way home
• rainy days: 2   - drizzles when we were in Banff one day, but not actually on our long ride followed by a downpour on our last day in Vancouver.
• museums: 1 -  Museum of Anthropology at UBC on a rainy day
• number of tantrums: 0  -   Awesome!
• unpatriotic thoughts:  ? ...... quite a few with the combination of national holidays, incredibly low covid rates in BC vs. WA, rolling back of American women's rights and even public investment in swimming pools.   

This was the longest trip we've taken since we went to the Azores in early 2019.  Thank goodness we took that trip when we did, pre-Covid.   It felt awesome to get away from it all - work, home and mostly covid.

Generally, this trip boosted my confidence a lot for future travel.   Dd, at 3.75 years, is at the point where naps aren't essential.   He took a couple, but mostly did fine without them and we didn't spend any time battling him to fall asleep in an unfamiliar and exciting environment.    We also pushed the kids by staying out pretty late several times.  There was lots of daylight and the drives were long.   They handled it like champs, and if you put it in perspective relative to jet lag, staying out until 10 pm isn't so bad.   One surprise success was on the hydration front.   I brought my osprey pack (thank you, Jack) with the hose and soft water bottle and the kids just could not get enough of drinking from it, so we all stayed hydrated.   

Keeping track of our stuff was a challenge.   We lost misplaced Jack's kindle a couple of times and it camoflauges extremely well against bedroom furniture.  Then D inexplicably put it in a drawer at an AirBnB.   Never put things away on vacation!   In the end, I think the only things we lost were a water bottle and two pairs of pyjamas Dd would have outgrown soon anyway.      

Also, our credit card had some fraud on it right when we got home, so that might be a souvenir of the trip as well.    All in all, it was a great trip.