We have arriiiiiiiiiived! (*Oprah voice) We have officially landed in Newfoundland, and getting here was certainly an adventure!
First off, a Move Road Trip and a Leisure Road Trip are two very different beasts. Many things are the same, but a Move adds extra layers of stress. I found that the biggest stressors for me fell into two categories, Clutter and Time Constraints.
On a regular road trip you can pack just what you need. I had a plan, I knew what I wanted to bring, and I had it all organized, BUT since we were moving there was all this extra shit that kept getting added on. The slew of things the packers/movers wouldn’t take with them. The box of cleaning shit we needed to actually clean our house before leaving. There was so much extra stuff being added into the mix causing clutter and disorganization and I hate that! My life is mostly chaos, but it’s ORGANIZED CHAOS! By the time we rolled out of the driveway our van was packed to the gills. Ugh. Luckily we were able to unload some of it on family at our first stop but it was still super annoying.
When you hit the open road on a leisurely road trip you can start and stop whenever you like. When you’re moving, and especially if it’s a military move, you have to adhere to other peoples schedules. You have a certain amount of drive days. You have to book all of these hotels. (Hotels are a whole other story. This move really made me appreciate the caravaners out there! I get now RV peeps. I got you!) You have to get there in time to meet your moving truck. You don’t get to pull over and explore as much as you’d like. There are a lot of time constraints that I could have done without. Just an extra layer of stress that can suck the fun out of your trip.
I did my best to keep it fun a stress free(ish) though. We’ve never lived in a different province so this was a big move for us and I really wanted to start us off on the right foot. I will say this though, no matter how well I planned ahead I still learned a lot on this trip. Like that my kids pee WAY more than I thought, and that when I say don’t drink all of your water right away, O will still drink all of his water right away… I also learned that my husband is blinder than even I thought (and I’ve been telling him he’s blind for years) and that he’s not as good at left & right as he’d have you believe! I also learned that I don’t care for hotels. Not a big fan. The whole process and the arbitrary rules, it was all a bit much for me. For example, some of the hotels had a max amount of people that could stay in one room, forcing us to get two rooms. So I slept in a two bed room where NOBODY used the second bed because little kids don’t want to sleep alone in a strange place. They want to sleep with their Mama. Ugh, whatever, it was super wasteful, and if we were paying for that ourselves I would have been furious!
My favourite parts of the trip were B having time off of work, so we got to hang out until I was right sick of him, and that we all got to see a little bit of some provinces we’ve never been to! Canada is absolutely stunning and I’d suggest a road trip across it to anyone.
Over all it was a good trip and we made it here safely! I’ve got some Top 5’s coming up that will cover my tips for road trips/moving with kids, so keep an eye out! Right now we’re just finishing unpacking and starting to explore our new home!
xxo
C
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