Hello Internet acquaintances,
I think I have mentioned it here and there and made at least a few longer blog posts about this before; I am going to be coming to N. America, starting in the middle of July. I am going to be bringing my awesome and tiny girlfriend, Sam, with me. We will be buying a car and trying to see as much of the U.S and Canada as possible before we run out of money or our visas expire (unlikely, we both have 5 year visas) and we are kicked out of the country by John Q. Law. As part of this we will be working over winter on one of the many snowfields on the British Columbia/Alberta border.
The basic gist of our trip so far is that we will be flying into New York on July 18th, staying there at least two weeks (maybe longer, depending on the timing of this supposed forum get-together being planned). After that we are planning to stay in and around the north-east part of the U.S/south-east of Canada, as we have to be in upstate NY for the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival starting on September 3. The basic route of our travel is to make a big loop up the east coast, into Canada, head west and come back into the U.S via Niagara Falls. The only place in America we are deadset on hitting on the part of the trip after NY is Boston. In Canada we have a slightly tighter itinerary taking in Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Timmins ON (The Lady used to live there and has friends to visit), Toronto and Niagara.
After ATP we are going to be traveling south down the east coast heading towards Sam's aunt near Tampa, FL. Once again we only have a few places we are sure we want to visit: Philadeplphia, Gettysburg, Washington D.C., Tampa, Nashville (maybe Memphis?) before Florida.
Following that we need to work our way back up into the north of the country to make it to the Canadian snowfields for the start of skiing season. This is the least planned part of our journey as there's a lot of stuff there in the middle of the country and neither of us really have much of an idea about what it is... So we don't really know where to go to get from the bottom right of America to the slightly left-of-the-middle of Canada aside from that we'd like to stop in New Orleans and Chicago somewhere along the way and I was hoping to see Mt. Rushmore/the S. Dakota Black Hills as well.
After winter then we will do pretty much anything in Canada we hadn't done and the west side of America but that is so far in the future it almost doesn't bear thinking about too hard.
The idea of this thread is to
a) garner suggestions of nice places to go and look at that we two wouldn't have thought of, to fill in the empty gaps between the spots we have already planned. There's a lot of empty space there and we would like to fill it with interesting and fun and historical things to do. Keep in mind the basic intinerary I have already laid out and that we are driving everywhere, though. This is also tied into:
b) I want to come see as many of you guys and hang out as is humanly possible! Tell me where you are! Of course, there might be a slight hidden agenda to this because
c) We are going to be poor as all heck, so free/cheap accommodation is a Good Thing. And although we are both pretty OK with hostels, or camping, or sleeping in the car in a Walmart car-park, it might get old if we have to do that all the time! It might be nice to sleep indoors in a place where there is no threat of contracting lice. We are both clean and well-mannered and we are totally OK with the floor or a couch or whatever, it is PUNX. Just keep in mind that there are two of us. In return for floorspace we will entertain you with our funny accents.
We have accommodation in New York somewhat sorted as I have an uncle who lives just across the Hudson in Union City, NJ and he has graciously offered one of the rooms of the bed+breakfast he runs to us. Unfortunately what this means is that we wouldn't be able to stay there if/when he has paying customers. He already has people booked in for July 24+25, so we need to vacate for a little while.
Accommodation has not been worked out anywhere else, except Tampa. I'd really appreciate it if you could help us out and wherever we end up living after this whole travelling thing is done we will totally put you up.
Anyway that's a pretty sparse general idea of where I'm going with this thing but I'll keep updating it and hopefully I'll get enough chances after we actually leave and hit the road to use Internet so I can continue to use this thread and whatnot.
So yeah, lemme sleep on yr couch, QC.
