Planning for a trip

Today we leave for Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. This would finish our quest of visiting all the Great Lakes. Lake Erie, Ontario, Michigan and Huron have all been visited. The last in the list being Lake Superior which will be visited this time. The past week I have been buzzing around like a bee trying to collect things for my trip.

Our destination


The 1400 mile round trip for a week takes us through 4 of the lakes and we pass three states and our final destination is in Canada. Our family has got used to road trips. We have made trips to Milwaukee, Dallas, Myrtle beach and Toronto just to name a few the past two years. We have checked in and checked out of multiple hotel rooms and sometimes 3 hotels rooms during one particular road trip. My special one is now so used to these trips that he expects one to happen every two months. I have picnic bags, toiletries bag, suitcases all the time ready. But this time, we have a thrown ourselves a challenge. We have booked ourselves a cabin instead of a hotel room in a campground. So we have a whole two bedroom house all to ourselves. This is going to surprise my special boy.

The white board (I have been teased about)


This week me and my boy visited multiple stores and picked up so many things from a list that I had made on my white board. We skipped going to his program and had fun doing this project. The last time we used our picnic bags were in November when we visited Harpers Ferry, but to my amazement I had enough of plates, spoons and napkins. We had to refill our toiletries bag and had to purchase new swim pants. I had to pack some groceries like rice and salt since I have a kitchen that I can cook. I do not use zip lock bags (trying to avoid plastic), but I had to purchase in different sizes to accommodate different dry items. The only problem every time we were at the store, he needed a Reese candy. But the upside he learnt to use the self checkout counter. These items look trivial but they are so expensive when you travel and you may not be even able to get them when you need it.

I have a lot of leftover painting projects and puzzle projects that are unfinished at home. With all the travel excitement, we just put those all aside and enjoyed our Walmart and Target trips.


My husband wants to relax on the trip. We are not an adventurous family, but I plan so much that I have an agenda ready when we leave the house. We do train and boat rides, museum trips and I have advance bookings done for shows. But this time, we are going to take as it comes. So no advance booking to get a 10 percent discount this trip. This has been too hard for me. I am a person whose brain is constantly working on what to do next and I think this is a good exercise for me. Yes, we are not going to do activities that are time bound. But I did ask my husband whether I can blog about my trip every day? He laughed and told me that I was too hyper. Yes, I plan to blog every day. I made that decision. I do not think it would be a proper travel blog,
but my personal experience of the day before.


Today will be a 400 mile trip and our night stay will be in Midland, Michigan. So will catch up with you from Midland, Michigan hopefully with something interesting and fun.

For Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share

22 responses to “Planning for a trip”

  1. Sounds like a fun trip. I like your whiteboard schedule. It makes it easier to see what and when things will happen. 🙂

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    1. Yup, the white board writing has been up for the past two weeks and my family had to see it everyday.

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      1. 🙂 🙂

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  2. Kimerle Anne Viccaro Avatar
    Kimerle Anne Viccaro

    When I was younger and we went on our yearly trip to Nags Head, North Carolina, I planned like you do Uma. Except I used a notebook. The beach trips were so much fun once we got there. The planning and shopping and packing are the hardest part. I hope you have a fun trip. I’ll keep an eye out on your house.

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  3. It sounds like you have a full trip. That’s a lot of miles. We went to Sault St. Marie, MI when I was a fifth grader. I remember it was 36 degrees when we got up that morning in July. I had never been so cold. The seaplane ride we took later in the day made up for the cold. 🙂 Have fun!

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    1. I hope it is not that cold 🙏. Thanks!

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  4. How fun, enjoy! I think planning for the trip is half the fun 🙂

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    1. Yes it was. Thanks 😊!

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  5. Brilliant, have a great trip and love the white board!

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  6. Enjoy the trip Ganga!

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  7. Thank you for your weekend coffee share. I hope you have a safe and enjoyable trip. The Great Lakes are special. Good for you to make it a quest to visit all five. I was in Sault Ste Marie in autumn and took the train to Agawa Canyon. Beautiful landscape and autumn colours there. I wrote about that trip on my blog.

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    1. Wow, will go back and check out your blog.

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  8. Good description of your trip! You enjoyed a lot 👍

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  9. We just visited the coast of Lake Huron last month. I’d hoped we could make it far enough north to see Lake Superior, but we ran out of time. We also skipped the planning and took things as they came–and I’m glad we did. It was hard for a planner like me, but it was also lovely to feel free to explore wherever we wished.

    I hope you and your little one are loving the trip!

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    1. Thanks. Btw my special one is not little. He is 26 😊. But we call him our big baby 😃😃.

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  10. I’m late commenting so I hope you’ve had a great trip. I remember being in Ohio last. year visiting family on Kelley’s Island (on lake erie) and on the back side of the island my phone signaled, Welcome to canada. You could see Canada from the bank and I didn’t realize that one of the other islands was actually in Canada…I thought “hmmm…I wonder if they patrol waters at the border”.

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    1. Ha Ha not too late at all. Yes we had fun. And yes we saw US coast guard 💂‍♀️!😊

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