How do YOU plan your trips?

Do you decide to just jump in a car and pick a direction?

Do you have a destination in mind but take in the scenery along the way?

Do you gather every scrap of info you possibly can but toss things to the wind when it suits? Or do you plan down to the minutest detail?

As I sit here surrounded by pamphlets gathered at various happenings and places this spring I wonder these things. I like having a plan, an idea of where we are going and 'oh, I'd like to do this and this' but if I spot something interesting it can all go to the wind.

When I was learning how to drive, my friends and I would do the first. Decide that this night we were going to practice and pick a direction and where we ended up we ended up. Sometimes in a small town with a single gas station and we'd be grabbing snacks at midnight and filling the car before turning around and going home. It's how we ended up on a back road near Okotoks in the middle of a snowstorm in February.

Once we decided we would go to Banff and enjoy ourselves, taking our swim stuff with us to go to the hot springs. After spending most of the afternoon wandering and eating a nice lunch we decided to go to the hot springs.. in Radium. By the time we got home, it was the middle of the night.

Another time, just last year in fact, the same friend needed some companionship on the road as she went to pick up an item from kijiji in Drumheller. She had to be there for 9, and the matter took about five minutes max so we ended up wandering all along hwy 10/56, hitting up the Hoodoos, the Atlas Coal Mine and a lovely lunch in Wayne as well as a few other things.

In other ways I enjoy planning. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? Not so regimented that it sucks all the joy out of it but having an idea of what is around can be great.

I want to pass on the joys of tripping around to my son, just like my Dad did for my brother and I (and he would make us groan by telling us when we asked where we were going that we were going to LA.. Leduc Alberta).

So here I sit on a rainy Sunday, pondering where I want to go this year and how much planning do I really need to do? We'll see..

New blog..

Just a random passing thought, why not blog about some of the tripping around I do in the great province of ours? Will update as I go on trips.