The Trip in Sum

So the cross-Canada trip turned out to be pretty awesome. Now that I'm back life is just a bit depressing, but it always is after a good vacation. Of course I have had several regrets about not staying in a couple places long enough, or wasting my time on stuff I shouldn't have, but all in all I think I saw and did a lot in a pretty short amount of time! Some interesting statistics:

- Driving through the prairies I almost ran over at least 20 prairie dogs and saw about one hundred others.
- When I was in Northern Ontario there were always cliffs and rocks along the road. I saw a ridiculous number of inukshooks. But not many others in the rest of Canada.
- It feels like about a million people have responded "By yourself??!!??" incredulously in response to me telling them that I went on the trip alone.
- Can't even count the number of times I thought to myself "I'm driving to Vancouver!" or wherever and smiled to myself happily.
- Talked to my car, the radio and my GPS system an embarassing number of times.
- All the motels have begun to blur into one little motel room in my mind.
- Saw many many state troopers on the highways, cops in Canada stopping motorists that had passed me and did not get pulled over once. Nice!
- The odds that my car would survive the trip: 1:1 000 000 000!! But he's still alive.

Since I am a very greedy girl, I've already formulated my next vacations in my mind. You'd think I would want to put my money towards those pesky osap payments, a decent car, a downpayment on a house perhaps; but nope, I'm already planning my next trips!! Next summer I want to do the ultra-touristy cliche backpacking trip around Europe. I want to see all of the places in real life that I only got to glimpse in Art History classes. I want to be an unwashed backpacker carrying a couple changes of clothes and my passport to countries like Germany, Poland, Italy, all of the UK!!

The summer after that? I want to hike the Bruce Trail. It's about 800kms along the Niagara escarpment from Tobermory to Niagara falls. How awesome would THAT be? All I need to do in the meantime is find myself a big buff male who's crazy enough to be willing to go (and put up with me for over a month!!), able to help me carry provisions, and serve as protection (mom has of course informed me that going by myself is a bad idea and I tend to agree)! A friend knew this girl who did it by sending herself packages along the way, which is smart.

After that, I'm not sure... any suggestions? Donations are also very welcome. My job doesn't pay all that well.