Prologue - A Germ Of An Idea

Welcome to Beverly and Al's inaugural blog post as we chronicle our multi-year adventure of living in every province across Canada for a year in each.

Our journey began at least a year ago, with us talking about future vacation plans.  We are both retired, but have different outlooks on life. Al likes to travel, especially to tropical places where he can scuba dive.  Bev, on the other hand, would be quite content to stay at home.  Her idea of travelling would be to a place where it is not hot, like England or Scotland, where we travelled to in 2014.

In the end, we settled on exploring our own country.  After many discussions, we decided to live in each province for a year at a time.  We began formulating a plan as to how it could work, both logistically and financially. Since neither of us had been to Newfoundland, we decided to begin our journey on the Rock.

As anyone who has moved house knows, it is a major chore, fraught with problems and anxiety-causing issues.  We complicated this for ourselves by electing to not sell our house but to rent it out instead.  Also, once we had decided that Newfoundland would be our first destination, we got some estimates on moving furniture and belongings out there and were astonished at the cost of it, mainly due to the ferry ride required.  So we decided to store the things we wanted to come back to at some point in the future.  But to rent a storage unit would have cost over $200 a month, so we decided to section off a portion of our basement, install some warehouse shelving and then started culling all the belongings we have accumulated over our 33 years of marriage and 28 years in that house.

After numerous garage sales, online sales, donations, auctions, recycling and garbage dumping, we finally had things down to a point where the storage area was not overwhelmed and our van and camper trailer were not overloaded.

We spent a lot of time removing wallpaper, painting, putting down new carpet and fixing things around the house to make it ideal for a tenant family.

Thank you to all those who wished us farewell and happy travelling. Also a big thanks to those who took items when we offered them.

Finally, on May 26, 2016, we set off for Newfoundland.  We hope that you will find this blog entertaining, informative and educational, especially if you are thinking of something similar.