Little perks of your city

[ssiguy]

One of things I love about BC is that all the cities/towns are in mountain valleys so no matter where you drive you always are presented with beautiful backdrops and this also means that you are never far from a wonderful huge park where you can really get away.

Rather oddly, one of the things I loved about Southern Ontario is that it isn't mountainous. This means that there are hundreds of different cities and towns to explore which are usually quite nice with old brick & stone buildings. The thing is is that you can go from town to town driving literally thousands of km of roads and never take the same road twice unlike BC valleys where you go anywhere and you essentially always have to take the same road back.

Just goes to prove there is no such thing as a perfect solution.

[urbandreamer]

True, I actually got sick of mountains and coniferous trees after spending 2 months driving around BC. It was so nice to be on the rolling hills of Alberta, although North Eastern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba really got tedious too. I was so relieved to be back in Ontario, there's so much variety here. I love the rural routes especially, and Eastern Ontario of course between about Cobourg, Cornwall, Ottawa and Algonquin is perfect. However, now that I've seen the Eastern Townships, I feel like they're the best compromise between Vancouver Island and Eastern Ontario/Southern Ontario small town/farm country.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Rather oddly, one of the things I loved about Southern Ontario is that it isn't mountainous. This means that there are hundreds of different cities and towns to explore which are usually quite nice with old brick & stone buildings. The thing is is that you can go from town to town driving literally thousands of km of roads and never take the same road twice unlike BC valleys where you go anywhere and you essentially always have to take the same road back.

Just goes to prove there is no such thing as a perfect solution.

This is a good point and I agree. I love driving and exploring back roads and different towns and that sort of thing. BC has some absolutely incredibly scenic, and really fun drives - just the Sea-to-Sky up to Squamish is one of my favourite that I've done, anywhere, for instance. But you're right that the available routes are somewhat limited. Without having to get on a ferry, there are basically two routes out of Vancouver, and the distances to get anywhere that aren't on one of those two routes can be pretty long (ie. not really feasible for a day trip).

Southern Ontario on the other hand has a dense grid of roads and is full of picturesque little towns a stone's throw from each other, but the comparatively flat landscape makes for a lot of straight and not particularly interesting drives. The near-north (Muskoka, Haliburton, Parry Sound, Ottawa Valley) is a lot more fun for this sort of thing.

What I find myself getting jealous of from time to time are places like New England, or the broader Appalachian region. Tons of scenic routes winding through the mountains, and it's still densely populated with historic towns and country roads.

[megadude]

I can attest to that last point. Appalachia makes for some great drives due to that combo. Though on my routes there weren't a tonne of charming towns but interesting towns nonetheless. Old rust belt towns that might actually be more interesting in their hollowed out forms than their past, more vibrant forms. I found myself being more entertained in Appalachia than in the Rockies because I could just feel the history and Appalachian culture. New England has all those quaint villages, often by the sea. So a totally different vibe.

It was years after that I decided to explore within a two hour radius of me to see what Southern Ontario had to offer. Basically started in 2017, when I made the effort to take different routes to places or rent cars and go places I had never been.

And going back to the BC/ON thing, it's like I've been saying for years, even if the immediate area you're in is shit, in BC, you've at least got a nice backdrop to look at. And as for drives, when I go to the cottage I will take the highway one way and country roads the other way and make a couple of stops. If I drive across the GTA I will take QEW/Gardner/DVP/401 and then 404/401/403/QEW on the way back.

Even locally, I will take say Trafalgar to get on the QEW to go west and then on the way back I'll get off at Third Line or Dorval to switch things up. I do that for virtually anywhere I'm going that is a 10+ minute drive. If I'm taking the short country roads up to Milton, I will take Tremaine up and Bronte back down, etc.

I like variety and options so I appreciate all the small towns to see in Ontario and love that locally I can visit DT Oakville, Kerr Village or Bronte Village within 10-15 minutes.

And I also got that feeling of being overloaded with gorgeous scenery but still somewhat missing what home looks like. I got that in Florida and out west in CO, UT, AZ and NM. Mostly it comes down to what you grew up with.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by megadude

I found myself being more entertained in Appalachia than in the Rockies because I could just feel the history and Appalachian culture. New England has all those quaint villages, often by the sea. So a totally different vibe.

It's similar in the Maritimes, with lots of winding old roads and small towns and villages, some being very old by North American standards. The scenery is not on the same level as the Rockies but the towns have a lot of character.