With long range travel, the inevitable question comes up:

Is it easier to drive or fly?

The answer is, well, it depends.

For a family of four traveling from Cestohowa, Texas to Timmins, Ontario, I would have to say that driving has proved to be the easiest, less expensive and most enjoyable choice.

It might be different if our destination were in a major metro area, such as LA. We could all get discount fares, hop on a plane and take a direct flight.

But because my in-laws live in a very, very, very, very remote area – pretty close to the North Pole, flying is much more difficult and involves changing planes several times.

The thing about air travel is – it’s utterly unpredictable and passengers are helplessly at the mercy of the airlines – utterly dependant on the airline for getting from point A to point B with all passengers and luggage intact.

The thing about driving is – you’re in control.

If you want to stop somewhere – you can do that. When you’re ready to go, you just get in the car and go. You don’t have to worry about delayed flights, cancelled flights, or being taken into custody because the security guard at the airport thinks that the fact you are wearing boots and a belt makes you a terrorist…

A big advantage of driving is that you’re in charge of your own luggage, and trust me, that is a good thing.

Driving takes more time, but I have discovered that the extra time taken has a special value.

In the car, the family gets to know one another very well, and together they get to experience new places together – enjoying the scenery and all the interesting sights of the open road.

There’s another advantage, too.

In a car, you really get a feel for the physical geography of America and Canada. In an airplane, you are so high up in the air that it is really difficult to appreciate the distances and the differences between Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario.

This trip has given me a new appreciation for how large and diverse these places are, and yet, there are common threads that remind me of how much we all have in common.

Of course, there is still the return trip home at the end of the month…

Who knows what awaits us?

We were in kind of a rush getting to Canada because we had a deadline – we only had three days to get here in time for a family wedding. As a result, there was little opportunity for sightseeing except what could be seen from the car.

Going home will be different. We won’t be in such a rush, so we hope to actually pull the car over and go see some of these interesting places up close and personal.

One last tale from the highway.

Everything is very green once you leave south Texas – this was a physical reminder of the seriousness of the drought we are experiencing at home.

Oklahoma – wow! Is there ever a lot of corn in Oklahoma and it looks like it is almost ready for harvest. All points northward were as green as can be and lots of hay in the fields.

We ran into a lot of rain showers on the way up and we’ve been trying our best to figure out a way to pack this rain up and bring it home with us.