Most people know how to ride a bicycle. They learned sometime as a child and never forgot. I am not one of those people. I tried learning when I was a child, a teenager and an adult, and I have never mastered the two-wheel contraption. Whenever I see a child zip past me on a bike, I get a little jealous inside. I've always wanted to learn, but it's just something I've never been able to do. 

On my recent trip to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Alberta, I explored several of the many biking paths that wind through the area. The paths are also hikable, so I walked them instead. Although I've visited Cypress Hills several times, I never get used to the hills and lakes throughout the area. With dozens of kilometres of trails, you can spend a weekend there and never do the same thing twice. Although hiking around the park was incredible, I imagine it would be a lot more fun, and a lot easier, to bike it instead.

Beyond biking, there's plenty of other things to see in Cypress Hills too, like canoeing, stand-up paddle boarding, disc golfing, and comfort camping.

When I started my blog, I wanted a place to tell stories. I wanted a place where I could keep memories and show them off for people later. My earliest entries on my blog are from 2011 (published in 2014), right after my trip to Europe. They're messy, they lack detail, and they are full of inaccuracies. Not the mention the wretched photography.

So, there's only been a slight improvement since then. Hahahahaha.

Four years later, my blog has become my hobby, my joy, my escape and my work. I spend hours writing content for my blog. I spend hours editing pictures, researching details, and adjusting content for SEO (search engine optimization). It's a full-time gig, and just the other day I published my 200th article. After 200 times of doing something, you'd think the articles would get easier, but they really don't. Each one is unique unto itself, and each one is a special time in my life that I shared with my readers.

Summer has finally arrived, and with that comes my favourite thing: impromptu Saskatchewan road trips!

The first place on my list to visit this summer was Roche Percée. I first heard of Roche Percée on Instagram where I saw a picture of unique rock formations. Normally rock formations like this are in Alberta, closer to Drumheller, so I was surprised to find them in my own backyard. I did a quick search online to see where they were, and I learned they were only about 2 hours south of Regina, just past Estevan.

"Roche Percée" is French for "pierced rock" and is named after these unique rock formations. Upon visiting them, you can see the rocks very much do look like they've been pierced by some divine entity. Due to their appearance, these rocks were regarded by local First Nation tribes as being sacred, and they often carved symbols into the malleable sandstone.

The sun had long set when we crossed the border into Quebec. While we didn't see the official border crossing sign, once the bilingual road signs switched to French, we knew we had entered the final leg of our journey.

This is the third time I've been to Quebec, so I'm used to French signage. In fact, non-English signs are something I've grown accustomed to over the years. I've gotten plenty lost down streets with German, Italian, Austrian, Dutch, Japanese and Chinese names, so French wasn't anything different. For Krystal though, this was a whole new experience. She found the signs disconcerting and often googled what the translated version of them might be. Suddenly even commonplace words like "road" or "stop" were foreign to her.

When we arrived in Riviere-du-Loup it was 1:30 AM Quebec time, so it felt like 2:30 AM New Brunswick time. I'm used to late nights, but Krystal lives with two children and has a full-time job so staying up this late is something she wasn't used to. When we arrived at our hotel, Auberge de la Pointe, Krystal was ecstatic to find our room was not only spacious but also had heat. After two cold nights in PEI and New Brunswick, having a warm room to spend the night was a luxury we didn't know we needed.

When we finally arrived in New Brunswick, the sun had started to set. Within in an hour, the skies darkened and it began to rain. The clock on our dash said it was close to 11 PM, and we still had over an hour left to drive.

Back in 2010 my mother and I went to New Brunswick for a quick visit before hopping back to Nova Scotia. We were running short on time – kind of like I would be eight years later – so we just took a picture near the New Brunswick sign and turned around. This time, under the cloak of darkness and rain, we didn't even do that.

Driving at night and during the day are completely different. In the day you can see where you are going, and somewhat place yourself in the vastness of an area. At night you're a single glowing aura in a sea of darkness.

My recent trip to Prince Edward Island was more-or-less a return trip to Canada's smallest province. Back in 2010, instead of going to Grade 12 Graduation, I asked my parents if we could go on a trip to the East Coast instead. While in PEI we visited Cavendish, Green Gables, Avonlea and West Point Lighthouse, along with a lot of other quirky spots along the way. It was a fantastic experience, and one we talk about to this day. 

Fast forward eight years and I found myself in PEI again, but this time with my sister. When I visited the island in 2010, we took a ferry across from Nova Scotia, but this time we flew right into Charlottetown. We were picked up by Denis, our Ford Canada representative, and were shown our sparkling new Ford EcoSport.

(For those who want to read more about the Ford EcoSport, check out my earlier article.)

Last week Ford Canada flew my sister Krystal and I out to Prince Edward Island to take part in their Cross-Canada #FordEcoSport Tour. We were only the fifth of fifteen groups that will take part in the tour, so be sure to follow the hashtag to see what everybody is getting up to as well.

Our section of the tour was probably one of the longest in the program, as we had to drive from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island to Saint John, New Brunswick, then to Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec and ending in Quebec City. The whole distance is about 1,020 kilometres, which is about 10 hours of driving, assuming we didn't stop to see anything along the way.

But, naturally, we stopped plenty.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked – after "When is your next big trip?" – is how I can afford to travel so often. It can be tough to make ends meet, even with a fixed income. For a lot of people, the idea of saving up for a trip means making lifestyle sacrifices. It means going out for supper less, going to less movies, and spending less time out on the town.

For other people – especially younger people who are already struggling financially – this isn't even an option. They already make sacrifices to make ends meet. For a lot of today's youth, buying weekly groceries simply isn't possible. Telling them to spend less on luxury items isn't going to help them, since they already can't afford basic necessities. Not buying a $5 coffee every day isn't going to solve their problems, since they can't afford a $5 coffee to begin with.

I know this because I'm one of these people. I struggle to make ends meet, but I'm doing a lot better now than when I was fully employed. I can afford rent, go out for food once or twice a week, and I have a little bit extra to spend at the end of the month. This article isn't meant to tell people how if they just stop buying avocados they can afford a house in five years. This is a legitimate article about how to save money to travel the world. So, how do you do it?