Summer Trip Idea's

As you can tell by the title, summer's almost here. Now with high school almost behind me, I've been making plans on were to go. But so far, I'm looking to go East from Vancouver; maybe head over to Calgary and Toronto possibly Ottawa, before heading south to NYC, then east to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago. But its after Chicago that I'm just going to wing it. All I know is that I leave Chicago and have to end up in San Francisco. Everything else in between is just an idea. For the most part, I try planning it out; but I'm just winging it. Mainly because the most important thing for me isn't where I'm going but the journey it took to get there. That and all I know is I start in Vancouver and End in SF. Everything else is just a guess, while I could go south and get there faster, but why do that when I could make an epic journey of it?

Anyways I have been doing my homework on my own location, its just those other places, I've searched through the forums. But the opinions and experiences differ greatly. So i'm curious to what everyone else has to say about my ideas.

Either way, come August - Which is about the time I plan on leaving. Some interesting things will happen. Also, this whole trip will be done by trainhopping. If anyone else has suggestions or tips, PM me or reply here.

- Goggles
 
Sounds like a fun trip, man. Maybe I'll run into you out there; I get off probation at the end of Sept, and may be following a similar route. Though, once it gets to October and later, I'm switching to a significantly more southern path. Those nighttime temps are a bitch, and I'm not interested in lugging all that winter gear.

Other than that, can't really offer much. I've yet to hitch or hop more than a couple states away.

mike
 
dude your trip idea sounds like a good time...and totally feasible to train hop the whole way although i'd skip ottawa myself and b-line it to montreal before I went south. if you're gonna make it out all that way I mean you may as well, i've been out those parts in the fall it's cold but not so cold you cant sleep outside you'll be fine! first time I hitchhiked across canada I left bc in the middle of august and spent thanksgiving in newfoundland. wool and some longjohns and a few extras will go a long way!

ps I recommend CP over cn on the way over better scenery!
 
quebec, particularly montreal is not a hard place to hop out of!! In fact I can't think of any particular place in canada that is tough to hop out of, some places like parry sound you have to walk a long ass way to get to certain spots but other then that it's all pretty straight forward!!