Happy Canada Day to all my north of the border readers! Last year in honor of it I wrote a post in which I revealed the Top Ten places I'd love to visit in the Great White North.
As you long time readers know I love road trips and have chronicled a few of them on the blog for you. I have traveled much of the US Interstate highway system in pursuit of business, fun or just to get away for a few hours from my at home drama.
I've always dreamed of one day driving on the German Autobahn system, and that dream of fast driving on foreign soil also extends to driving the highways and byways of Canada.
The Queen Elizabeth Way, or the QEW for short has my attention because it leads to the city in which a certain Canadian home girl of mine resides and is part of Ontario's 400 series of expressways. I'm particularly interested in not only driving the 400 series routes in Ontario, but Quebec's kissing cousins to our interstate highway system, the 1,900 kilometer provincial system of expressways known as Autoroutes.
I'm well aware peeps that the speed limit on the expressways and autoroutes is 100 kph (62 mph for the metrically challenged). It's a little slower than the 70 mph (110 kph) we're allowed in Kentucky and some parts of the States, but if I am blessed to do that trip I'm not going any faster than 5 kph over that. The TransGriot hates and will do her utmost to avoid speeding tickets.
I'd also have a blast taking in the scenery as I happily motored along scarfing up the Timmy's doughnuts as well.
The Autoroutes history dates back to 1959 when the first Autoroute, the Autoroute des Laurentides was built as a toll road.
One of the Autoroutes that Americans are familiar with is the A-15, which connects with Interstate 87 at the US border to provide a continuous link between Montreal and New York. It was completed in time for the 1967 World's Fair that was hosted in Montreal. Another one is the A-55, which connects with Interstate 91 at the Vermont border.
The A-40 intersects with Ontario's Highway 417 at the Ontario-Quebec border along the north side of the St. Lawrence River. It runs from there to Montreal and continues to Quebec City. The A-20 runs along the southern side of the St. Lawrence.
So yeah, I'm keeping up with the ongoing Autoroute construction updates via Scott Steeves cool website CanHighways similar to AA Roads that focuses on Canada's highways. And maybe one day soon I'll get to say bonjour to not only a certain blogger in Niagara Falls, but hopefully get to visit Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal at the same time.
