Craving a weekend getaway from Ottawa but not sure where to go? My 2022 book, Ottawa Road Trips: Your Weekend Getaway Guide, has all the tips you need for all sorts of trips in Eastern Ontario, the Outaouais, upstate New York and beyond, all within four hours’ drive of Ottawa (and many much closer!).
Photo at the top of this post courtesy of Tourism Eastern Townships.
Here are just a few of the places you can go and the things you can do with the information you’ll have at your fingertips.
- Zip line above a waterfall in the Pontiac
- Take a cooking class in Prince Edward County
- Go to a concert in a cave in the Ottawa Valley
- Fly an aircraft simulator near Montreal
- Pretend you’re Captain Kirk in upstate New York
- Hike a scenic trail in Westport
- Visit Canada’s biggest clock museum in Deep River
- Eat dinner under a lift lock in Peterborough
- Learn to blow glass in Alexandria
- Go rock hunting in Bancroft
- Hurtle down an Olympic bobsled run in Lake Placid
- Eat tasty tapas in Kingston
- Visit a peaceful monastery in the Eastern Townships (see the cover photo on this post)
So where can you buy Ottawa Road Trips: Your Weekend Getaway Guide?
- You can check with your favourite indie bookstore, including Black Squirrel Books, Books on Beechwood, Mill Street Books, Perfect Books, Singing Pebble Books, White Pine Books and World of Maps. If they don’t have it in stock currently, they can order it! And I’ll be doing signings at the Carlingwood Coles (Saturday, June 11, 11am to 1pm) and the Kanata Chapters (Sunday, July 10, 12pm to 4pm).
- Maker House usually carries my books, too.
- The book is currently available at several Ottawa-area Chapters/Indigo locations, including Rideau Street, Gloucester, Carlingwood Shopping Centre, Pinecrest, Place d’Orleans and Barrhaven. Soon, it should be available in other local Indigo stores, as well as online.
- You can buy it directly from the publisher, Ottawa Press and Publishing (they’ll have a booth at the Signatures show from May 5 to 8 at the EY Centre, too).
Finally, if you like exploring our region, why not subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, if you don’t already? It’s packed with up-to-the-minute tips on local road trips. You might also be interested in my 2021 book about trips closer to Ottawa; it’s called Ottawa Road Trips: Your 100-km Getaway Guide.
As the owner of Ottawa Road Trips, I acknowledge that I live on, work in and travel through the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be present on this land. Ottawa Road Trips supports Water First, a non-profit organization that helps address water challenges in Indigenous communities in Canada through education, training and meaningful collaboration.
11 comments
[…] at the end of the survey, you’ll be entered in a draw to win a signed copy of my latest book, Ottawa Road Trips: Your Weekend Getaway Guide! I promise I won’t use that e-mail address for any other purpose. And if you don’t want […]
Excellent, as always! We are fabs…!!!
Thank you so much! Glad you like it!
Just the trip tips in the e-mail are so fantastic I can’t wait to read the book.
Thank you for all your hard work investigating all these spots.
You’re very welcome, Gail–I’m glad you’re finding the tips useful!
My wife and Ibeing new to the area on a nice Sunday afternoon will take what we call a mystery drive of the Lanark area and closer to Ottawa taking in the back roads and stopping off at some of the smaller villages a great experience we found.
It’s a great way to get to know the region. There are so many pretty villages around Ottawa. And Lanark County is wonderful!
[…] Looking for additional weekly tips on things to see and do in our region? Subscribe to my free newsletter. You might also be interested in my 2022 guide to places a little further from Ottawa; it’s called Ottawa Road Trips: Your Weekend Getaway Guide. […]
looks very well planed for a weekend trip
I am a senior, like to do the Day Trips and like to show out-of-town visitors around (beside Ottawa-Gatineau). I have a difficult time trying to keep track of the names of the towns (such as those on your list) separate; the images of each town overlap and are all jumbled up. Could you create a list of the names of the towns and a distinguishing (for seniors) iconic image for each in a poster layout?
I’m sorry to hear that the images aren’t displaying properly–I will try to fix that! Could you tell me how you are reading the post–on a computer, on an iPad or on a phone? That will help me figure out a solution.
I will work on a poster-type list, as you suggest. That’s a good idea.
In the meantime, for reference, the towns are:
Aylmer
Chelsea
Manotick
Cumberland
Wakefield
Carp
Mississippi Mills (Almonte and Pakenham)
Carleton Place
Casselman
Kemptville
Arnprior
Smiths Falls
Morrisburg
Merrickville
Montebello
Perth
Renfrew
(and I’ll soon add Prescott)