New guidebook outlines 20+ weekend getaways from Ottawa

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.