Oops, mistake on the dog-boarding: the cheapie option would be $75/day for 3 dogs.

Yep, fair bit work, most of the afternoon. Not hard, just nit picky back and forth among various screens. Much of the info is easily available on the net.

We vaguely tossed around the idea of renting an RV for a week to go see family, if it would prove cheaper than boarding the dogs (3 biggish dogs in a smallish house with cats...way more fun to watch than TV, but not good visit etiquette). In that instance we would rent upon arrival and park it in a laneway, meaning negligible mileage and fuel costs. Once the notion of RV rental entered our minds, since hubby hasn't been west of Windsor, ON, ever and I haven't been west of Wisconsin for years, of course we said that one of these days we should check what it would cost to cross Canada (east, west and north in separate trips). Today became that day.