In between filing for a passport and packing a toothbrush, stop into your local library and see all the great information and services that can get you on your way.
Your library has a wide variety of travel guides that can help you plot your backpacking route through Europe, the best resorts in the Caribbean and even the order to do the rides at Disneyland. From a backpacker's budget of $1 a day to the most luxurious European hotels, your library covers it all.
If carrying around a heavy travel guide seems troublesome or worrying about dropping that guide to Mexico's top attractions in the ocean is a concern, check out all the ebook versions of travel guides available on library2go, where you can find the library's free ebooks. Download them onto your tablet or e-reader and you have portable access (and maybe a few beach reads) in a package lighter than the average paperback book.
If you need to brush up on a different language before you go, the library can also help you in several different ways. You can borrow a phrase book or a two language dictionary, or you can even borrow a lesson on CD and learn in your car. Want to learn online? Try our Mango Languages product from any computer and you can learn over 30 different languages at your own pace. There's also an iPhone app so you can brush up your skills anywhere in the world.
The library also has free Internet so you can come and research your destination, print off maps, coupons and interesting articles and read reviews for hotels or activities.
If you aren't going too far check out our great selection of Canadian travel books such as guides to the national parks or checkout "Larger Than Life: Saskatchewan's Big Roadside Monuments" by Robin Karpan and see where the world's largest tomahawk is located. You can also check out the library's local history collection or ask the librarians for insider tips for what to see and do around their communities. And because your library card is valid anywhere in Saskatchewan, you can always grab something new to read or a movie to watch at the cabin from the branch closest to you.
All this, available for free, at your local library. Come check us out at www.lakeland.lib.sk.ca or visit your local branch for more information.
