Happy New Year!
Wow, it’s 2013! Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and avoided the flu bug that seems to be everywhere this winter. So what have we been up to since our last update? Well at the end of November we fixed up the one remaining bedroom on the main floor of the Grand Bend cottage but it wasn’t an easy job. …
Keeping busy
When we left the Tiverton farm sit, we immediately went to Dave’s sister’s place near Newmarket to look after their newest family member, Charlie, while they went on a mini vacation. He’s a very cute, golden retriever pup who’s a sweetheart but man you forget how much work puppies are. …
Big Dog sittin’ - Tiverton,ON
September went by quickly! We house & cat sat for our friends Terry and Tracey for a couple of weeks and then caught up with my Dad for the rest of the month.
The first week of October we ended up in Tiverton for a farm sitting assignment for Sarah and Neal, a very nice young couple we met online via one of the house sitting websites we belong too. …
Back in Ontario - A sleeping giant & a break down
Got back in the province on August 17. Stayed in Dryden for a few nights and then spent 5 nights at Sleeping Giant Provincial park just south of Thunder Bay. If you’ve never heard of this park before and wondered what the name is all about, it’s a big rock formation that when viewed from a distance, literally looks like a very large person, lying on his back on the water. …
Whiteshell Provincial Park, Manitoba
Stopped at this park, right on the Manitoba/Ontario border for 5 nights. The beach campground on Falcon Lake was OK but not great, a bit run down feeling to it due to the crowds (and screaming kids) it attracts since it’s right near the water. …
Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba
Wow, the scenery once you get out of the Rockies sure is ordinary and somewhat of a let down but you gotta get thru the prairies to get back to Ontario. We took our time heading east with stops in Cochrane and Medicine Hat, Alberta and White City and Indian Head, Saskatchewan. …
Camping at Lake Louise, Alberta
Lucked out and managed to get a last minute, 2 week long reservation in Banff National Park at the trailer campground in Lake Louise, Alberta. When we were here in 2009, we could only stay for 5 days but that only left us wanting more so we’re happy to be back!
Back in Canada!
After we finished with Yellowstone, we headed further north and spent a few days in Fairmont, Montana and then in Wallace, Idaho. Did a few more hikes but nothing spectacular to share.
Crossed the border back into Canada at Osoyoos, BC on a beautiful sunny and warm day. …
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Turns out that the Grand Teton National Park is directly south of Yellowstone so we decided to take a day and explore as much of it as we could while we were in the area.
There were 2 ways to get to it from where we were. …
Yellowstone National Park
From Moab, we headed to Ogden, UT (just north of Salt Lake city). Spent a couple of days there doing absolutely nothing. We needed the break from all the sight seeing and hiking we’d done in the heat and red dirt the past month. …
Moab, UT - a desert city in the crack of red rock
Arrived in Moab on May 28, Memorial day here in the US. Only took us 1.25 hours to get here from Blanding so it was a short travel day. Arrived at the Spanish Trail RV park, right at the south end of Moab and got set up. …
Blanding, Utah - Base camp for Adventure
The drive from the Grand Canyon to here was by far the most interesting scenery this trip so far. We drove east and then north east to Kayenta (close to border of Arizona & Utah) and unexpectedly ended up going through part of Monument Valley. …
Two days later - How do we feel now?
Actually, we both feel surprisingly good. I’m sure the 12 hours we slept when we got back to the trailer on Thursday night helped. I think that’s the best sleep I’ve ever had!
Sure we have achey legs, a few blackened toes and sore shoulders but who wouldn’t after that kind of hiking. …
Going up Bright Angel
Some info and stats about the trail.
Route Description (From the Official Guide to Hiking the Grand Canyon)
“The trail descends through a natural break in the upper cliffs, passing the Redwall Limestone in a series of tight switchbacks called Jacobs Ladder. …
Recovery day
Wow, do we hurt today! For me it’s the toes, the outside part of my quads and my butt, right near the hip bones. Shoulders are surprisingly fine except when I touch the part where the back pack straps sat. …
Going down South Kaibab
Some info and stats about the trail.
Trail Description (From the Official Guide to Hiking the Grand Canyon)
“Most trails in the Grand Canyon stay within the confines of a side canyon. But the South Kaibab Trail (SKT) is one of the few trails to follow open ridge lines that provide panoramic views of the main gorge.” …
Arrived at the Grand Canyon, AZ
We arrived at the Grand Canyon, AZ on May 6th. Our week long stay in Trailer Village, right in the National Park was the only advance reservation that we made on this road trip. We found out in February that our application for the back country permit to hike down to the bottom via the South Kaibab trail, stay for 2 nights in the Bright Angel Campground and then hike up the Bright Angel Trail had been accepted for May 8 & 9 so we made our reservation right then. …
Abuquerque, New Mexico
Left the flat, hot desert of Carlsbad, NM on April 30th and drove about 5 hours north to Albuquerque, NM. Nice to finally see some lusher scenery like green grass, trees and mountains. Plus it was only 80F when we got to the RV park in the afternoon which felt fantastic after baking in 90-100F in Carlsbad.
Dry heat and caves in Carlsbad, New Mexico
We left Junction, Texas on April 25 and drove for about 6.5 hours to Brantley Lake State Park, just north of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Once you get out of the Texas hill country there’s not much to see but miles and miles and miles of scrubby desert. …
Back to nature
After living in the concrete jungle for 5 days we were ready to get back to what we like best, camping in the country. Found a nice, quiet, little state park only a few hours west, right on the South Llano River in Junction Texas. …
Very urban RVing
Next destination, urban camping near San Antonio. Compared to all the small, quiet little RV parks we’ve stayed at on the gulf coast, this one was quite a change. The River Ranch RV park in New Braunfels (about 20 minutes north of San Antonio) was located right on the Guadalupe River under 2 very busy overpasses of I-35. …
Don’t camp on the beach when it’s WINDY!
We left Port O’Connor with high hopes, we we were going to spend 1 week camping on the beach in Port Aransas. It’s another 2 hours south, almost to Corpus Christi. The town is bigger than Port O’Connor and much more touristy. …
More fishing and even some catching!
So what have we been doing since Matagorda Bay? Fishing of course. Spent spring break in Palacios, a small coastal town another 1 hour south. The RV park there was combined with a marina so it was right on the water. …
Matagorda Bay FISH tales!
We just spent 13 nights at the Matagorda Bay Nature Park RV park which is located on the Colorado River right where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Great to be back near the water although it’s not exactly what I’d call pretty water like what you see in the Florida Panhandle. …
Bay City, TX
Once we got the trailer roof fixed, we decided to stay put here for another week and get the rest of our repairs complete. We still needed to get the axles reinforced after our accident and Dave found a garage that could do that, a few blocks from the RV park we’re currently staying at. …
Murphy’s Law
So you know that saying “If anything can go wrong, it will”? Sigh...let me tell you, it’s true!
After our axle accident we vowed to get all the axle supports reinforced so that we wouldn’t have to deal with that problem again. …
Relaxing at Brazos Bend State Park
After all the axle excitement it was nice to relax at this state park, in the middle of nowhere, in Needville, Texas. Huge camp sites, lots of space and lots of very green grass with all the rain they’ve had this year.
CAA plus RV membership - PRICELESS!
Yesterday was supposed to be a short travel day, only 90 min drive to the next campground but fate had other plans for us.....
We’d just exited off the Sam Houston Toll Road South in Houston to Highway US 59 South when Dave noticed A LOT of smoke coming from trailer on the passenger side. …
Made it to Texas!
Wow, talk about lucky...we had perfect February travel weather for getting to Texas, not a snowflake to be seen anywhere. Thank you Mother Nature!
After our 1st stop in Battlecreek, Michigan, we drove another 7 hour stretch thru Indiana and into Illinois where we stayed at a hotel in Effingham. …
Spring in February!
We thought leaving Canada in February was going to be a challenge...hardly! Instead of having to dig the trailer out of a pile of snow in sub zero temps, we didn’t even have to remove a single flake of the white stuff when we left Newmarket, ON this morning. …