sue – Page 7 – The Destinators

New River Gorge National Park

When we first decided to travel about in an RV back in 2015, the first thing we did was create a master electronic map where we’d put e-push pins everywhere we wanted to visit. It’s likely no surprise that among the first pins to make it to the map were the National Parks in the US and Canada. About a year ago, I read a NY Times article about the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. Hmmm… this isn’t on our map. How’d that happen? It turns out that although the New River has been a protected river (no dams/development) since 1978, it was re-designated as a National Park in 2020. We added a push pin.

Jams with friends, part 1

When we travel, we seek opportunities to meet up with other musicians and play music. Our universe of on-line musician friends is growing quite large. Doug has long been a member of Blues Guitar Unleashed and I’ve been a member of Drumeo for the past 4 years, and more recently we’ve both begun singing and piano lessons with Singeo and Pianote. Can we put together a virtual jam band? What about IRL?

Simsbury CT, deux

Visits with Mark and Linda are always a treat! We try to connect as often as we can with these long-time friends and fellow RVers, despite living 4 hours away from each other. And we’ve also been fortunate to connect with them on the road, intersecting on our respective travels.

On the road again, again

Time to visit my mom in Florida! Driving to Florida in the RV, as opposed to flying there in an airplane, gives us opportunities to spend more time with my mom, bring instruments along for jams, and see friends along the way, so we’re out again for about a month. Plans include exploring a couple of east coast national parks we’ve not yet visited (aka going places that we’ve never been) and, yes, making music with our friends.

Hey mom, see you soon!

Happy homeowner projects

It’s been 20 years since we bought our home and did a thorough round of remodeling and renovation projects. That means… it’s time to do them again!

Toronto – Drumeo live meetup

The event of the summer for us was a live meetup of a group of people from Drumeo, my online drum program. Drumeo provides a plethora of video lessons and workshops, live-streamed or online. We, the students, post videos of ourselves demonstrating our new learnings or a new tune on the Drumeo website forums, and we share feedback with each other. We also have the option to post our videos for a Drumeo instructor to critique and make recommendations. Of course we’ve met some Drumeos on past trips, however, a live get together with 14 students is a rare thing. And outrageous good fun!

Brampton, ON

Sue, Iris, Doug

Our last stop before we arrive in Toronto was Brampton, ON where we enjoyed getting together with our musician friend, Iris. Of course, it was an opportunity to jam!

Manitoulin Island

Lake Manitou from the Cup & Saucer cliffs

Look at any map of Ontario, and there’s a curious island at the north end of Lake Huron. It’s Manitoulin Island and we’d never heard of it. And it has a dotted line attached to its southern shore. Ferry! This needed some research.

It turns out Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world. Interestingly, Manitou Lake (in the photo above) is the largest freshwater lake on an island in the world. The population (13,000) is a healthy mix of people of indigenous and European descent. Politically and culturally, the island is in North Ontario. Geologically – the Niagara Escarpment runs through it – it’s an extension of South Ontario. There are only 2 ways on or off the island – a swing bridge from Little Current to the mainland, and a ferry to and from the Bruce Peninsula that runs only in the summer. It sounded to us like a unique place worthy of exploration…

SW Ontario, part 2 – Owen Sound

There’s a strategy for travelers facing busy, tourist-filled areas during peak season. It’s called: Zig where others zag. We employ this strategy often, and it’s been quite effective!

SW Ontario, part 1 – South and West

We spent some quality time exploring Ontario in 2018. We headed east through North Ontario in May, and returned via South Ontario in October. The difference between the two is striking. North Ontario is nearly 1 million square kilometers of arboreal forest and many, many lakes on the rocky Canadian Shield. With <1 person per square kilometer, there are more moose than people. South Ontario is just under 100,000 square kilometers of farms, wineries and orchards with 5 big lakes, 3 of them great – Erie, Ontario and Huron. Canada’s largest city, Toronto, and the capital of Canada, Ottawa (on the northern edge of South Ontario), drive the population density to 120 people per square kilometer. The dividing line is the nearly 10,000 square kilometer Algonquin Provincial Park, home to 12 million* beavers.

There was one area of Ontario we had yet to visit – Southwest Ontario. This is an area within South Ontario that touches Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Half of this area is north of our 44° home latitude, half is south.