Meet ups with friends & family
Doug et moi comptons de plus en plus d’amis sur les forums grâce à nos programmes respectifs de cours de musique en ligne : Blues Guitar Unleashed et Musora (anciennement Drumeo et Pianote). C’est toujours un plaisir de pouvoir rencontrer quelqu’un en personne lorsque nous sommes dans le voisinage. Sylvie a mentionné un jour qu’elle habitait près de Mont-Tremblant. À retenir !
English translation follows or click here…
Continue reading “Prévost, QC”
On a rendu visite à mes cousins Suzanne et Normand deux fois en 2023. Dans des articles de blog précédents, on a raconté comment nous nous sommes rencontrés et retrouvés. Ces visites étaient si agréables que nous avons décidé de remettre ça : même lieu de rendez-vous, même restaurant avec terrasse, mêmes pizzas, partager. Suzanne et moi avons ri à la fin du déjeuner en réalisant que nous avions toutes les deux mangé la bonne stuff, laissant la croûte ! On doit être de la même famille ! Ce qui n’était pas pareil, c’était notre niveau de français, à Doug et moi. Suzanne et Normand ont tous deux remarqué nos progrès en trois ans, des remarques qu’on a parfaitement comprises et auxquelles on a répondu avec toute gratitude. On était rayonnants de fierté ! Un grand merci à tous les membres de notre club de français MRV !
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Continue reading “Quebec City, partie 4”
Nous étions garés sur un grand parking presque vide de la plage de Brackley, dans le parc national de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard, en train de préparer nos vélos pour visiter les sentiers dans le parc, lorsqu’un autre camping-car, identique au nôtre mais un peu plus récent et beaucoup plus rutilant, s’est garé quelques places plus loin. Nous avons vu un couple commencer à préparer leurs vélos. Bien sûr, nous n’avons pas le choix – il fallait leur dire bonjour…
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Continue reading “Saint-Siméon-de-Bonaventure, QC”
This visit to Caraquet was different from our first visit in 2023. My maternal grandparents and generations of ancestors were born and lived here and I’ve heard about the town since I was a kid. In 2023, we aimed to check out the town. The town is in a pretty location on the Baie des Chaleurs (Bay of Warmth), on a peninsula in northern New Brunswick. We loved it! The arts community, the funky restaurants, the murals, the beaches, the marinas, the bay, the outdoor gathering spots all caught our attention. We (literally) sought out signs of my ancestors and found street signs with the Morais family name.
Continue reading “Caraquet, deux”
As we drove across the beautiful and brilliantly engineered 8-mile-long Confederation Bridge between PEI and the mainland, we were entering PEI with a few time constraints – tickets to a show on 8/8, meetup with friends on 8/14 and don’t visit PEI National Park with its legendary crowds on a weekend – and a list of things we wanted to visit. Oh, and we had forgotten about the Canadian long weekend and so arrived just in time for that. Working up a schedule with all these constraints required a bit of creativity. (Check out PEI on our travel page in you’re interested in just how much creativity…)
There was was only 1 item on our list in the south central part of PEI. However, given our driving routes to work around the constraints we got to explore this area and found a few gems.
Continue reading “South central PEI”
The very first stop on this year’s journey was at Bates College, where I and my Bates ’76 classmates came together to celebrate our Fiftieth College Reunion.
Continue reading “Lewiston, ME”
In 2014, before this blog began, even before RV travel entered our lives, Sue and I traveled to a blues jam near Augusta, ME. This event was run by a high school teacher and tennis coach with a serious guitar habit who calls himself “Cowboy” in the BGU forum, though his real name is Wilbur. At Wilbur’s jam, we met a whole bunch of cool people from the Blues Guitar Unleashed forum, including one who had chosen “sloslunas” for his forum name, likely because his first name is Steve, which starts with “S,” and he lives in Los Lunas, NM.
But that was my first jam of any kind, my first time playing my guitar in public, the first time I ever plugged into an amp and played at stage volume – a whole bunch of firsts. At one point Steve came to me, acting real serious, and then he told me I was a player (“You’re a player, man!”). I found that to be incredibly encouraging, uplifting and enabling. We became friends. When Sue and I started all our traveling, we stopped in to see Steve and Hy in Los Lunas. That was in April 2017, way too long ago. Though we’ve tried a few times to get there again, each of those efforts was thwarted – until this year!*
Continue reading “Return to The Compound, Los Lunas, NM”
Mutual friends introduced us. “You should meet this couple we met! They both play music and travel in an RV with an insane amount of music gear. You’d love them!” So we first got together with Rod and Tanya at their home in Egan SD in 2016, and love them we did! That was our first year out on the road and we learned so much from them about RVing, traveling with music gear, and making music. Mentors! We were humbled that these pro musicians, traveling as RVDreamTour, invited us to jam with them. We were fortunate to cross paths again later that year, in one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever played music in, and once again in 2019.
When we first met, Rod and Tanya were able to work remotely while traveling for months at a time. Although they still do that, their latest work situation requires them to occasionally be on site at several places in the west. They still spend summers in Egan, but winters now in St David, AZ which is nearer to the work sites. We checked in from Palm Springs, when we were about to be heading towards St David and – surprise! – they were in Bakersfield, CA. Well, that’s not very far from Palm Springs, is it? Set a course!
Continue reading “Bakersfield, CA”
We became friends with Nancy and David within minutes of meeting them for the first time in 2017. Our friends Mark and Linda had encouraged us all to cross paths in our respective RVs at Lake Powell while we were all out on our own respective adventure trips. We got along so well with Nancy and David (Mark’s cousin and her husband) that we joked about perhaps having been friends in a former life. Despite living on opposite coasts, we’ve connected again several times and enjoyed every minute.
Continue reading “Palm Springs, CA”
I’ve “known” Dennard from the Blues Guitar Unleashed forums since he first lit up the stage at the BGU Live jam at Lake Arrowhead, CA in 2018. I wasn’t at that event, but his original songs and charismatic stage presence brought him immediate fame within our online community. This man is a player!
Sue and I first crossed paths with Dennard in person at the 2023 BGU regional jam in Grand Rapids, and again in 2024 in Albuquerque. We were looking forward to jamming a few tunes with Dennard again earlier this month in Parker, but, alas, at the last minute he could not attend due to a family visit. We’d also been looking forward to meeting up with Dennard here in SoCal around this time one year ago, and that was one of the visits confounded by our sudden change of plans. Not this time!
Continue reading “San Diego, CA”