Category: General

Well, we’re vaccinated now. Yippee! Of course we’re aware the pandemic isn’t over, but the vaccines are effective, COVID contagion is way down, and it seems folks might responsibly start venturing out and doing a few things again. Non-essential travel probably isn’t one of those things. On top of that, for our next major excursion we’re hoping to tour the Maritime Provinces, and travel to Canada is still not possible for Americans.

However, as much as it’s been a tough 14 months for everybody, it’s been tougher still for seniors in assisted living facilities. Sue’s mom lives in such a place and is long overdue for a visit, so we’ve packed up the quarantine-mobile and we’re heading south to spend a little time with her in Florida, returning back home before it gets too hot for us down there. It will be a shorter trip than previous ones, and we’ll see how it unfolds.

And just like that, we’re off on a new adventure. It feels a little weird…

After a year plagued (pun intended) by changes in, well, just about everything, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We anticipate receiving our COVID-19 vaccines sometime in April. That will be a giant step toward the next phase of normalcy in our lives.

Continue reading “A Bit of Optimism, Light at the End of the Tunnel, Hope on the Horizon, Happy Spring!”

The summer of 2020 will certainly be one to remember. Or forget. Remarkable either way. We’ll remember that foregoing our usual summer travels allowed us to enjoy the simple pleasures of life in Vermont.

Continue reading “Simple Pleasures”

Vermont has not been hit hard (so far) by the coronavirus, though the impact of the shutdown on businesses and tourism has been huge. As in our previous post, we’re staying put until the pandemic is under control and spreading has stopped. The culture in our small state and small town is pretty much to look out for each other and, in general, people are following guidelines. As a result, the number of cases has been kept small and outbreaks have been quickly addressed. However, although it’s been a quiet spring, as businesses start to reopen and we begin to welcome some visitors, it’s clear that we’re not going right back to the way things used to be. The times, they are a-changin’, one might say…

Continue reading “The Times, They Are A-Changin’”

Well, ordinarily at this time of year, we’d’ve just finished up the ski season and we’d be getting the motorhome packed up and road-ready, while getting the regular home packed up and ready for the house-sitters. Instead, the ski areas shut down a month ago, and of course traveling for 6 months or so is out of the question for now. So we stopped packing, helped our house-sitters arrange alternative housing, and set about hunkering down.

Continue reading “Social Distance”

Yes, I made it back. The rig is unloaded and ready for freezing temperatures, though it still needs some cleaning up and a few other things before winter sets in. That’s all for now, maybe we’ll have more to say later – if not, here’s hoping we all have an awesome winter!

We’ve talked about how a life on the road includes all the things that life usually does anywhere else. Well, another one of those things came up. We were over the Sierras and most of the way through Nevada when we got word that Sue’s parents were having some issues with her father’s care in Florida. Clearly the best way to help out was to be there.

Continue reading “The Destinator? (temporarily…)”

We’ve crossed the border into the interior of Alaska! We left Haines, re-entered Canada, then came back into Alaska (see photo) southeast of Tok, where we’ve still got a short way to go to the end of the Alaska Highway, then we’ll be poking around up here for awhile.

We’ll keep posting updates when we can get onto the internet.

When people think of Alaska, a lot of us think first of the Interior – that huge landmass that includes Fairbanks and Denali, just south of the polar bears. There’s also southeastern Alaska, also called the Inland Waterway or the Inside Passage or the Alaska panhandle. It’s a bunch of beautiful islands and peninsulas, featuring rain forests in close proximity to glaciated mountains. Our friend Gail who previously lived in Haines loved it and recommended a visit.

Fascinating and beautiful it is, but travel in southeast Alaska is primarily via the Alaska Marine Highway (aka ferries), cruise boats, and airplanes. It’s tough to visit southeast Alaska driving an RV! There are but two roads, for a total of 246 paved miles. One connects Whitehorse (which we’d just departed en route to Haines Junction, YT) with Skagway, AK, 100 miles to the south. The other 146 miles make up the Haines Highway which connects Haines Junction, YT (where we just happened to be) with Haines AK.

Continue reading “Side trip to Alaska!”

Our preferred approach to our travels is to let a trip unfold, giving ourselves opportunities to poke around to see stuff, meet people and enjoy adventures. Typically, we pick a concept (this year it’s Alaska) and we average about 50 miles per day. No, we don’t turn off the engine after 50 miles. Rather, we’ll drive 2-3 hours, find a fun place to stop, and stay and explore for a couple or a few days. Or more, or less. It depends.

Since our chosen route to Alaska is over 4,000 miles long, we need to sped some time re-positioning. In RV-speak, this means we pick up the pace to get somewhere, then we can slow down. At a 50-mile-per-day average, our approach would take 5 months which would leave not much time left to explore, well, Alaska.

Continue reading “The Sprint, part 1 – What’s different”