Mostly musings, no real categorization
Having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves on this year’s adventure and already thinking about what’s next, we pulled into our driveway in Vermont to… a power outage. Estimated to last 3-4 days. No electric, no water, no heat, although we do have a wood stove. We walked into the house, started a fire, assessed the situation over a cup of tea, and moved back into the RV. Let the adventure continue…
From our point of view, our friends and family tour of the west was hugely fun! Since August 10, we’ve made 16 stops to visit friends and family (17 if we count seeing Dana and Muffin twice). It’s important for us to stay in touch. And it was outrageous to meet up with long lost cousins!
Ah, but the leaves are changing, the temps are dropping, and there’s snow on the higher ridges. That can only mean one thing… We’re onto the fourth portion of this year’s adventure – our re-positioning back to Vermont. There’ll be fewer destination stops. And we’ll be seeking out adventures along a more direct (our definition) route while keeping an eye out for early cold snaps and snowstorms.
Stay tuned…
I recently read an article that referred to social media as a way to live ‘a perfectly curated life.’ Hmmm, is that what we’re doing with this blog? Featuring the perfect? Sweeping everything else under the proverbial analog rug?
Not really. We’re genuinely having great fun. Some days are outrageous – we climb mountains, see unbelievable views, swim in crystal clear lakes. We do tend to emphasize these in our posts, though some days are ordinary and we do laundry and go grocery shopping, while other days have hiccups like flat tires and roads suggested by GPS that turn into singletrack. It’s all part of the great adventure.
Except for wildfires.
We’ve seen the Pacific! Ok, Puget Sound. It’s salt water!
We left Glacier intending to head west toward North Cascades National Park. We meandered through western Montana, following the Clark Fork Valley through pretty pine forests, reaching Lake Pend D’Oreille in Idaho. The pine forests gave way to rolling hills and eventually those amber waves of grain (the wheat belt of eastern Washington). Cresting a hill, we got our first view of the Columbia River Valley in the form of Lake Roosevelt, behind the Grand Coulee Dam. Following the river, which retains a certain natural beauty despite having been heavily engineered for power generation and irrigation, we passed through miles of fruit orchards surrounded by green hills and more sagebrush.
It was in Fontanelle, Wyoming (population 13) that we finally said thank you and goodbye to Utah. Let me explain…
Continue reading “So long, Utah and the Colorado River Basin”
Southern Utah is beautiful! However, cell coverage and wifi are nearly as sparse here as palm trees in the high desert. It looks like we’ll be updating blog posts in batches, and perhaps adding photos/albums as we find bandwidth!
We were approached by another hiker who asked if it was our first time in Utah. Yes, yet how did he know? First timers tend to take an extraordinary number of photos. He was right! So, please excuse our (temporary?) hyperphotophilia. Our oversized albums are a small fraction of that extraordinary number…
We have arrived in Utah where we plan to stay for a bit and explore. The re-positioning portion of our trip is complete. We’re about to slow way down.
…bring interesting storms into eastern Colorado and New Mexico in the spring. So what are the options for a couple of adventurers in a 6 ton RV with 6 all-season tires (2 of them brand new!) heading through Taos and Santa Fe to Albuquerque, with a forecast for 12+ inches of snow?
No excuses are needed to reminisce about our 2016 adventure. We’ll talk travel with anyone who’ll listen not just to be polite. And fond memories pop up every now and again.
As we start planning the next adventure, and consider how to make epic even more epic, we look back to 2016 for lessons learned – what we loved and plan to continue and what we’d like to do differently.
So here’s our 2016 trip summary, keepers and things we’ll do differently…