Author: areeb

Hi Everyone!  Do you believe summer is officially over, now that Labor Day has past???  How did that happen so quick?  But fall is a great time of year just about anywhere, I think.  We’ve been having fun on our tour of the Southwest.  I have so much to share with you.  Grab a cup of tea and settle in!

I mentioned in my last post how much we were loving our Southwest Colorado location in the mountains.  We loved it so much we booked the exact same campground site for the month of September 2019.  Not sure where all we’re going to go next year, but we know we’ll be at that spot for September.

We ended up cancelling some of our Utah plans for the first couple weeks of August, and stayed in Southwest Colorado longer than originally planned.  A great benefit of traveling this way, we can change our plans and our location when we want to.  We moved around to a couple of campgrounds in the same general area, staying in the San Juan mountains, north of Durango. We met a very nice couple at  one campground that we hiked with for a few days, which was fun, and they were full of good information about places we were headed.  And, on another hike, we ran into a friend of a friend.  It was so weird – we hiked up a mountain, in a light rain, to the top where there was a nice little lake.  There was only one person at the lake, with 2 dogs.  Of course Gerry had to go say hi, and we started talking.  The usual, where are you from, where are you staying, where are you going type of talk.  Turns out, he was from Delaware, Ohio, their kids went to the same school as ours (different ages, though), and we have met he and his wife a few times at graduation party and wedding of a mutual friend.  And he was staying at a campground just up the road from us.  So he kindly invited us over one evening for a nice visit, he played guitar and sang while we enjoyed each others company.  Small world!

We visited Durango a few times, a nice western town with a lot of services and shopping, and some good grocery stores.  We now rate towns based on the availability of good grocery stores.  We have changed how we eat fairly considerably in the last year and look for grocery stores with good selection of organic produce and also seek out farmers markets everywhere we go.  I have been surprised how many towns and areas do not have access to good, fresh, organic produce.  Food deserts do exist, we have found some of them!

Anyhow, we traded a couple of weeks of hot, sandstone bluffs and canyons in Utah for mountains, trees and cooler temperatures in Colorado.  So glad we did.  When we moved out of the mountains we stopped for a few days in Cortez, Colorado, which is right in the southwest corner of the state.  We went to Mesa Verde National Park, where we took a tour into the Pueblo Cliff Dwellings.  Very cool, you have to climb up big ladders to get to the cliff dwellings.  Amazing how  people built these and lived there around 1100 AD.

Then we moved on to  Lake Powell in Page, Arizona.  Lake Powell straddles the Arizona/Utah state line.  Lake Powell was formed in the 1960s, when they built a dam in the Colorado river.  Glen Canyon was then flooded and Lake Powell was born.  It is the second largest dam, after Hoover Dam.  They are in year 8 of a drought, and 52% of the lake is gone – 92 feet down.  We walked along the lake every day, our campground was right on the lake.  A state park campground, Wahweep, which was very nice.  We walked to the shore for sunrise a couple of mornings which was beautiful.  But, since the lake is so much smaller now, you have to walk down quite a ways on what used to be underwater.

We did a raft tour on the Colorado river, through Glen Canyon which was very nice and a good way to see the area from a different perspective.  We went through the famous “Horseshoe Bend” on the raft, then later went on top of the canyon to take a picture of the Horseshoe Bend.  You’ll see it in the pictures.

We also went to Antelope Canyon while in the area.  Antelope Canyon is a “slot” canyon (I had to look it up, didn’t know what that meant).  It’s a very narrow canyon, more like a “slot” in the ground, that has been formed by water and wind.  The result is amazing sandstone formations that swirl all around you with light coming in from the slot over your head.  Lots of pictures for you from there!

That area has some famous hiking, most notably “The Wave”, in the Vermillion Cliffs.  We were very close to that area and wanted to do some hikes.  The Wave is so popular they do a lottery system and only 10 people a day are chosen.  So we didn’t even try that.  But, we learned of another hike, Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch that started right next to the trail to the Wave, and was promised to be “one of the best hikes in the US”.  According to a book I have that I have found to be pretty reliable.  So off we go, leaving Gerry behind in the RV in the air conditioning because he really can’t handle the heat.  We were loaded with water, healthy snacks, proper clothing, etc, etc, etc.  The trailhead is at the end of an 8 mile, very rough, dirt, US Forest Service road.  We couldn’t go more than 7 or 8 mph.  But we knew that and had planned for it.  WELL.  At mile 6 we see a tow truck coming the other direction, with a Jeep Cherokee behind it.  Not a good sign.  The Jeep waves us down and tells us the road is flooded up ahead, they got completely stuck and had to be towed out.  We had read about how that was possible, and if a tow was needed, expect to pay $1,000 (yes, $1,000) for it.  Seriously, it was 90 and sunny with no shade at 10:00 am.  Dry as you can imagine.  How is this possible???  But, we received flash flood warnings on our phones every day, they say there are severe downpours, very isolated, and they turn these dirt roads, with nothing to stop the water flow into dangerous situations.  SO, we turned around, and did not get to hike One of The Best Hikes In the US.  Bummer.

After Lake Powell we went straight north to the Hatch, Utah area.  Right between Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park (about 1 hour either direction to each park).  A very remote campground, called Wilderness Ranch and probably the strangest campground we’ve stayed at yet.  The people owned 500 acres, and the RV sites were at the back of the property, down some long dirt/gravel roads.  No bathrooms, no showers, no laundry facility.  But, huge RV sites with full hookups in the middle of nowhere with beautiful views.  And, there were only a couple of other RVs there so we had the place to ourselves.  There was also a golf course on the property.  Weird, I know.  It needed some work and the owner had plans to improve it and try to make it an area attraction.  Anyhow, we enjoyed several days of wondering the property with Gerry, listening to the coyotes at night and oh my goodness, the stars!! We saw the Milky Way several nights, I have never seen so many stars.  We also went to Bryce Canyon National Park (lots of pictures).  Beautiful there, and we did a great 6 mile hike.  Of course we had to leave Gerry behind, doggies are not welcome at national parks.  🙁  We did not make it to Zion National Park (I hear your gasps and shock!)  But, we just didn’t want to do another day without Gerry and we loved the property we were on and didn’t muster the energy to go there.  We’ll keep it on the list for another time.

Speaking of Gerry.  A little update is needed:  he developed these warts (2 big ones) on his nose/lip area.  We found out it is from a contagious virus.  How did we find out you ask??  Well, we were signing him in at a doggy day care in Durango when the owner saw them and said “oh no!  He can’t come in here!  Those are contagious!!”  A phone call to our vet back home, some pictures sent, and they agreed.  So we went to a vet in Durango who suggested we get his immune system to kick in to fight it by crushing the warts.  They assured us it wouldn’t hurt him.  So they did.  And we gave it 2 weeks and it didn’t work.  All the while we couldn’t take Gerry to any doggy day care, which made it hard for us to go to national parks because we don’t like to leave him alone in the RV for more than a few hours.

So, while we were at Wilderness Ranch, we drove to Cedar City, Utah, about an hour and 15 minutes each way, to see a vet who surgically removed them.  Gerry had to have anesthesia, but he did well and we took him home the same day.  Happy to report he is healing well and hoping he will be fit for doggy day care again soon.

We moved from Wilderness Ranch south to Fredonia, Arizona, which is right outside Kanab, Utah.  This was our home base to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Terrible RV park, and we ended up cutting our time there short by a few days.  But, we had a great visit to the North Rim, and did a great hike there too.  Hard, as we went about 1.5 miles down into the canyon, then back up and it was very steep.  We had planned to go about 3 miles down, then up, but, we ran into a Ranger on the way down, who was telling everyone to turn around and go back up, a storm was coming.  Evidently, the day before, on the same trail, people were stranded for a few hours during a storm, water floods the trail since it is between high canyon walls and is very dangerous.  So, we took his advise and turned around.  The weather cleared up somewhat while we walked around the rim, although you’ll see in the pictures there was a storm over the canyon, a few miles out.  Beautiful.  Lots of pictures for you.  We haven’t been to the South Rim yet, that will be in the next couple of weeks.  But we loved the North Rim.

While in the Kanab, Utah area, we also visited Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.  Thank you, Janet, for telling us about this great place!  Best Friends is a 3,700 acre, no kill sanctuary for all types of companion animals:  dogs, cats, horses, pigs, goats, bunnies, exotic birds.  They have about 1,600 animals on site at any given time.  They have a very active national outreach program that works with shelters in cities all over the country to reduce the kill rates at shelters.  They have neuter/spay locations all over the country and run many other programs with the goal of reducing the number of animals killed in shelters every day.  We did a tour of the property, met some doggies and kitties and had lunch in their cafeteria overlooking a beautiful canyon.  Check them out, animal lovers, they do great work!  Somehow we left there without another doggie in tow, but it was hard!

RV Update:  I told you before about some of the wood trim coming off.  Well guess what?  On one moving day two or three weeks ago, I opened the door to start my set up process (put slides out, etc) and found our 50″ Samsung smart TV lying on the floor.  Yup, the wall bracket had come out of the wall, above the fireplace, and it lay shattered on the floor.  The road had been bumpy that day.  And perhaps there is a cumulative effect from all the bumpy roads.  Who knows?  We have never used the TV much, mostly for DVD movies.  I’ve mentioned before we never set up the DirectTV, we have never used the cable option that some campgrounds have at the hookups, we do sometimes get “air” channels if we are near a city and will watch a little TV then.  But most of the time, we don’t use it for anything but watching DVD movies.  We have built an impressive DVD collection, I must say.  So, we have no TV now in the living area.  We have been using the bedroom TV to watch DVDs.  We had never turned that TV on before this happened, but it was easy to figure out how to use it.  And, if things get really rough, we still have the outside TV we have never turned on.  It is under the awning on the outside, I think people use it for things like football parties, etc.  Again, we have never turned it on, I would have to figure out how to use it if we wanted to.  One of the best things, I think, about how we live in the RV is that we don’t watch TV.  I know some of you may think we are crazy (for so many reasons!) but it is amazing how different life is when time is spent on other things (talking to each other for example 🙂 ) rather than watching TV.

We are also having somewhat of an issue with our water intake valve.  When we hook up to the water spigot at the campgrounds, which feeds directly into our water pipes, some water is seeping into the fresh water tank (which you would fill if you were not going to have access to a fresh water hook up).  This happens sometimes, not always.  My best un-mechanical minded guess is that a valve or flap of some sort separates the fresh water tank from the water hookup and the valve does not hold sometimes.  Anyhow, we are keeping an eye on the monitor for the fresh water tank and when it fills up we empty it.  The danger is that if we forget to check it, it could overflow and flood the RV somehow.  Oh well, all in all, we are very happy with our RV and how it works.

So that brings us up to the present moment.  We are currently at the Grand Canyon Railway RV park, in Williams, Arizona.  This will be home base for 10 days.  Bill is coming to visit, and, I am going to St. Paul to help Guy finish up some things at the new Sober House for a few days.  Residents are beginning to move in (sooner than planned) and we need to finish up a few improvements and  furnishings.  It will be great to spend a few days with Guy and see Aspire Sober Living receive it’s first resident.  Life is good.

Before I go, I have a confession to make.  I have not even opened up the box for the external hard drive we bought to make room on the computer for Steve’s pictures.  Just have not had the motivation to tackle that project, it is not my cup of tea, so to speak!!  So, in the meantime, phone pictures will have to do.  I think you will notice how much better our new phone cameras are (remember the 5 hour Verizon ordeal in my last post?!)  Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Sorry for the long post, but I had a lot of catching up to do!  Thank you everyone for the comments and well wishes, we love hearing from you.

Southwest Colorado Hiking:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/w1fioMgp1ZERhMWu6

Mesa Verde National Park:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/tjiSy2eYVbfEu6Zb8

Antelope Canyon:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/vqo8jAAuMAB2G8Ja6

Lake Powell, Glen Canyon, Horseshoe Bend:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/SwT9AYAC7yaaorbx7

Bryce Canyon National Park: https://photos.app.goo.gl/VfrZBSqagRzrYKzJA

Southwest Utah:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhbTrq4LjtDfJ4vf8

North Rim Grand Canyon:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/TkRkTfqhs1yrFuUb7

 

Hi Everyone:

Many apologies for the long delay between posts.  We are doing great, all is okay and we are loving our southwest travel.  I promise a real update soon, complete with pictures.  In the meantime, I thought I’d let you know we are okay!  Joanie, thanks for your concern about aliens getting us at Roswell…we are going there, but haven’t been yet.  So we’re still here!  But what a fun adventure that would be… 🙂

I know I sound like a broken record, but our internet access has been very spotty.  We’ve had to drive to towns and sit in the truck several times just to do banking, check our mail, make phone calls, etc.  AND Steve’s phone up and died a few days ago.  You may recall we had to get new phones last year while in Oregon.  That was 10 months ago.  So we drove over an hour each way to the nearest “big” city the other day and spent 5 hours (yes you read that right) at the Verizon store.  NOT how you want to spend a day, trust me.

So enough for excuses.  I am rounding up pictures to share with you soon.  We are currently located in southwest Utah, between Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park.  Beautiful spot.

Here’s a photo from a recent trip to Antelope Canyon; more to come soon!

Hi Everyone!! First, apologies for the long delay since our last post.  And thanks for all the comments, we love hearing from you guys!!  At the risk of sounding like I’m making excuses (which I admit I am 🙂 ), I have been struggling with – or more like fighting with – my computer and storage space.  The short story is we are completely out of storage space on the computer, way too many pictures and videos.  This in spite of the fact that I have 3 cloud services – Google Photos, Verizon Cloud and One Drive.  But alas, all the photos from Steve’s “big” camera load to the computer storage even though I thought I was getting them to go straight to One Drive.

Technology is not my strength by a long shot, and it certainly isn’t Steve’s.  I have spent hours trying to figure out a solution and have not resolved it yet.  And part of the problem is I’m always trying to move pictures from the computer to the cloud when we are in areas with not great internet service which is most of the time.   I think I’m going to get an external hard drive when we’re back in civilization somewhere soon.  I’ve always struggled with getting our cell phone pictures and the pictures from Steve’s big camera to be in one place so I can merge them together into albums to put in this blog.  And now this storage issue … ahhhggg!!

But enough about that, sorry for venting.  Onto the happier topic of our travel adventures.  I’ll give you a roundup of where we’ve been these last few weeks and what we’ve been up to so we’re all caught up.  We left Denver after a lovely visit with Samantha and went to southwest Colorado.  Near a really cute little town called Ouray, in the San Juan mountains.  Loved it there, and went to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  Beautiful.  We also drove a long (13 mile) dirt/gravel road to the area True Grit with John Wayne was filmed (at least part of it).  It was also a beautiful area and we enjoyed exploring it, very remote.

From there we went to eastern Utah.  First a 3 night stay at the Dead Horse Point State Park (they filmed the end scene from Thelma and Louise there, where they drive off the cliff).  Great state park and made us realize we should maybe try to stay in state parks more often.  Then we moved just 30 miles to an RV park in Moab, UT.  Main reason for using an RV park vs. a state park is that most state parks don’t have full hook ups.  We had electric only at the state park.  No water and no sewer hook up.  But we have big tanks for that and planned accordingly.  We could have made it several more days without hook ups we determined.  But anyhow, we moved to Moab, at a decent but not great RV park with full hook ups.

I can sum up our 10 days in the Moab/Dead Horse State Park area in 1 word:  HOT.  It was 105 or more every day.  No trees, no shade, just lots of red rocks, beautiful canyons and hot.  I admit it slowed us down quite a bit.  We even spent a couple of days hibernating in our air conditioning.  And Gerry hates the heat we have learned.  But we got out and did a lot too.  We celebrated Steve’s birthday at a lovely ranch about 20 miles outside of Moab that was a beautiful drive.  We got massages at the ranch spa too (hey, it was Steve’s birthday)!  We went to Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park.  Both are beautiful.  We did several hikes and also rented a Jeep for an off road adventure.  We’ve never done that before and it was fun.  Plus the Jeep had air conditioning which we kept at full blast all day, while we had the top open.  Gerry was not a huge fan of the Jeep and the bouncy jeep trails.  But it got us off the beaten path and into some really cool places, including some very steep jeep trails with big drop offs that were a little scary.

The rental place gave us a good lesson before we left about shifting and when and how to use which gears and they also gave us maps of the “beginner” trails.  The instructions even tell you exactly where on each trail to shift into lower gears and were pretty idiot proof, as evidenced by the fact we completed the trails they suggested and made it back safely!

We left Moab yesterday (Saturday) and drove about 150 miles east back to Colorado.  We’re only about an hour from where we were a couple of weeks ago, on the other side of the San Juan mountains.  We’re about 50 miles south of Telluride and about 70 miles north of Durango.  We LOVE it here.  One of the best campgrounds we’ve seen anywhere, rustic but nice.  Lots of trees, and nestled into the mountains all around.  Sites big enough to have a campfire at each site, and we’ve had a fire already in ours.  And it was so chilly this morning we turned on our fireplace and went looking for our sweatshirts!!  We’re at 8,100 feet elevation and it was only about 80 today for a high.  Perfect.  Went for a great 6 mile hike today into the mountains, walked right our our RV door to the trailhead.

The RV is holding up pretty well so far, but we have lost a few (3 total) pieces of wood trim inside.  One is a crown molding on a kitchen cabinet, one is a piece of baseboard and one is off the closet door.  Not sure why things are falling off now and not last summer on the bumpy road to Alaska.  But, maybe we knocked a few things loose then and they’re falling off now.  Who knows…but, all in all the RV is great and we are still loving it.  And loving this lifestyle.

We plan to go to Telluride tomorrow.  We hear it is a very nice, resort town that is super dog friendly.  They have a Gondola that allows doggies, so we’re going to ride it to the top of the mountain.  I’m sure I’ll have things to report on that later!

I’ve put together some pictures on Google Photos from our phones.  As mentioned earlier, I can’t load any of Steve’s pictures from the big camera yet, so phone pictures are all we have.  Hope they work!!  The picture below is on Steve’s birthday, on the drive out to the ranch for dinner.  The links to Google Photo albums is below it.

Arches National Park:   https://photos.app.goo.gl/QpVC9RQkX8HzvUd66

Moab, UT:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/u1fpH66eREEmk2RF7

Off Road Adventure:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/9Whif6uRf137qW4bA

 

Howdy everyone!  We have been enjoying the Denver area, visiting Samantha at her new home.  We arrived to the RV park in Golden, CO on July 4th.  It’s a great location, only about 5 miles from where Samantha lives and we have a view of the foothills out our windows.  That’s the good news.  The downside is that the RV park is super crowded, the spots are not big enough for the big rigs (ours included) even though they advertise otherwise.  We’re told it’s one of the few RV parks near Denver that can accommodate big rigs (such that it is).  We white knuckled it as we drove through the campground to our spot – people’s trucks and tow cars don’t fit onto the assigned spots so they hang out into the driveway which makes it really hard to drive thru with the rig.  But Steve did a great job getting us into our spot and we’ve made the most of it.  Did I mention we’ve had the good fortune to enjoy the almost nightly live bands directly across the road at the big biker bar?  🙁 Oh, and the loud motorcycles that come and go morning noon and night at the big biker bar???  Oh well, it’s an experience and makes us appreciate the more remote, quite places we are heading to next.

We’ve had a great visit with Samantha and her friend Ryan who moved out here with her.  She graduated from OU in May (yeah!) and moved here the end of May.  She will be working at a cannabis company, with 2 retail locations and grow facilities.  This is her dream come true, to work in the cannabis industry, and she is excited to start her career.  There’s a rather lengthy process to get credentialed to work in the industry, and she’s making her way through the process.  She should be fully credentialed and able to start work by end of July.  She is so happy here and we are so proud of her, she has worked hard to make this happen.

We got out for a hike the other day with Samantha.  A great trail, only a few miles away.  We were enjoying the hike in spite of the heat and then we met a rattlesnake right on the trail!  Steve almost stepped on him since he was leading the way on the trail, but didn’t see him.  Samantha saw the snake and screamed.  So Steve was on one side of the snake, Samantha and I were on the other side of him and Mr. Snake was not showing any signs of moving.  Steve threw a couple of rocks at him hoping to motivate him to move, but no luck.  There was no way to go around him, there was a steep drop off on one side and a high rock on the other side.  So, Steve took a long branch, pushed the snake out of the way while Samantha and I ran by him on the trail.  His rattle was going full speed and it was scary!!  Thank goodness Gerry was at doggy daycare that day! We are  worried about our hiking in this region over the next few months…not sure what we are going to do yet about that.  We’ve been reading about what to do in the event of a bite.  I have a picture of the snake below for your viewing pleasure!

Steve looked up an old college friend, Adam, who lives in the Denver area and we were able to get together for lunch while here.  They hadn’t seen each other in about 35 years!!  Was so nice to visit together and hear them talk about the old days!  I have a picture below of the two of them.

My last post was about New Beginnings and Beauty All Around.  I think we can put this post under the same category – New Beginnings and Beauty All Around.  Life is good!

Now it’s time to move on to our adventure for the summer, the Southwest.  We leave here in the morning for the southwest part of Colorado.  We’re going to spend the next few months exploring Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.  Hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy lots of hiking and seeing all the National Parks in the area without any more visits from Rattlesnakes!!!

Hello, Hello, Hello!  Yes, we are “on the road” again!  We left Columbus June 16 and our first stop has been Minnesota.  It was hard to say goodbye again to family and friends, and we appreciate all the well wishes from you all!

It didn’t take us too long to remember how to do this “RV thing” again.  It probably took us longer to hook up and prepare for take-off than normal since we were a little rusty, but I think we’re back in the groove now.  We do love our RV and life on the road.  It makes us happy!  Gerry did not miss a beat and has adapted to his back seat palace just fine.  Really, the back “seat” of our truck converts to a very spacious doggy palace that has been outfitted with multiple doggy pillows, toys, food and water bowls and things to chew on.  He even has a doggy puzzle that he uses his nose to find treats in compartments to fight any boredom.  🙂

One reason we came to Minnesota was to visit with Guy and help him launch a new business.  I’m happy to report (for so many reasons!) that he has formed a new business, Aspire Sober Living.  We have formed a partnership with him and  have purchased a house that will be a sober living home.  He has been a live-in manager of a sober house for over a year now, and wants to own and operate his own.  Sober homes are very common here in the Twin Cities, they are independently owned businesses that provide a sober living environment for residents in recovery.  A safe and supportive environment to live in, usually after leaving a rehab treatment facility, with like-minded persons to help each other.

Guy has put a lot of work and thought into making this happen.  And we found out the housing market in the Twin Cities is incredibly competitive!  Houses are flying off the shelves around here!  But the stars aligned and we found the perfect house and won in spite of 6 other bidders on the same house.  The house had been a “catagory 2” house which means it was condemed for habitation.  The sellers did a total rehab on the house as a flip.  It has 6 bedrooms and 3 baths and will house 7 residents plus Guy.  Guy said, “How fitting…a house that was condemed, rehabed, and now will provide a home to people in recovery, rebuilding their lives.”  Really.

So we have been super busy looking at houses, going through the offer, cross your fingers and wait to hear if you won the bid, inspection, etc, etc, etc process for the last several days.  We’ve also been completing the zoning applications, drawings and other requirements for the sober housing certification.  All has gone smoothly and is on track for a fall opening.

In the meanwhile, we have also been fortunate to have met and getting to know Guy’s girlfriend, Katelyn. What a delight she is, beautiful and smart and as warm and friendly as can be.

We’ve been staying at an RV park a little over an hour outside the cities – there are no RV parks in or very near the cities.  In spite of the driving, which has been significant, we have loved staying here.  It is right along the freeway, but once you get down the drive way you enter a beautiful 40 acre oasis with a lake, lots of trees, very well spaced RV sites and very nice owners.  They have paths mowed all around the lake that we have enjoyed strolling and Gerry has loved running on.  Tons of birds right out our window every day.

We leave tomorrow morning for the Denver area.  We will spend a few days staying near Samantha and visiting with her.  She moved there the end of May, after college graduation.  More on that later when I give you an update on that visit!

New beginnings indeed!  And beauty really is all around us, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

Howdy folks!  I have been learning how to make videos from pictures on my computer.  I realize this is not a new skill for many of you…but for me, it’s a huge stretch of my technical abilities!   I want to preserve the memories from our big trip to Alaska and all the the great experiences we had.  And we have hundreds and hundreds of pictures.  So, I decided to put together some videos and these are the first 2 of that endeavor.

The first video is from when we left in late May thru June; the second video is from the month of July.  I’m working on more videos, stay tuned!

Going through all the pictures to make these videos brought back so many memories…what changes we have made in our lives!! 🙂  I had tears running down my face half the time I was working on these, and was laughing the other half of the time.  When we go back and look at the pictures, we still can’t believe we actually were there and saw the things we saw.  Don’t be too surprised if another trip to Alaska happens at some point in the future!!

Please let me know how these work, I hope you will be able to see them okay.  I think viewing on a larger screen (tablet or computer) will be better than a phone, since the pictures are small.

Life is good!

1st Video: this one is about 4 minutes long:

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pngTpHhgaI_v9e_u0

2nd Video: this one is almost 10 minutes long!  Sorry, I can’t bear to leave out all the good stuff!

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pngWIm_zn3SB72jIG

Hi everyone!  We’ve been back since early March, getting settled again into the apartment and Steve is busy at work for tax season.  We loved our trip south and have booked the Port St. Joe spot again for next winter.

We are enjoying catching up again with family and friends, and Gerry is loving doggy daycare…he comes home so tired, and that’s a good thing!  We try to get him there at least a couple of times a week.

We plan to leave again in late May for another long trip, heading northeast to eastern Canada – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island.  Then to the New England states for the fall – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, upstate New York.

I have been working on some videos from our Alaska trip – I will post them soon!

Thanks for all the comments, it is great hearing from you!!

Hi everyone from Port St. Joe, Florida!

We moved here almost 2 weeks ago, we’re still in the panhandle, about 1 hour from our last spot in Carabelle Beach.  Port St. Joe is a nice little town, with a nice grocery store and a few shops and places to eat.  A little more going on here than Carabelle Beach, but still not very commercial.  No hotels, no high rises, but beautiful beaches and vacation homes on the shores.

The highlight of our stay here is the visit from Guy.  He was here for almost a week.  We took him to the airport this morning, and he has arrived back home to St. Paul, MN safely.  It was so great having him here, and he enjoyed the break from work and the weather back home.  Speaking of weather, it is finally seeming like Florida around here!  After several weeks of not so great weather, the last several days have been perfect.  High 70s by day, 50s at night, lots of sunshine and beautiful sunsets.  We took full advantage of the weather while Guy was here, we went to the beach every day, rented a pontoon boat one afternoon and rode around St. Joseph Bay, and ate tons of seafood.  Perfect!

Gerry is loving the beach life, and has made friends all up and down the beach.  We go to Cape San Blas for the beach, which is directly across the bay from the RV park, about 15 minutes by car.  He loves playing with Cora the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, and he totally has a crush on Maude the Goldendoodle.  I have a picture of Maude below.  It’s funny to watch him prance and perform when she’s around!  The beach is beautiful and we walk 3 or 4 miles each day up and down the shore.

The pontoon boat was a great way to see the bay, and Gerry was very comfortable on the boat, as you’ll see from the pictures below.  The bay is very shallow in many areas, and Guy and Steve got out and walked around a lot.  We saw lots of Stingrays and Horseshoe crabs while we were on the boat.  We’ve seen a lot of Dolphins swimming along the shore, and we’ve seen Eagles several times while driving around in the area also.

This RV park is right on the shore of the bay, and has a small marina as part of the operation.  It’s not the nicest park we’ve stayed in, but we’ve seen worse too.  It’s been a good location and has a perfect view of the sunset over the water each night.  I’ve included some pictures below.  Everyone is very friendly and lots of nice doggies here too.  Several RVer’s here from Ohio, and most have been coming here for several years.

We leave here one week from tomorrow to head back home.  Can’t believe how fast time has gone by, and it sure feels good to have sunshine and warm weather.  But we’re looking forward to being back home for awhile, we miss family and friends!  We’re working on plans for our next big trip, we will leave mid-May.  We’re going to Nova Scotia and other points in eastern Canada, and the New England states – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and possibly others.  We’ll also spend some time in the Finger Lakes region of NY and likely some time in Pennsylvania also.  It’s all still in the planning stages, so stay tuned!

Thanks for your comments, we love hearing from you!

Hi again everyone!  We moved about 300 miles east to Carrabelle Beach, Florida a few days ago.  We’re here for a week, then we move one more time, to Port St. Joe, Florida which is about 55 miles from here.

We like our spot here in Carrabelle Beach, we’re right across the road from the beach.  We can see the ocean from our windows, when all the RVs are lined up just right!  The weather has been getting a little better, we’ve had several days in the 60s and still cool at night, in the upper 30s or low 40s.  Not bad!  We’ve been taking Gerry to the beach several times a day, they are very dog friendly here which is nice, since we couldn’t take him to the beach at our last place at all.  This part of Florida is very undeveloped, and they call it the “Forgotten Coast” and I can see why.  There’s no commercial development, no hotels, no condos, no shopping.  Some nice houses along the shore which are mostly empty right now.  We went to Tallahassee yesterday to find a good grocery store, which was over an hour drive.  But it was a nice day trip, Steve found a gym and we ran a few errands.  Otherwise, we’ve just been chilling and enjoying the beach and all the fresh seafood.  There’s lots of small fresh seafood “shacks” here and it’s all been good.  🙂

Before we left our last spot we went out to see the sunset on the beach and also the super moon that came out a few miles away over the bay.  I’ve put a few pictures below of that and also of our new beach.

Guy is coming to visit us next week, we’re excited to have him and I think he’s excited about getting out of the frozen tundra in Minnesota!  I will be sure to post an update about his visit.  We plan to go on a fishing charter…that should be interesting!

Thanks for the comments, we love hearing from you!  Stay warm!

Hi everyone!  Hope you all have stayed warm this January, I know there’s been some really cold weather for some of you.  It’s not been a great weather month here either.  We’ve had a few days of sun and 60’s, but mostly cloudy, rain and cooler.  Not complaining, but a little more sunshine would be nice 🙂

We’ve been out and about all around the area, exploring.  We found out the beaches here do not allow dogs!  We took Gerry a couple of days anyhow, hoping it wouldn’t be a problem with the cooler weather and not very many people out.  We didn’t have any problems, but we’re told they are pretty strict with the no dog rule and there’s a $500 fine.  So we have stayed away from the beaches.  The weather hasn’t been very beach friendly anyhow, most days.  We have found some nice dog parks near by and also a good doggy daycare that Gerry has been to a few times so we could go do things.

We visited Ft. Morgan, an old fort on the coast from the Civil War.  We also took the ferry over to Daulphin Island which was nice to explore and we found a great little place on the shore for a seafood lunch.  We also visited the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.  Very interesting place, with airplanes used by Navy, Marines and Coast Gard from early 1900’s to present day.  This is also the home of the Blue Angels.

Gerry has made a new BFF here at the RV park…Hamish the English Mastiff is 18 months old and weighs 210 pounds!  He’s huge and so nice.  He makes Gerry look like a lap dog next to him.  They love each other and we frequently meet up at the dog park here in the RV resort so they can run and play.  We have hiking trails right here at the RV resort, and they connect to the Gulf Shores State Park.  So we can access about 25 miles of trails right out our door.  So we’ve been walking a lot, and walked to the beach one day too, which is about 4 miles each way.  We’ve seen 2 coyotes and a snake, but no alligators yet, although we’re told they are around.

Lots of great seafood here and we’ve sampled all kinds of fresh catch.  I’ve been cooking a lot and trying out new recipies.  We’ll be leaving here on Feb 1st to our next stop in the Florida panhandle.  I’ll be sure to give you an update from there.  In the meantime, stay warm!