Catching Up: July 2014 – July 2015

You know the expression ‘time flies when you’re having fun’? This isn’t an exaggeration – the last 12 months have flown by in a whirlwind of campgrounds, family visits, hikes, exploring, eating great food, drinking great beer, and lots of driving (not in that order!!!).

The one thing we haven’t done in the past year is write a single blog post for this site, and for that we’re both a little embarrassed. From the beginning it’s been our intention to share our travels with our readers. It’s right in the name of the website! We also love sharing information, and our posts on earning a living from the road, RV Water Filtration, and getting the best deal at an RV show have been pretty popular.

We’ve also noticed that most of our travel-oriented posts aren’t that popular, and we understand why: Most of the day trips we take – while fun for us – are only briefly interesting for most people. As a result, we’ve been sharing snippets and photos on our Facebook Page instead of writing about them here – and that will continue.

We are committing to occasional ‘where we are and what we’re doing’ type updates here, however. We’re thinking 2x a month, and we’ll see how it goes.

The Great Sidetracking of 2014

It’s very likely – even entirely possible that had we not been sidetracked we would have continued to update this site regularly. Unfortunately we did get sidetracked – and this is the brief story of what happened.

Our intentions for the summer of 2014 were to trek around New England, and ultimately swing up through Canada and the Gaspe Peninsula.

Prior to leaving on this trip, I noticed a small red blotch on my left thigh. I didn’t think much of it at the time as I’m fairly injury prone in the scrape, bump, and bruise sense.

The next day the small red blotch was about double the size, and wow did my thigh hurt – Not good! I ‘treated’ it with Bacitracin and a bandage, but as the day progressed my leg hurt more and more. Very not good! I’ve included a picture at the right, and I mean it when I say: click at your own risk! It’s nasty.

I awoke the next day in misery. I didn’t sleep much the night before, either. As I’m a guy, I’m pretty stubborn about going to doctors, but I finally reached that point. We headed to Urgent Care and the doctor quickly put me on a 21 day prescription of Doxycycline – one of the strongest antibiotics available. They use Doxycycline to treat Lyme Disease, Anthrax exposure, and huge red blotches that may or may not be a spider bite or a Staph infection.

There was a possibility that the Doxycycline wouldn’t do the job, in which case I’d need IV antibiotics. I kicked myself for not going to the doctors sooner, but at least I was getting treatment.

At that point we hunkered down at my mothers house and waited. I couldn’t drive or even do much, so we weren’t going anywhere. Fortunately, the Doxycycline worked, and many days later we were finally in shape to get back on the road.

Our Time in New England

From here I’m going to keep it brief. During the past year I took more than 4000 photos and we traveled just about everywhere. I’m going to share photos of each leg for those who are interested, but I’m not going to get into much detail. There’s simply too much.

This first block of pictures covers our time in New England. While we didn’t get to Canada, we still went through Vermont, New Hampshire, the Maine Coast, out on the Cape, and even to Martha’s Vineyard. Enjoy!

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Next Stop: Gettysburg, PA

We ended up staying in New England a little later than normal as my sister Hannah had surgery and needed looking after. This was a smaller sidetracking, but it’s worth noting that when you’re a full-time RVer your lifestyle is flexible enough that you CAN look after someone for a couple weeks.

Our original plan was to head west toward Ohio and then south, but as it was already mid October we simply headed south with a stop in Gettysburg.

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On to Georgia & Florida

From Gettysburg we headed down to visit family in Atlanta, Georgia, and then we spent a few weeks in Florida. Our plan was to stay in the area through Christmas and then head west. For the first time in a long time, we stuck to the plan! 🙂

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The Gulf Coast

Kathy’s daughter, Heather was up for a trip, so we took her with us down to the beautiful Emerald Coast of Florida, and then on to New Orleans. This was her first time in New Orleans, and we had a great time exploring the Garden District and the French Quarter of course.

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Regrouping in Texas

Originally I wanted to blast through Texas and get to California, but after everything we’d done over the past 6 months we needed to hunker down and get some work done.

One of the big challenges we face as full-time RVers is that there’s so much to see and do that it’s hard to have the discipline to stay in the RV and work. Of course we still have pay the bills and eat, so work we must!

We still managed to see and do in between, with trips to San Antonio and Austin as highlights.

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Next Stop, Arizona

Texas is a massive state at nearly 900 miles across, and our last Texas campground was at about the halfway point. As spring was fast approaching, it was time to move on – but first we stopped in Arizona to check out Caverns and Saguaro Cactus.

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California and the Long Drive North

At long last we reach California. While we’re still technically California residents, we hadn’t been in the state in almost 20 months!

We spent time in San Diego backcountry (amazing!) and then in the more populated areas near Los Angeles. It was important for us to stop over in Orange County, as Kathy’s home office is located there – along with many of our friends and some of my clients.

We had an amazing offer to house sit in Santa Barbara, which we took. This was a real highlight, as the home was very high end and situated in the hills with an incredible view of the ocean and the channel islands.

From there we headed up to wine country, Russian River, the Redwoods, Mendocino and other NorCal highlights. Northern California is still one of our favorite places, and it’s so different from Southern California.

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Oregon & Washington

The last leg of the trip brings us to where we are now – enjoying the summer in Washington state.

To get here, we drove the Oregon coast route, aka 101 north. It’s a beautiful and scenic drive with incredible ocean vistas, sea stacks, big trees, and many state parks.

It’s also a little sketchy to drive in an RV, as there are many people who bike the Oregon coastal route. In places we were driving on a narrow road with cliff exposure on one side and a solid rock wall on the other with little to no room for a biker in between. We didn’t see any accidents and didn’t have any close calls, but it was still a little nerve wracking.

That said, we really enjoyed spending 6 weeks camping on the coast – especially because it was 90 degrees plus every day inland, while the cost stays at a consistent 65 – 75 and breezy. Wonderful!

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And that brings us to now. I’m writing this in Paradise RV ‘Resort’ within view of both Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. This weekend we’re heading up to Seattle, and then we’ll go to the very top of Washington State for a few weeks.

We hope you find the above pics interesting. As I said above, I pulled them from the nearly 4000 photos we’ve taken in the past year. It’s a lot to go through!