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Back to the Florida Keys
We loved spending the winter in Florida’s State Parks so much last year that we decided to do it all over again this year. Right after Christmas, we beelined to Curry Hammock State Park in Marathon, where we had a waterfront campsite, and Michael was still on PTO. Curry Hammock is a tiny state park with a tiny campground. There are almost no day visitors, so if you are staying there, it’s like your own private oasis in the otherwise very crowded Florida Keys. The weather was great, so we had a lot of beach time. We also walked the Old 7-mile bridge every morning. The north side has a…
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An Icy Hike at Grandfather Mountain, NC
We’re still out here rolling around, going into our 6th year on the road! We’re currently enjoying another warm and sunny winter in Florida. Looking back in the rearview mirror to last November in western NC, we finally got around to hiking the Grandfather Trail, which we had wanted to do for years. Grandfather Mountain, with its iconic Mile High Swinging Bridge, was a privately owned tourist attraction for decades. The backcountry was designated as a state park a few years ago, but the bridge is managed by a private nonprofit, and costs up to $35/person to visit. The Grandfather Trail is similar to the Precipice in Acadia NP. There…
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RVing NYC
NYC is not exactly a top RV destination, but there are a couple of options, and we found one that worked well for us. Croton Point Park, situated between the Hudson River and a Metro North station in Croton-on-Hudson, has reasonable rates and full hookups. From there it’s an hour long train ride to Grand Central terminal. Just don’t take an RV on any road labeled a Parkway, which most seem to be in this area. They aren’t allowed. Also, cats aren’t allowed at Croton Point Park, so we had to sneak Cody in. There are a lot of cute historic towns along the Hudson River. One day we walked…
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Friends & Apizza in Connecticut
As we’ve been simply RV traveling every state, our friend Diana has been running a marathon in every state! Connecticut is #48 for her and we planned our visit to see her and Mark. We spent our first week in CT at Hammonasset Beach State Park campground. Pets are not allowed in CT State Park campgrounds so we tried to keep our contraband away from the windows. After our short travel day, we spent the afternoon in the touristy town of Mystic. I picked up our new truck and spent the week driving 1000 non-towing miles to break it in. One day I drove all the way to Vermont and…
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Catching Up: More Maine & a New Truck
I’ve gotten a little behind, and this hodgepodge will bring our blog up to date. Since my last post, we’ve spent 3 more weeks in Maine, traded our truck in Massachusetts, and have started exploring Connecticut for the first time! First was Camden, located in midcoast Maine. Camden Hills State Park, where we stayed, has tons of hiking and the very popular Mount Battie overlook of the town and harbor. Our site was close to the park entrance, and we watched tour buses roll in and out every day. We went to see two lighthouses in the area, the Rockland Breakwater Light and Curtis Island Lighthouse. And hiked the Maiden…
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Downeast Maine
The Maine coast from Acadia National Park to the Canadian border is called “Downeast Maine”, abbreviated from the direction sailors would travel “downwind” and “east” from elsewhere in New England. Besides the super busy area of Acadia NP near Bar Harbor, this part of Maine is a hidden gem. After our beeline through the Maritimes, we stopped at Sunset Point RV Park in Lubec, ME for the workweek. The park delivered on their sunset promise. I think our rear widows are our favorite part of the Brinkley. We wanted to see a couple of lighthouses in the area. The West Quoddy Head Lighthouse is the easternmost point in the US.…
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Historic & Colorful St. John’s, NL
St. John’s, the capital of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (and yes, both doggos are from there), is Canada’s oldest and easternmost city. Roughly 1/3 of the province’s 500K population live in St. John’s and it felt completely different than the small communities we’d been visiting. It was extra busy while we were there because they were hosting families from all over Canada for the Canada Games, which are for the country’s top high school athletes. Wildfires weren’t on our Newfoundland bingo card, but we had plenty in St. John’s. We’d planned to boondock on the Avalon Peninsula, but the wildfire I mentioned before continued to grow so we…
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Terra Nova National Park & the Bonavista Peninsula, NL
We left Fogo Island on a Friday morning so that we could spend a weekend at Terra Nova National Park. Terra Nova is an old growth boreal forest so we didn’t think Dishy would work well enough to spend the workweek there. The Newman Sound campground has full hookup sites with potable water, a rarity in Newfoundland campgrounds. We must have been tired at this point, because we got completely set up in site 244 when we realized we were supposed to be in site 243 and had to move. That was a first. We hiked the Ochre Hill trail on Saturday. Terra Nova doesn’t get nearly as much attention…
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Island Hopping: Twillingate & Fogo, NL
From Gros Morne on the west coast we had a big move over to the Twillingate Islands, connected by short bridges and causeways off the north coast of Newfoundland. Twillingate is part of NL’s Iceberg Alley and calls itself the iceberg capital of the world. When we planned the timing of this trip, we prioritized having good weather instead of seeing icebergs, and while we are enjoying all the hiking we’re able to do in good weather, we are also having some major iceberg FOMO so we may have to come back one day. We boondocked at an abandoned campground at Sleepy Cove, on the northern tip of North Twillingate…
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Gros Morne National Park, NL
I used to think the Appalachian mountain range ended in Maine. But no, we just spent 2 weeks in the Appalachian mountains of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland! We spent the first week in Shallow Bay, the northernmost campground in the park, which put us in a good position for a day trip up to L’Anse aux Meadows. Newfoundland is 1.5 hours ahead of Eastern Time which means Michael is working from 9:30-6:30 local time. Shallow Bay was perfect because the campground had miles of beach that we could walk every morning before work! We took a boat tour of Western Brook Pond, which is a inland freshwater fjord.…
