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Alaska Bound: Oregon & Washington
We spent a weekend making the big move from Half Moon Bay to Eugene, OR. Eugene was a utilitarian stop, planned so that we could get some preventative maintenance on the trailer. We stayed at Armitage Regional Park for the week. Eugene, home of the University of Oregon, is a very treed town with lots of blooms in mid-April and the weather was just perfect. We tried Voodoo Doughnuts, walked around the Saturday market, and had lunch at Noisette. Our next weeklong destination was the Columbia River Gorge. On our way, we stopped at Silver Falls State Park so that we could hike the Trail of Ten Falls. In a…
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Alaska Bound: Cruising Through California
Since the beginning of our great big RV adventure, I thought Alaska would be our last state visited, if ever. But here we are, 37 states and 4+ years later, and we’re on our way! We’ve just spent the last 5 weeks traveling through California. The time has flown by without too much to report, so just one blog post. I’ve resolved to be okay with not doing a whole lot on our way to Alaska. Just getting ourselves there (and back in the Fall) will be the adventure. Back in early March, we returned to Sunbeam Lake RV Park in El Centro for a night. I forgot to mention…
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Baja’s Grey Whales
On the last weekend of February, we made our way back up to the Bahía Concepción and stayed at Playa El Requeson for the workweek. This beach is unique because it’s a spit with water on two sides. We liked that a lot of locals used this beach, as opposed to Playa Santispac where we stayed on the way down the peninsula. Next, we moved back to Mario’s RV Park in Guerrero Negro for the weekend so that we could go whale watching in the Laguna Ojo de Liebre, one of 3 lagoons on the Pacific side of Baja where grey whales migrate from Alaska to the warm waters of…
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Cerritos Beach & Todos Santos, Mexico
Playa Los Cerritos, ~45 minutes north of Cabo San Lucus, was the end of the road for us this winter. From here, we will be turning around and driving north for a very long time, all the way to Alaska, if all goes as planned! We loved our 2-week stay at Cerritos Beach. Our full-time RV life is not a constant vacation, but rather everyday life, and work, with an ever-changing backyard to explore. However, our evenings and weekends here felt like a vacation. We also really liked Cerritos Boutique RV Park, where we were a 5-minute walk from the beach. We could see a sliver and hear the constant…
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La Paz & Balandra Beach, Mexico
After Loreto, we moved to La Paz, the capital and largest city in Baja California Sur. We stayed at Campestre Maranatha, an RV park that rivals any nice RV park in the US. It had a pool and an onsite cafe but my favorite amenity was the onsite laundry. One afternoon we drove into town to walk along the Malecón. We were excited that we were in town during the first half of Carnaval, the week-long celebration leading up to Fat Tuesday. Then we were disappointed to find out that the parades and main events were only during the last 3 days when we’d already be gone. We also walked…
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Lovely Loreto, Mexico
From Playa Santispac, located at the top of the Bahía Concepción, we had a 2-hour drive down Federal Highway 1 to the lovely historic town of Loreto on the Sea of Cortez. The first 20 miles or so were along the Bahía Concepción coastline and this stretch of the drive was stunningly beautiful. I wish I had a better photo but this is the best we’ve got through our dirty windshield. Loreto was the first Spanish settlement in the Californias, founded with Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó in 1697. It is a Pueblo Mágico, a town recognized by Mexico for its ‘magical’ qualities such as unique beauty, natural…
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From the Border to the Bahía Concepción, Mexico
This story begins over a year ago when Michael told me he wanted to RV down the Baja California Peninsula. At first, I didn’t take him that seriously, but after several months of his daily Spanish lessons on Duolingo, I decided I needed to come up with a plan. We stayed at Sunbeam Lake RV Park in El Centro, CA the week of our planned border crossing at Mexicali East. While in El Centro, we purchased Mexican auto and travel trailer insurance. We walked across the Mexicali West border crossing to get a stamped FMM (basically a tourist visa). We rented a storage unit to empty enough space in the…
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Camping & Hiking Around Phoenix, AZ
After Christmas with our family, we beelined to Arizona on an unoriginal route for us, I-20, even spending nights in mostly unoriginal locations along the way. It’s not my favorite drive, simply because this is the 3rd time we’ve done it. But, it’s the most direct from NC, and it avoids most winter weather issues we could have this time of year. I’ve had a couple of campgrounds near Phoenix on my radar and we were excited to be back in the land of the saguaros, yet exploring a part of Arizona we have not spent much time in. We made it to our first weeklong destination, McDowell Mountain Regional…
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Heading South: Lexington, KY & New River Gorge National Park, WV
Even though we’ve been parked in NC for over a month now, our blog is still stuck in Chicago. Back in November on our way home, we stopped in Kentucky for horses and bourbon and in West Virginia to visit the country’s newest National Park. In Lexington, we spent a week at the Kentucky Horse Park, which is an “equine theme park” owned by the state of Kentucky. They were already in their winter season which meant less was happening with the horses, but we paid cheaper fees and also had Christmas decorations in our campsite! We spent a morning exploring the horse park’s barns and museums. And then spent…
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Visiting Family & Friends in Chicago
The most exciting stop on our way east this year was seeing Michael’s Aunt Mary & Uncle Roger and my college friend, Erin, in Chicago! We got to see everyone twice which made it a very wonderful week. We arrived in downtown Chicago on a Saturday afternoon and had a 24-hour reservation to stay in a truck marshalling lot for the McCormick Convention Center. This was probably the craziest place we’ve ever towed and parked the camper but it sure was convenient after we got there. We were about 3 miles south of where we wanted to walk around so we took an Uber up to Millenium Park, where The…
