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The North Cascades
We arrived at the North Cascades National Park the last week of June during a 3-day 95-degree “heat dome” AND a park ranger told us that all the hikes I had planned to do were covered in snow and that we should have winter hiking skills and carry an ice ax. Interesting. One paved road, the North Cascades Highway/20, runs east-west through this lightly visited National Park. Most of it is a wilderness that can only be accessed by backpacking or taking a ferry across Ross or Chelan Lakes. There isn’t a lot of infrastructure for visitors and most only see overlooks along Highway 20, which is technically part of…
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Day Trips To Seattle & Mount Rainier National Park
Between our trip to NC and our fridge debacle, we didn’t spend nearly enough time exploring western Washington and it will certainly be a summer destination another year. However, this time around, Rainier View RV Park was about an hour’s drive to both Seattle and Mount Rainier National Park and we were determined to spend a day at each of those. It rained the entire week that we were there in May, but couldn’t let the rain stop us on a weekend day. We started at Pike Place Public Market for breakfast…and stayed for lunch. Since we rarely eat out for convenience, but as more of an activity, we researched…
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A Trip To NC & Camper Projects
We moved from the Oregon coast to Washington and our daily conversations changed from tide tables to “whether or not the mountain was out”. The mountain under discussion, Mount Rainier, happened to be out the day we arrived and it was just breathtaking. Similar to the feeling we had the first time we saw the Grand Canyon or Zion Canyon, which was honestly unexpected. We left our camper at Rainier View RV Park while we flew home to visit our family in May/June. Packing and preparing the camper to be left for a month ended up being a bigger job than we expected. We checked the roof for potential leaks,…
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Cape Perpetua To Cannon Beach, OR
We left Bandon and continued ~125 miles north along the coast to another great campground at South Beach State Park in Newport. About 2/3 into our trip, as we were driving through the Siuslaw National Forest, we came around a turn, saw the Heceta Head Lighthouse, and decided that we would come back to explore this area the next day. The Cape Perpetua Scenic Area is just north of Heceta Head. Some popular Oregon coast landmarks are here – Spouting Horn (left) and Thor’s Well (right), so we spent a couple of hours walking around various viewpoints. South Beach State Park got some extra points in our nonexistent campground rating…
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The Southern Oregon Coast
When we headed west at the end of December, we knew that by May we would either need to start driving back east or plan to fly home for some family time. Eventually, the lure of continuing up the coast won out over the terrifying thought of flying with our cat so we booked a flight out of Seattle. So, state park hopping up the Oregon coast we went. And, WOW! When I said the area around Redwood National and State Parks/Crescent City, CA has to be one of the most beautiful areas of the country, our sentiment continues up into southern Oregon. Oregon’s 1967 “Beach Bill” secured public access…
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The Majestic Coast Redwoods
From Willits, we had a 100-mile drive to our next destination, a one-night stop at Ancient Redwoods RV Park located on the Avenue of the Giants. As we drove north, it seemed like everything and everyone had disappeared. There was no traffic, which we would have noticed because Hwy 101 becomes a curvy mountainous two-lane road. And, although there were names of towns on the map, we didn’t see any. Maybe they were hiding behind the trees? The Avenue of the Giants is a road that runs parallel to Hwy 101 through Humboldt Redwoods State Park, where you can enjoy some old-growth forest (never logged) from your window, or stops…
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A Day On The Mendocino Coast, CA
Even though the wind changed our plans to stay on the Mendocino Coast, thankfully the upcoming 3-day weekend allowed us to make a day trip. We left sunny Santa Rosa and drove north on 101, the views changing from miles of vineyards to miles of foggy dense forest. We stayed at the Mendocino Redwoods RV Park in Willits, 30 very curvy miles west of the coastal town of Fort Bragg. Our first stop was Point Cabrillo to see the lighthouse and keeper’s house. We also watched baby seals learning to swim here! A few miles further south we stopped and walked around the gorgeous coastline of Mendocino Headlands State Park.…
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Sonoma County, CA
As I write this we are grieving our sweet lap kitty, Lynx. We had to make the difficult decision to say goodbye last week and it’s been hard. Even though she had multiple chronic problems, we expected to have her for a couple more years. One of the best things about full-time RVing has been traveling with her and we miss her so much. Back to our stay in Santa Rosa, CA at the beginning of April… We love California wine country. We’ve visited Napa Valley every time we’ve been to San Francisco. Sonoma was new for us and made for a short travel day. It was just as beautiful,…
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Moochdocking In Montara, CA
If you blink while driving up Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and San Francisco you might miss the quaint San Mateo County coastal town of Montara. Montara is currently one of our favorite places to visit because it has it all – a beach, mountains, and a 30min drive from everything a city like San Francisco has to offer. But mostly, it has our friends Peter and Jake!! We had visited them back in 2019 so this wasn’t our first time in Montara. Ever since we got our travel trailer, we’ve been wondering if we would be able to get it into their extra driveway. We finally have the answer!…
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Monterey Bay To Big Sur, CA
After not doing much other than beach walking in Pismo, followed by a workweek at Wine Country RV Resort (it really was a resort) in Paso Robles which we never left (hence, no blog), we hustled to do as much as possible around Monterey. Somewhere along the way, I read the following advice for planning full-time RV travel. First, chose pillar destinations for the winter and summer. These are places that you really want to visit that are also predicated on the weather. Once you have those destinations in mind, you can create the route based on places that look interesting along the way. Besides visiting our friends in the…
