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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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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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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…
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Ventura, Santa Barbara, & The Channel Islands, CA
After all our detours through the desert, we finally made it to the California coast! We find the desert very interesting and beautiful and love all the free camping, but these water views were a welcome change. I guess that’s the cool thing about RVing. We landed in the town of Ventura on the Rincon Parkway, where we rented a 46X15ft parking space parallel to the ocean. A bit inconvenient since we are 53ft bumper to bumper. The Rincon is a Ventura County RV Park with 127 parking spaces and is one of the most unique camping experiences we’ve had thus far. On one side are a rock seawall (although…
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Death Valley National Park & Mohave National Preserve, CA
On the last Friday of January, we headed to Death Valley National Park. We had inched closer the night before and stayed an hour away at Preferred RV Park in Pahrump, NV to do chores. Knowing there was no internet, we only planned to stay for the weekend and explore the popular Furnace Creek area. The highest temperature ever recorded on earth was 134F at Furnace Creek, so January was a good time to visit. Neither of us had heard much about Death Valley and we didn’t have many expectations, but we really enjoyed this park! Death Valley didn’t end up being as scary as it sounds, but maybe that’s…
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White Sands National Park
There are only so many destinations you can reasonably drive to in one day from Big Bend NP. White Sands NP, in south-central New Mexico, looked doable (under 400 miles) and was certainly worth a visit. While visiting, we boondocked just 4 miles away from the park on property that Holloman Air Force Base allows. It was not a bad place to spend the work week! The sky was absolutely amazing every night. Unfortunately, you can’t have any contact with the lake since it’s toxic; and sadly, there were a lot of ducks there that can’t read the posted signs. White Sands NP protects the largest gypsum dunefield in the…
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Big Bend National Park
It was nothing short of a miracle that we left NC “on time” in a new tow vehicle and with the same 14-year-old adventure cat, Lynx. The cat had been minutes away from surgery to remove bladder stones before it was determined that the surgery would not have been successful. For now, she will just live with her stones until her behavior indicates that she is too uncomfortable. Also, after finding out that our Ford needed its second expensive repair (both recall items on other models), we decided to buy a new truck. We were happy to find a RAM, during the national truck shortage, that had several features we…
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Zion National Park
When we started out on this trip to the southwest, the only camping reservations we had were 10 nights in early May at the Watchman Campground inside Zion National Park. Zion (actually pronounced Zi-in) was at the top of our list of places to visit since several people had told us that it is their favorite park, and we can see why. Also, it’s RV friendly (we fit!) and there is a great cell signal (because the campground is close to the town of Springdale), both of which are uncommon in NPS campgrounds. Coming from Bryce, if our rig setup had been less than 50ft long, we could have entered…
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Bryce Canyon National Park
We weren’t originally planning to visit Bryce Canyon National Park this year because we would then be backtracking for the reservations we had at Zion National Park right before heading east to North Carolina. Located at the top of the Grand Staircase, Bryce is also at 8,000 feet elevation and still below freezing most nights during Spring and some of their trails do not open until the Summer. However, 4 weeks prior we had been able to snag appointments in the nearby town of Panguitch, UT for our first dose of the Moderna vaccine and wanted to be close for our second. So north on US89 we went and ended…
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In & Around Grand Staircase National Monument
After moving every weekend for the past month, we settled into a boondocking spot on BLM land 15 minutes north of Kanab, UT for two weeks in mid-April. Kanab is a really nice small town in a great location. It borders the Grand Staircase Unit of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, is 30 min from the eastern entrance to Zion NP, 1 hour from Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs NM, and 1.5 hours from the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon NP, and Lake Powell. This entire area is a huge swath of public land with endless places to explore. Sometimes our stay here was frustrating because we couldn’t get to some…
