Tag: truck camper

2nd quarter 2023: WheRV we been?

The trip from Mile 0 (Dawson Creek YT, June 5) to Historic Mile 1422 (Delta Junction AK, June 18) of the Alaska Highway is the most famous stretch, but only a fraction of what we’ll cover this summer, from TX to AK to WA.

First quarter this year we stayed in one place.

From the end of April to the end of June? We became quite promiscuous, spending the night in 44 places in 90 days, as we went from TX to WA with the BFT and Tex (our 41′ 5th wheel), from WA back to TX in just the BFT, from TX back to WA with BFT + Road Island (our truck camper) and Tim the Tool Man’s Traveling Tool Trailer, and finally from WA to AK in the BFT-RI combo, for a total of 9766 miles. So far. And only as measured directly between overnight stops.

Map represents the TX-WA-AK trajectory, and isn’t completely accurate, but I managed to swing the route through most of our actual stops.

I thought about composing a chronological recounting of the wonders along the way, but it felt too daunting and sounded too boring, so I’m going with broader brushstrokes and an intentional lack of chatter. We’re busy. Places to explore and rarities to find!

You’ll notice from our attire that like us, the weather was all over the map, and you can’t count on the tank tops appearing farther south or later in the season than the fleece jackets. Luckily, we’ve remained unperturbed by wildfire smoke, snow, or heavy rain.

The all-night light hasn’t interfered with our sleep, but we do tend to stay up later than usual because it just doesn’t feel right to climb into bed when the sun is still high in the sky — at 10 pm.

Scenery

  • Summit Peak Trail, Stone Mountain Park BC, Canada
  • Quill Creek, Haines Junction YT, Canada
  • Davidson Glacier, from Chilkat State Park, Haines AK
  • Battery Point, Haines AK
  • Historic Fort William H Seward, Haines AK
  • Haines Highway, near Atlin BC, Canada
  • Different spot on Haines Highway near Atlin BC, Canada
  • Emerald Lake, Carcross YT, Canada
  • White Pass & Yukon Railway, Fraser BC, Canada
  • Miles Canyon, Whitehorse YT, Canada
  • Trout River, Muncho Lake Provincial Park BC, Canada
  • Muncho Lake, Muncho Lake Provincial Park BC, Canada
  • Denali, Denali National Park AK
  • Healy AK
  • Denali National Park AK
  • “Sunset” at 12:45am, about as dark as it gets in summertime, Fairbanks AK
  • Midnight Sun Classic Baseball, first pitch at 10pm, Fairbanks AK
All aboard! We took the White Pass & Yukon Route from Fraser BC to Skagway AK.
Fan.Tas.Tic.

Wildlife

  • Mooselets
  • Mama bear & cubs
  • Bald eagle
  • Arctic ground squirrel
  • Porcupine
  • Stone sheep
  • Baby bison (the rest of the herd had already disobeyed the sign, which is clearly for humans only)
  • Caribou
Cow moose near Chena Hot Springs, AK, gettin’ herself fed.
Her babies had been spotted with her earlier, by friends who’d passed by the pond before we did.

Food

  • You can tell what it is, but this one came from the “Cinnamon Bun Center of the Galactic Cluster,” a.k.a. the Tetsa River Lodge, Mile 375 Alaska Hwy
  • Pecan butter tart & the best peanut butter cookie we’ve ever had, from The Shepherd’s Inn, Mile 72 Alaska Hwy
  • Nanaimo Bar (upside down because I wasn’t paying attention) from Village Bakery, Haines Junction YT
  • The Brushfire, a spicy pie featuring reindeer sausage, Prospector’s Historic Pizzeria & Alehouse, Denali Park AK
  • Elk meatballs, also from Prospector’s
  • Reindeer sausage beneath bacon mac, Tiki Pete’s food truck at the Midnight Sun Festival in Fairbanks AK
  • Blueberry rhubarb crisp and spinach bread from the Talkeetna Spinach Bread food truck, also at the festival

People (mostly us)

  • A bathtub! Outdoors. With other people in it too. Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park, BC
  • Santa & Mrs. Cuss (putting the Ho in ho ho ho?), Midnight Sun 10K Run, Fairbanks AK
  • The run took place during our weeklong Escapees Hangout, and quite a few of our attendees ran, walked, or volunteered.
  • Alaska Pipeline above; mask below. Covid finally got me. Mild case. Yay for vaccine + boosters!
  • We met Nick & Paula at a Year to Volunteer project in TN two years ago, and managed to meet up at Denali after leapfrogging each other through Canada & AK
  • Now that’s north — but not as far north as we intend to travel.
  • Pre-gaming with Escapees Hangouts friends at a bar in Whitehorse YT. See that friend on the left? See that hat I’m wearing?…
  • … she knitted it! @Pinknpurl on Instagram
  • My Tim the Tool Man meets *the* Tim the Tool Man at the one and only Hammer Museum in Haines AK
  • Quick stop at Arches NP in Utah on our 2nd slog from TX to WA, because it was on the way…
  • … and so was our older son. We got to help him set up for his class, teaching maritime safety skills to a group of middle schoolers in Port Townsend WA.
Argh! Sorry about the multiple photo sizes in the slide shows. I tried something new to keep that from happening, and I failed. Already planning a new strategy for my next update.

But what about all those logistical challenges?

In my last update, I left loose ends on multiple ropes that required tying off before Tim reports to the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in October for his yearlong program of study. Specifically…

Are we going to book an RV site for a year? Rent a furnished place? We’ve rented a furnished cottage within a couple miles of the school.

Sell or store Tex (5th wheel) or Road Island (truck camper)? As luck would have it, some family members in WA ended up selling their house earlier than planned and needed temporary lodging exactly when we’d have needed to find storage for Tex, so they’re living in it for about a year, and all of us are relieved to have found an ideal solution. Road Island will be able to bunk right next to us in our rental cottage’s driveway, so that worked out too.

What about the cargo trailer with all Tim’s tools in it? It landed in a safe place in WA, on property belonging to friends who have a lengthy list of projects to tackle at their freshly built home, and who are of course free to use the Tool Man’s tools as part of the “rental agreement.” Again, everybody wins.

There it is beside the house, all cozy until we return to WA to hitch it back on in September.

What am I going to do while Tim’s in class every weekday from 8-5 for a year? If I get a job, won’t we need a second vehicle? I’m planning to pick up a part-time job and/or a regular volunteer gig to keep me feeling busy and useful. And since we’ll be living within a couple miles of the boat school, we won’t need a second vehicle because Tim can easily walk, bike, or be dropped off and picked up. Another win.

Where to next?

Everywhere we can reasonably get to in Alaska and western Canada over the next two months.

Already planned: Escapees Hangouts in Seward and Valdez

On the list, but lacking specifics: Lake Clark NP, Anchorage, various towns on the Kenai Peninsula, the Arctic Ocean, Top of the World Highway, Chicken, Northwest Territories

Not on the list, but not off it either: Whatever/wherever strikes our fancy between the various places above. There just aren’t that many highways up here, so locations that haven’t actually made our list are likely to become stops somewhere along the route between others.

Let us know if you’ve got an Alaskan “can’t miss it,” and check our socials for more frequent updates. Maybe we’ll pop up in a place you’ve visited! Facebook – Instagram – Twitter

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.

3rd quarter 2022: WheRVe we been?

Remember that time we left Maine in August and drove all the way to southern California for our pumpkin patch jobs that started in September? That was in 2019, and although the line on the map below makes it look like we’d perhaps forgotten that 3-week endurance test, we most definitely had not.

This year we made a similar diagonal, from Nova Scotia to New Mexico, but took closer to 6 weeks to do it.

We is smarter.

Being a little more pressed for time than usual, I’ll jump right into the maps and a quick sampler of our 3rd quarter travels. We’re currently in Albuquerque for the 50th Annual International Balloon Fiesta, volunteering with the Escapees Boomers, and our training/crewing schedule is going to have us keeping unusual hours. Hello to 4:00 a.m. wake-ups, afternoon naps, evening glows, and the sights & camaraderie that will make it all worthwhile.
From July to September, we racked up 8 US states, 5 Canadian provinces, and 6019 miles — only as measured directly between overnight stops, not all of which are on the map — on a jaunt that took us from MA, NH, ME to NB, NS, PEI, QC, ON to MI, WI, OK, NM.
We put way more miles than that on the truck, sometimes with the camper on, sometimes without, as we ran errands and visited people at each location.
(Map does not reflect actual routing.)
Just for giggles, I also made this very rough map of the counterclockwise loop we’ll have completed by the time we get back to San Antonio next month. We took off in Road Island in late April, and will return almost exactly 6 months later. It’s been a lot — in a good way.

Slide Show 1: NH & ME

  • In NH, we spent a night at the base of Mount Washington …
  • … visited Littleton, home of Pollyanna (I didn’t know either) …
  • … and hiked up to the Galehead Hut on the Appalachian Trail. Tough climb! (But not as tough as Mt. Washington, which is why I said no to that one.)
  • In ME, we spent a night on a horse farm …
  • … went on a hike with an old friend from our Norfolk days …
  • … ate lobster in many mouth-watering forms …
  • … and visited The WoodenBoat School in Brooklin. Tim was one happy guy, and I think a flame’s been rekindled.

Slide Show 2: NS-PEI-ON Canada

  • In Nova Scotia, we spent our 30th anniversary on a whale watching tour …
  • … wearing the same size full-body flotation suits we could have worn the year we were married. #brag
  • There were no bad water views in Nova Scotia.
  • See?
  • See again?
  • And of course we ate Digby scallops in many mouth-watering forms.
  • The Confederation Bridge took us to & from Prince Edward Island, which now ranks amongst my favorite destinations.
  • Again, no bad views, and we lucked out at two different waterside provincial parks.
  • Arch 1
  • Arch 2
  • Incredible skies…
  • … and sea life sightings …
  • … and an hour with Beach Goats (worth every one of my 10 Loonies) …
  • … and a Harvest Hosts farm with the best hosts ever!
  • Before crossing back into the US, we swung through Ottawa and visited Maman …
  • … and PM Trudeau. (Okay, he wasn’t there, but I definitely looked.)

Slide Show 3: MI-WI-OK

  • On Michigan’s UP, a friend let us stay on her family’s lakeside slice of heaven — so nice, we stayed twice!
  • We visited Kitch-iti-kipi, the miraculously clear Big Spring …
  • … and went for swims in both Lake Superior & Lake Michigan.
  • We went on a boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore …
  • … and spent a week camping in The Porkies (Porcupine Wilderness SP).
  • Labor Day brought a picture perfect weekend with friends in WI …
  • … followed by 2 weeks helping a cousin kick the ball forward on finishing the interior of his pole barn.
  • You know it’s a big job when a scissor lift is delivered.
  • Oh, and look who came over to read our flag one morning. Own less, do more, Bambi!
  • Last stop before Albuquerque: Tulsa, for a weekend with Andrea & Shawn, friends who’ve come off the road to live in a real house for a while.

Where to next?

After our gig here at Balloon Fiesta, we’ll head toward Sedona, AZ, for a week of volunteer preservation work with HistoriCorps at Crescent Moon Ranch. We’d first heard about this organization last summer, and immediately signed on for an October 2021 project in Oregon, but it was canceled on short notice due to excessive wildfire smoke. When the Sedona project popped up for this fall, it took all of two minutes to decide that the detour would be worth delaying our return to Home Base San Antonio by another week.

So yes, after that, we’re back in central Texas for the winter, for the usual visits with family & friends, all the winter holidays, and the doctor-and-dentist-go-round. We’ll also move out of Road Island (~150sf) and back into Tex (~320sf), and won’t that feel all kinds of extravagantly spacious!

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.