On to Bryce via Colorado

Continuing my westward July travels, after a couple more "Camp Wally" overnight stops at the Scottsbluff, NE and Laramie, WY Wal-Mart stores,  I decided to bypass Denver's traffic and head to the central Colorado mountains via 2-lane mountain roads from Wyoming instead.

Along the way just so happened to be another National Wildlife Refuge, so of course, I had to stop!  Arapaho NWR sits in the North Park basin west of Rocky Mountain National Park and east of Steamboat Springs.  The auto tour loop was easy to scope out before driving it, so I knew I'd be o.k. driving it with the RV/toad.

There were a few ponds of migratory ducks, geese, and this cute little pied-billed grebe--

Giant T@B Cache in Southern IL

Here it is the end of August, and I'm still trying to finish my blog posts of my springtime travels....eee gads!  Well, I've been wildly busy this summer working as a volunteer interpretive ranger at Bryce Canyon NP, and the connectivity here (and spare time) have been pretty minimal.  So, I'll try to mash together multiple posts into one today, and move the backlog along a bit!

My final week in southern Illinois this past April was spent doing the 2 big things I'd come to the area to do: attend the Midwest T@B Rally at Giant City State Park, and finally (FINALLY) paddle and explore the Cache river basin-- the northernmost cypress tupelo swamp in North America.

Missouri's Magnificent Mingo NWR

My early April travels along Highway 60 from Enid, OK to southeastern Missouri were fairly uneventful.  The gentle, rolling prairies and oil/gas fields of northeast Oklahoma gave way to southern Missouri's Ozark mountains-- tree-covered hills of blooming dogwood and rosebuds.

I arrived to Lake Wappapello State Park north of Poplar Bluff, MO the day before a spring storm was to pass through.  Nestled in the forest with a distant view of the lake, my rolling home had found safe shelter, and at only $12/night for an electric site, quite a bargain to extend my stay a week and explore the area.  Number One on the list would be a visit to Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.

Beach Paradise At Last!

All good things come to those who wait!

After 4 noisy, dusty nights parked next to the sand dune of racing ATVs and dune buggies, the hoard of race fans went home.  We were finally rewarded with our pick of the best of the 2 best beachfront campsites in all of San Felipe!  It didn't take more than a few minutes for Hans, Ursula, and I to decide to extend our stay here an extra week.

Now, we'd finally get to discover some real San Felipe living!

Magical Days at Concepción

Before I start today’s post, I’d like to express my sincere thanks for the kindness you all have shared with me this past week since the passing of Millie.  I knew she was one well-loved dog out there in blog-land, but honestly was amazed and touched by the outpouring of comments, emails, and phone calls.  It seems she left a hole not only in my heart, but in many of yours as well.

I spent last week mostly consuming myself with work.  I’m currently volunteering at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico for a few months, and it’s been a perfect place to begin healing—surrounded by caring fellow volunteers and lots of amazing wildlife to watch and learn about.  I’ll start posting more about this place soon, but first wanted to finish up and share the final few posts of our winter Baja trip, as our last week there was pretty amazing!

Millie Falls Overboard!

A few short kilometers west of Tecolote Beach (north of La Paz, Baja Sur), sits an absolute gem of a aquamarine beach—Playa Balandra.  When the north winds are howling at Tecolote, the protected, shallow inlet of Balandra can be as calm as a baby.  The waters here are so shallow that you can walk nearly across the inlet (especially if its low tide).

But for our visit today, we had two objectives—swimming for Millie, and kayaking for me, Hans, and Ursula.  So, we arrived to Balandra right at high tide to enjoy our day.

The Best Boondocking Beach in Baja

Whenever I thought about spending my winter days lazily boondocking on a beach in Baja, this was always the scene I always imagined—RV’s (not too many, not too few) parked around an emerald bay with views of islands in the distance.

When we first drove down Baja Highway 1 and crested the hills south of Mulegé to see this stunning picture postcard in real-life for the first time, I knew I wanted to come back ASAP to camp at Playa Santispac along the Bahía de Concepción.  So after a few days together in Loreto, when Hans and Ursula continued south to La Paz to visit their old sailing buddies,  Millie and I backtracked 70 miles north to find a bit of paradise on the beach!

Rock Creek Revisited

If it’s June, it must be time to head back out to Iowa to reunite with my old camping buddies at the Midwest T@B Rally at Rock Creek State Park near Grinnell, IA.  Since selling my T@B in 2011, I think I’ve brought a different RV every time I’ve attended!

Took my new kayak for a spin!

It was warm and sunny this morning—a perfect day to try out my new Sea Eagle!  A couple weeks ago, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my original 2011 FastTrack with the newer, lighter, slimmer FastTrack 385.

First, the unwrapping…

Celebrating the Holidays…Isla style

No snow trips over the hills and through the woods to Grandma’s house this year.  Spending the holidays on a warm, usually sunny beach in a foreign country was quite a change from the frigid, snowy holidays most of my relatives spent in Chicago and Colorado!

The first celebration occurred a week before Christmas.  My next door neighbors here at Tres Amigos, Rolf and Jackie from Alberta, hosted a big Full Moon beach bonfire get-together for all the residents of “RV1” (Tres Amigos is divided into 2 separate parks with a hotel and restaurant in between).


The next RV1 event was Movie Night on the Saturday night before Christmas.  Two of the RVs here are parked awning to awning, so they offered their large covered space as our “theater” while one of the other RVers brought over his large LCD TV and sound bar for our screening.  What better movie for a group of RVers in Mexico to watch than “We’re the Millers”, Jennifer Aniston’s raunchy but funny comedy about a low-level drug dealer who rents an RV to smuggle marijuana back to the U.S. from Mexico and pulls together a very unlikely bunch who pretend to be a “typical RVing family” on a vacation.  It was hilarious!

Christmas day was celebrated with an afternoon potluck dinner just before sunset.  Everyone in RV1 went all out to make their very best dishes so the food was across-the-board delicious.



Christmas night’s sunset wasn’t too shabby either!



The T1Nnie Winnie may not have been covered in snow, but it still felt festive to come home to…



For New Year’s Eve, RV1 decided to do a bonfire and hors d'oeuvres on the beach right after sunset.  What a spectacular sunset it was!!!  A rainstorm was approaching, so the skies were getting moody just as a big cruise ship was pulling out of the harbor headed to Puerto Vallarta.  Since it was darker than usual, the ship already had it’s lights on and the combination of brilliant skies and dotted lights on the ship were just breathtaking!

Not 5 minutes after taking these photos, the skies opened up and soaked us (and the firewood) for a good 10 minutes or so.  Fortunately, our men of RV1 are quite resourceful and found that using toilet paper as extra kindling and dousing the whole pile of wood with citronella oil got the soggy wood burning in no time!



Once the fire got going, it was time to fill up our plates (by flashlight!) with all sorts of yummy finger food--



Unfortunately, our bonfire celebration was short-lived.  More rain came through about an hour later to quickly disband our festivities, but it was sure fun while it lasted!


I
n between Christmas and New Year’s, my fellow View-owner friend (and full-time RVer), Suzanne of TakeToTheHighway came to visit for a few days between her 2 mini vacations of the Copper Canyon train ride and celebrating the New Year in Oaxaca with her brother.  We managed to get her a great deal at the Maria Coral hotel next door to the RV park, and the view from her 3rd floor room was quite something!



The hotel even had a nice view of the “RV2” side of Tres Amigos.



We enjoyed sampling a variety of Isla restaurants, from the fancier beach-side seafood restaurant, to a couple of the in-town “mom and pop” cucinas. One provided a great birds-eye view of the main intersection in town on a hoppin’ Friday night…



Contessa hosted a happy hour and dinner at her place on Saturday for all 6 bloggers on the Isla and called it our first International Bloggers Conference (click the link for Colin & Contessa’s great pics and links to each of the blogs)



Suzanne was thrilled to finally see the Isla and meet Contessa!



On our final morning, Suzanne and I rented kayaks and headed to the “bird island” for some exploration. 




We both have rather goofy personalities and have often joked that we are a bit like “Lucy & Ethel” when ever we happen to meet up.  I took my GoPro camera along just in case our kayaking adventure happened to include a capsize or shark attack, but thankfully Lucy & Ethel encountered no such calamities this time around and only shared goofy fun and lots of laughs.

Here’s a little video of our trip!


On to 2014!

Autumn Camping Weekend in Iowa

While the biggest news of my late September weekend trip to Iowa was coming home with a new RV, the rest of the weekend was quite enjoyable as well!  The original plan for the weekend was to attend the Midwest T@B rally at Sugar Bottom COE campground near Iowa City.  We last camped here with the same T@B friends back in 2010 when we still had our T@B trailer.  That July rally had been miserably hot and humid, so all subsequent Iowa rallies were planned for the more hospitable weather of early summer or fall.

I set up my View near my T@B friends, but not so close that I’d ruin the effect of their cute little campers all parked in a row--

My friend Kathy had mentioned at the Rock Creek rally a few months ago that she wanted to take up kayaking and was thinking about buying a Sea Eagle.  When I checked with her before the weekend and found out she still had yet to buy one (but still wanted one), I knew she’d be the perfect recipient to donate my original Sea Eagle SE330 to.  I’d not had the SE330 out of it’s bag in a couple of years, but it pumped up just fine and seemed to be in perfect shape.  Kathy was thrilled to get it, and David and I were excited to get another kayak partner for next summer’s planned paddling at the Rock Creek rally!

 

The winds were a bit too strong to do any kayaking this weekend, so we just admired Coralville Lake from the shoreline.  Millie woke me up early enough to take a few sunrise walks.  The first morning was partly cloudy with a wonderful colors over the lake--

While the next morning, the lake was shrouded in ground fog.  It still made for some interesting photos!

The gang gathered around the campfire both day and night--

Saturday afternoon brought a few soaking thunderstorms, so a few of us decided to head out to the local pizza pub for a nice warm dinner and conversation.

On Sunday, Millie and I packed up camp and headed up to Forest City, Iowa to Lichtsinn Motors RV, where we’d trade our ‘08 View for the new ‘07.  It was a beautiful sunny fall day as we zig-zagged along the farm roads past the countless acres of corn drying in the fields.  One last silhouette of the ‘08 View!
 

Forest City is home to Winnebago’s headquarters and main factory.  We had a wonderful rally here back in 2010 with the View-Navion Skinny Winnie group.  The courtesy parking at Winnebago’s visitor’s center was pretty full today --

 

so Millie and I decided instead to stay at the pretty little town campground, Pammel Park, along the banks of the Winnebago river.  We had the place all to ourselves!

Millie insisted I pull her swimming towel and water toy out of the closet so she could make a beeline to the riverbank to do some late afternoon swimming.  If her muddy paws are any indication, she had an absolutely fabulous time!

After dinner, we decided to cross the suspension bridge to the trails on the other side of the riverbank.  What a neat little park!

After a quiet and peaceful final night in the ‘08 View, we packed up and did a final drive a few blocks up the street to Lichtsinn.  So long, ‘08 View, you served us well!