Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Reflections on 2016… The Last Part!

rom Idaho we moved into Washington state and stayed a total of 12 nights. Our reasons for a visit were to see an old college friend and to drink a little wine in the wine country.

Best Washington Memories – Urban hiking in Spokane, Gonzaga University and visiting friends.

Worst Washington Memory – Finding out our favorite park in the Tri-Cities area (Hood Park COE campground) closed after Labor Day.

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The next state we entered, Oregon, is another of our favorite summer spots to visit but this time we visited in the fall. We would have normally stayed longer in this beautiful state but we were late in the season so we only spent 21 nights there.

Best Oregon Memories – Hiking the Columbia River Gorge, revisiting Crater Lake,urban hiking Portland with friends and enjoying a stay in Bend to visit more good friends.

Worst Oregon Memory – Seeing a tire bubble and waiting forever for it to be replaced. Chilly weather (mental note stay in the summer). Driving the RV at night in the mountains… YIKES!!! Never again!!!

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Sadly we left Oregon and cut through the northeastern corner of California, knowing we would later return to the state to spend time in San Diego. We stayed only one night before moving into Nevada where we would stay eight nights.

Best Nevada Memories –  Casinos, hiking in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and the Red Rocks.

Worst Nevada Memory – No bad memories here as the weather warmed up and things were looking up…

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We loved our brief stay in Nevada but we had reservations in San Diego so we re-entered California and ended up staying for a total of 44 nights in California. This included a long stay at one of our favorite parks in San Diego – Mission Bay RV Park.

Best California Memories – Having our daughter and her boyfriend visit us, seeing the San Diego Chargers Football team, Thanksgiving with friends and family and hiking at China Date Ranch.

Worst California Memory – Having our side camera and surround sound receiver fail making for a costly month and of course more work for me…

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After leaving San Diego we finished the year off in Arizona where we will have stayed 6 nights by the time January 1st, 2017 rolls around and will be here until the end of January. Since we  just arrived we won’t add a best and worst memory since… well, we haven’t left yet!

What a great year we had as we traveled through a total of 19 states this year but only stayed in 17 of them as we just briefly drove through both Mississippi and South Dakota. A total of 7556 Miles for this 2016 journey and we camped at 84 different locations including commercial parks, state parks, Corp of Engineer Parks, Casino Parks and Parking lots and even our first boondock at an overnight spot (in our case it was a Cabellas).

And so we are ready for the next year to come along. Bring on 2017!!!

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Reflections on 2016… Part 3

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With our annual physicals behind us and receiving good results we moved on to another new state for us, North Dakota. Even though we only spent 8 nights in North Dakota we sure enjoyed our brief stay there and with summer winding down we had to move on westward.

Best North Dakota Memories – Visiting the state capitol and its natural heritage center and the best was finally seeing the wildlife and scenery at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Worst North Dakota Memory – Hearing a loud crashing sound while driving the RV which turned out to be our closet rod breaking!!!

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By this time it was already August and we were wanting to stay a month near Glacier National Park so we entered Montana and scooted across the state until arriving in Kalispell. No doubt this is one of our very favorite summer destinations. We spent a total of 38 nights in Montana.

Best Montana Memories – Hiking Glacier,Seeing Glacier, Experiencing all of Glacier National Park!!! Seeing the first snow on top of the peaks in Glacier. Discovering a gem of a place to see wildlife at Bison National Range. Visiting with former and new friends.

Worst Montana Memory – The only bad thing that happened to us was being unable to take the National Park ferry over to hike the Grinnell Glacier because it was either full or the weather would not cooperate. (metal note – make reservations early),

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With summer quickly disappearing we wasted no time heading west. As a result we only spent a brief three nights in Idaho.

Best Idaho Memories – Visiting the Kootenai Falls and Swinging Bridge and hiking the Ross Cedar Trail.

Worst Idaho Memory – With only a three night stay we didn’t have time for any bad memories ;) other than it was chilly!

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