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Tuesday April 3, 2007

Back Home!

We made it back home in above-freezing weather! This is being written on Thursday, we spent Wednesday emptying the RV and winterizing it, just in time, as the temperatures plummeted (it's -8C this morning) and we have a couple of cm of snow on the ground. After a winter of warm temps, it feels very COLD.

The post will be updated with some stats and comments about the trip later.

Monday April 2, 2007

Pinery Provincial Park, Grand Bend Ontario

We are back in Ontario! We got into Pinery after lunch today and are one of two campers in the park.

For $32.75, it's not a bargain compared to $14 for water and electricity in New Mexico State Parks, for $225 US you can camp for a full year for $4.00 a night! in any park. Ontario needs to get real with rates and services.

Pictures:

The site, Suzette is walking Kasey



The yurts are close by, but none are occupied:



The RV across the street is the only other camper!





Sunday April 1, 2007

Harbortown RV resort, Monroe Michigan

We arrived here at noon today, a short hop from Auburn.

Tomorrow, we head back to Canada and into Pinery, then it's home!


Saturday March 31, 2007

In Auburn KOA, Auburn Indiana

It's Officially COLD!!

We dropped into this KOA after spending last night in Columbus Indiana. Yesterday, it was mid 20's C, we had the A/C on to cool the RV, today it's rainy and 9, and the heater is on to keep warm.

The true of test of coldness is that both Al & Suzette have long pants on for the first time after being in shorts for over 2 months. We are not liking this!!


Thursday March 29, 2007

Bowling Green KOA, Kentucky

We dropped into this KOA to do some laundry. For a KOA, it isn't bad!


Wednesday March 28, 2007

Natchez Trace State Park, Tennessee

We are in this great state park, but it's the first full day of rain we've had in 2 months!

The fire was a bit of a failure, but we tried. Some pictures:







Monday & Tuesday March 26/27, 2007

Village Creek State Park, Arkansas

We dropped into this beautiful state park about 50 miles west of Memphis Tennessee. On Sunday, we stopped at another state park which was underwhelming, and we couldn't get on-line because of the trees.

This is a beautiful area of the state, below find some initial pictures of the camp site. We are staying here for a couple of days.







A picture of the trail we took:




Saturday March 24, 2007

Lake Bob Sandlin State Park

We arrived at this park about 2:00 pm today after surviving the drive through the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

We are about 50 miles from Texarkana on the Texas/Arkansas border.

The park is nice, as the folling pictures show. We will probably stop tomorrow for a couple of days to provision and take it easy, The driving is OK, but we like to take an occasional break.







Today we got an E-mail from our friends Cam & Lorraine indicating that there was some bad weather (hail and tornadoes) in New Mexico near Logan! We hope that we don't run into this type of weather on our way home.

Friday March 23, 2007

Lake Mineral Wells State Park, Near Fort Worth Texas

We got into this state park early this afternoon. we had a fire for the first time since we left home in mid November!, It was a great fire with mesquite wood, expensive ($16) but nice!

Some pictures:

Al by the fire:



Kasey is enjoying the site:



This is our site, again a lot like Pinery:





Thursday March 22, 2007

Abilene State Park, near Abilene Texas

Yesterday, we took a one day break at a private RV park in Big Spring Texas, we needed to do some laundry.

Today we moved close to Abilene to the state park here. It looks very much like Pinery in Ontario, there are oaks and cedars along with  other savanna-type plants. It's cooler and a bit rainy today, the first rain we have seen in about 2 months!

Some pictures:

An armadillo is something not seen in Pinery!



The park is quite old, it was built in 1933 as part of depression make-work jobs (see the plaque below). A lot of the structures are made from local sandstone that looks fantastic:



This is the plaque:



This is part of the swimming pool/concession building:



A final look at the architecture:




A picture of the site which is in the trees:






Monday and Tuesday March 19/20, 2007

Brantley Lake State Park near Carlsbad New Mexico

Tuesday:

We went down to Carlsbad, about 20 miles south of here to look around. They have the famous Carlsbad caverns here, but we didn't want to leave Kasey in the trailer for half a day alone. Next trip here, we will camp closer to Carlsbad so Kasey won't be alone for such a long time.

Carlsbad is located on the Pecos river; around here water is important and in the old days they built irrigation ditches and aqueducts to supply water to the area:

This is a picture of the Pecos river in town:



Suzette and Kasey walking across the floating pathway just upstream of the dam:



This appears to be an old power plant now converted to a recreation center:



This is an aqueduct upstream from the power plant. It does not have the appearance of the Roman ones, but it was (and is) functional:



This is a view from above with the water flowing through:



Back at camp, Suzette took this picture of Brantley lake from the boat dock:



Tomorrow, it's off to Texas (we lose an hour of time!), we need to do laundry, so it's off to a full service private RV park.


Monday:

We arrived at this park about 2:00 pm this afternoon. When we left Oliver Lee, it was about 24C. On the way we climbed up to about 8,000 ft. altitude, the temp went down to about 13C and we drove through areas with snow on the ground!!  When we got to Brantley lake, we were back down to about 3,000 ft. altitude and the temp was up to 33C!  Amazing!

We did not stop to see if the skate rentals were still available:



A picture of the remnants of snow left on the slopes:



A closer shot of the hill:



This is a shot of our campsite. Note the 2 Scotch Pines beside the trailer, they are watered by a water system and are not native to the area which is basically desert:



Another shot from the back:



We took a hike to the lake just before sunset:



Friday to Sunday March 16-18, 2007

Oliver Lee Memorial State Park near Alamogordo New Mexico

We arrived at this state park on Friday, I'm writing this commentary on Saturday. The dish continued to have issues with transmission errors, this morning I declared war and stripped out the wiring around the modem, hooked up the coax directly from the dish and voila! no transmission errors. The culprit appears to be a loose coax connector inside the RV, I'm on-line with minimal errors.

This state park is just north of White Sands missile range and the Holloman Air force base where the stealth planes fly from. We actually saw a stealth plane in the air on our way up here.

We decided to stay here over the weekend, we leave Monday morning. We are exploring some trails up the hills, we plan to do some "relaxed" hikes this afternoon, after it cools down. The main hike climbs about 3000 ft. and takes about 10 hours, we won't take that one!

Some pictures:

This is the dog canyon trail, last year they had a flash flood that washed out most of this trail, too bad, it looked like a nice trail to take:



Suzette took this picture of a mother and daughter waiting for the other members of the family to return from trying to get past the broken stairs:



This is the face of the hill, the black dot in the center is a cavern. You can just see some pathways up the hill if you look carefully:



This is our site, a little tight but we have water and 30 amp hydro:



Who says that the desert doesn't have great flowers to look at???



We wimped out!!

We took the Dog Canyon trail today and we didn't make it to the cavern, as the following pictures show:

This is a shot (from the hill) of the road that goes back to the main highway, from this height, you can see for miles:



This is a closer shot of the cavern than the one taken from our campsite (see the above pictures):



A picture of Suzette on the hill:



Al looks a little tired!:



We enjoyed the hike, we made it halfway up the hill and decided that the trek was great, but the temp was hot and we needed to replenish our bodies with some liquid (meaning we had earned ourselves a beer!).

Monday morning

This morning we are leaving to go east to Brantley Lake state park, about 100 miles from here. Yesterday, we went into Alamogordo to provision. For the first time in a LONG time, I was "carded" when buying some beer, apparently some sort of a requirement at the place I stopped. It made me feel very young again!


Wednesday/Thursday March 14-15, 2007

Rockhound State Park near Deming New Mexico

We got into this great state park on Wednesday, we were here before on our way down to Mexico. This time we reserved a site as the parks are quite busy; we're glad we did, as all the serviced sites were occupied when we got here.

The dish is still giving issues so we upload pictures whe we get few transmission errors; this was a good time.

The views are absolutely tremendous:



The campground backs onto a hill and gives good views all around



More great scenery:



The temperatures here are hot during the day and about 60F overnight, good for sleeping. We find the low humidity in the desert to be quite similar to inside conditions at home during the winter, the skin is dry and in the morning your nose is dry congested.


Tuesday March 13, 2007

Last day at Roper

Today was spent in doing some hiking and getting the truck serviced in preparation for our travel back home.

We hiked the same trail we did last time, the trail leads to a mesa above the campground.

Tomorrow, we head to Rockhound state park in New Mexico.



Monday March 12, 2007

Roper Lake State Park, Near Safford Arizona

We made it into this state park around 1 pm today (We are still on standard time in Arizona). We plan to spend two nights here, then move on to New Mexico.

A few pictures:

This flock of yellow breasted blackbirds seem to be heading north just like us!



This is the same flock in a tree nearby:



A closer view:







Thursday March 8 to Sunday March 11, 2007


Sunday March 11, 2007

Last Day at Beaudry

Today, we are packing up and we leave tomorrow morning for Roper State Park near the New Mexico  border.  Although  almost all the states have gone to daylight saving time, Arizona (and Hawaii) do not, so we still have an hour extra sleep. Today we ran into our friends Darlene and Whitey from Mexico, we enjoyed seeing them again.

Throughout the visit to Beaudry, the jacuzzi got lots of use!

Beaudry RV Resort, Tucson Arizona

We returned to Beaudry as our first stop back into the USA, to get a couple of items from Camping World and to stock up on groceries.

We got a jacuzzi site, Suzette is enjoying the water:





This is a view of our site:



This is a view down the row of RV's closest to us, there are a lot of high dollar RV's here, we are "small potatoes" in this crowd