A little over a year ago, we heard from a man named Jeff. We had met he and his partner Marina at Grand Teton back in 2019 and had a few nights of beers with them. You know those couples you meet that every just clicks? Yeah, that was them. Marina and I stayed in contact for a few months and then life just gets in the way and we lost contact. The week I heard from Jeff, Ed and I had literally just been talking about them.

Jeff told me that I had inspired him to write his own travel blog. I took a look at it and it was really nice. Instead of doing a weekly post, he did a summary of their year of travel. I love that this could be something I can get to without worrying about my own in-my-head deadlines. So, it might take a while to catch up on 5 years of traveling. But why not start now?

Our 2025 has had a few trips already. We spent a week in Antigua in January. I made a trip out to California in March, seeing my daughter in San Diego, friends in San Francisco, and my aunt in Santa Rosa. In April, we camped for a week at Douthat State Park here in Virginia with our dear friends Dave and Wendy. And in May, we headed to Boston and the South Shore of Massachusetts for a week of friends, family, and good beer.

This Fourth of July weekend, we leave for 8 weeks in Michigan and northern Minnesota, returning Labor Day weekend. I’ll write a few paragraphs each week in a draft and will maybe have a full post by the end of our trip

So, I’m obviously behind on blog posts – 6 months worth.  Got a few little kicks to get my writing  going again.   Our neighbor in Chesapeake checked in with an email earlier this week.  Then a dear friend asked if I was writing a journal just today.  I guess that’s the incentive to get my butt in gear and start journaling again.  It will be slow and out of order.  I’m not sure who was reading it, but I need to do it for myself in any case.

Thanks for the butt kick.

 

After a quiet night in Lake City, we headed for our next 10 day stop, Clearwater!  Ed’s sister lives in Indian Rocks Beach and this was the closest park we could get to it.  After setting up, we headed down to St Petersburg waterfront for an event I wanted to attend.  We weren’t there 30 minutes when it started torrentially downpouring!  Which pretty much was what happened most of the time we were there, so we didn’t do a lot.

We got together with Ed’s sister for dinner down at the beach.  We got to check out her new place and see the sights along Indian Rocks.

That Friday, we went over to Tampa see some old friends.  Had a lovely dinner at their house and then we took a boat ride around Hillsborough Bay and saw all the Christmas lights and had a lot of laughs with the entertainment onboard.

The next day, we drove over to Madeira Beach with his sister and putzed around the shops.  We spent the next evening having dinner with his sister and our niece, who had just come back from Europe for Christmas.  Meghan had caught up with us by now, after a whirlwind two weeks of residency interviews.

We had a quiet Christmas at the park and the family joined us in our little home for dinner and some of our good Napa wine:

The day after Christmas, a friend of his sister took us out on his boat for the day.  That was really nice.  This was a quiet stop all the way around.  The weather was atrocious, just torrential rains almost the entire time except for the last two days.  But we got to see precious family and that was the most important part.

Loaded up and now we are heading for the Keys!

We got underway from New Orleans heading towards Naval Air Station Pensacola.  It pretty much rained the entire drive.  Our GPS took us to the front gate, which was under extra security due to the shooting a few days earlier.   It really should have took us to the back gate, because that’s where the park is.

We stayed at Oak Grove RV Park.  Really big spaces, but lots of mud since it had been raining non-stop for a few days.   We got set up and then went exploring around the base.  Found the gym, the exchange, and enjoyed the view of Pensacola Bay from our campground.

On our first full day, we went out for lunch at a really fabulous place – Pensacola Cooks Kitchen.  Great home cooking.  You have to go if you’re in Pensacola.  We took a drive over to Pensacola Beach and then to Fort Pickens, one of the many Civil War forts that guarded the Bay.  It was really cold, rainy and brisk day and we weren’t up for exploring the fort in the weather. 

The next day, it’s raining again.  So, this would be a good day to go see the Naval Aviation Museum – we took our time covering the bottom floor of it but my knee was seriously troubling me this day (It had been very bad since I wore heels at Meghan’s graduation), so we left and did a few errands around town.

We went back to the museum the next day to finish the entire thing, but first we had lunch with this shipmate and Twitter friend:

On Saturday, we finally had some sunny weather – so we headed down the Panhandle to Destin!  What a lovely drive along the ocean.  And a fantastic lunch at Boshamps!  We took a long walk along the beach:

We had planned on going to Fort Barrancas on base to tour around, but because of the base restrictions, the National Park Service had shut the place down for touring.  So we took a drive down the other side of Pensacola, on Perdido Key and towards Gulf Shores, Alabama.  We also toured the Pensacola lighthouse, where the views were to die for.

We had a hankering for a burger, so we headed downtown to the famous Maguires Irish Pub to enjoy one!

A quick 5 days here and now we’re heading east, stopping for the night in Lake City.

And then there were 3.  We headed out of Austin for the long drive back to New Orleans.  It’s an over 500 mile drive, so we stopped for a night in Lake Charles.  There’s a brand new KOA there and it was very nice.  Quiet night of laundry was on tap.

Our next day, we made it back to New Orleans.  This time we stayed at Joint Base Belle Chasse at their campground.  Really, really nice.  Definitely plan on going back there some day.  Huge spots and very cheap.  We met another retired Navy couple a few spots down and now we’re following each other on Instagram.

We dropped Meghan off at her house so she could finish the pack up to move her out of her house.  We stayed at the campground and got some packing of our own done to move some bins into storage with Meghan’s stuff.

That Thursday, we went back to being tourists and took an airboat ride through the bayou.  We’re out of season for a lot of gator sightings, but we did manage to see a few and this friendly baby was onboard the boat:

Friday would be a busy day.  Brunch at the lovely Bearcat Cafe in Freret and then packing up a UHaul to take Meghan’s stuff to storage.  Loading took a lot longer than dropping it off.

Saturday, Meghan would get on a plane for two weeks of residency interviews and Ed and I would prepare to leave New Orleans the next day.  Except there was a tragic shooting at our next stop in Pensacola and they put the base on lockdown until Tuesday.  So we got an extension to stay in New Orleans for two more nights.  Thought about trying to get tickets to the Saints game against the 49ers, but they were a little expensive.  So I asked Meghan where to go to watch the game and she said The Wrong Iron.  What a great, great sports bar.  A big courtyard with lots of picnic tables, all different kinds of beer, food trucks.  Even though the Saints lost, it was so much fun!  The dancing that went on during scores was a sight to behold – as you can see even Ed was dancing!  New Orleans is a great town to watch a game in!

On Tuesday, we finally got on the road to our next stop:  Pensacola.

 

I’m a few months behind on blog posts and I figure I’ll take advantage of Ed and Meghan having left for Tanzania and my being on the couch due to my knee surgery to get caught up.

We left New Orleans and headed west towards Texas, a two day trip.  We took a detour for stop, at the Escapees Park in Livingston.  This is where our mail gets routed through to send to us.  It’s a quiet park and we enjoyed our night there and our dinner at The Blue Duck.

Onto Austin the next day.  Our home for the week would be Lone Star RV Resort.  A little noisy with the interstate being nearby, but a nice park.   Of course, our first night here, we went and partook of one of many fine craft breweries here in town, this one being the Austin Beer Garden.  Nice brews and excellent pizza! 

The next day, we would find ourselves in the line for the famous Franklin BBQ.  We got in line at 10 am for their 11 am opening.  We were pretty far back and by the time the noon hour arrived, they came and told us it would be two more hours and they couldn’t guarantee there would be any brisket or pulled pork left.  Sorry, no BBQ is that good.  We jumped out of line and headed downtown to Coopers BBQ – it was pretty outstanding and NO LINE.

After this delicious lunch, we meandered around the South Congress Street shopping district for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day was Thanksgiving.  We had a quiet day around the RV and I actually cooked a turkey in my wee oven!  It was the smallest one I’ve ever made.  We had company for dinner too, our friend Alice and Cliff’s son now lives in Austin and joined us!

Our last full day in Austin, we went out for excellent Tex-Mex at Matt’s El Rancho and then toured the state capitol:

The girls had asked to do one thing since we were going to be in Texas and that one thing was a stop on the drive back to Dallas.  I booked us an AirBnB for the night and we headed up to bucket list place in Waco:  MAGNOLIA!!

We had such a great time shopping and eating and drinking there.  What a great place!  We explored around the city and later in the day, we found Mammoth National Monument, with lots of mammoth fossils.

We drove Rachel back to Dallas the next day for her long flight back to Perth and we drove back to Austin for our long drive back to New Orleans.   Good times with my family in Texas!

We headed towards New Orleans with our nuclear family intact!  So good to be together!  We parked the RV at New Orleans KOA and took the girls to Meghan’s house, where they both would be staying during the week.  Family had just started arriving and we met up with some of them downtown for drinks and dinner.

The next day, everyone would start arriving.  A few trips to the airport to pick some of them up and off we went to the house we had rented for the weekend, where we could all stay together.  Huge place not far from Meghan’s house.   We all ended up at Parkway Bakery (Obama’s favorite) for great Po-boys and beers!

The next day, we wandered down to the French Quarter for a full day of walking around.  Brunch at the Court of Two Sisters and popping in and out of good drinking establishments was on tap for the rest of the afternoon.  Our friends Kim and Tom were the last to arrive and we enjoyed some sunset cocktails with them in Jackson Square.

Graduation Day!  So proud of our brand new Doctor Meghan Handley!  The ceremony was beautiful and then we went to Audubon Park to take some pictures with the graduate!

We followed up our picture taking stop with a fabulous dinner at Superior Seafood!

The following day, as some of the family and friends started trickling out of town, we took a lovely stroll through Louis Armstrong Park.  We then headed to Mother’s, a New Orleans institution, for a final night meal and then in the morning, we packed up and started heading towards Austin!

Our rig is fixed!  And the manufacturer of the frame that was collapsing paid for all of it!  Kudos to Hemet RV for the outstanding work they did getting us back on the road.

So, I rearranged our trip so we could make short stops in the places we intended to go.  But on the day of pickup, Hemet RV called us to tell us it would be Monday before we could pick it up.  I decided to cancel everything again and just get us to Texas.

It was indeed ready on Monday and we picked her up, headed to storage and loaded her up and took her to San Diego KOA to get organized to get back on the road.  It was a very long two days of organizing, but we were underway by noon on November 6.  She feels good and strong and none of the chucking we were feeling in the weeks leading up to our breakdown.  We stopped for the night at Gila Bend KOA.  A lovely campground and very quiet.

Our next day, we would continue driving through Arizona.  We stopped at Cochise KOA.  Picked up some groceries and had a quiet night.

Onto El Paso!  Our campground was El Paso West/Anthony.  Right behind Camping World and super cheap! I would stay here again the next time we come through.  But the reason for the stop was to see our friends Ruben and Laura who live there.  We had the BEST time with them.  And once again, we wish we had planned to stay longer because we really always have a great time with them.

We’re in Texas now and deciding what to go see.  We thought about making the trip down to Big Bend, but then we looked at the weather and they were expecting snow.  What else is near us?  Carlsbad Caverns!  So off we go to Carlsbad.  A very long country road for 120 miles with no services.  But we found another place to go along the way.  We pulled into Carlsbad KOA – 15 miles north of town.  So quiet!  And the stars were beautiful with no light pollution!

The next day, we wandered to this new place to visit – Guadeloupe Mountains National Park!  Went for a long hike deep into a canyon and it had outstanding fall color – who knew, Texas!

The next day, we drove up to the Caverns.  What a wonder they are.  We were even able to get on a tour of one of the less visited parts of the caverns:

Our third day, we headed up to Roswell and took in the International UFO Museum – how fun is that!

Back on the road and heading to Abilene TX for the evening.  Then a short drive the next day into the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  We’d be here for 5 nights and had our long awaited family reunions – Meghan arriving our first full day, and Rachel on our last.

After Meghan arrived, we got some shopping done for their trip to Kilimanjaro later in the winter.  Walked around downtown Dallas and met up with our good friends Luis and Caroline and their daughter for some good barbeque and playground time.  The next day we headed in to the Sixth Floor Museum – which documents the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Pretty sobering.

Then to see “Ford Versus Ferrari” – a great movie!

Rachel arrives and we partook of some great Dim Sum and had a quiet evening at our “home” – which is now complete!

The next day, we started the long drive to New Orleans, stopping for the evening in Boyce LA to break up the drive.

So, we headed out of Fresno to go to San Diego.  We were going back for Canadian Thanksgiving, hosted by our dear friends.   She is Canadian and we used to celebrate this holiday with them when we still lived in San Diego.  Now this 20 person holiday has grown to over 80 people, so this was a must-holiday event before we start heading East.  Our itinerary after San Diego was to be a week in the Grand Canyon, 5 days in Sedona, and then 10 days in Santa Fe before we head to Dallas for a week.

We chose to drive over Tehachapi Pass and avoid Los Angeles altogether.  We’d done this drive but different to see in the Fall.  We were plugging along and stopped at a rest area in the Mojave before we make the turn to I-15 South.   Ed took a look at the pinbox on the hitch and didn’t like what he saw.  We had about 100 miles left of driving for the day, so we just hoped we would make it without incident.  We got to Hemet (our stop for the night) and he looked at it and said we couldn’t drive it further.

In the morning, he took it down to Hemet RV Center to have them look at it.   We were lucky we were already so close to San Diego.  I got news on the way down from Fresno of the untimely passing of my beloved godmother and aunt, Dorothy Packard.  So, not long after we arrived in San Diego, I was on the red-eye heading to Boston.

Despite the reason for the trip, it was good to spend time with my sister and the rest of the family.  Had breakfast with my dear friend Christina in Boston before heading for my flight back to San Diego.

The next day was Canadian Thanksgiving.   What a fantastic time with our dear friends and their friends, so many who we were acquainted with when we lived here.  I had one too many shots with their youngest:

Now, the bad news.  We find out we have catastrophic damage to the frame of our RV.  It could have collapsed on the road and possibly killed us.  It was discovered that there was shoddy workmanship on the welding on the frame.  We find this all out on Ed’s birthday.  What a shitty day!  But we took him out for a great celebration at a Scottish bar in La Mesa and he enjoyed a few shots:

Ed spent a lot of time driving back and forth from Hemet, talking to insurance, talking to the manufacturer about our options and who was paying for all this damage.  We emptied it out and put everything in storage and started going through everything to see where we could streamline our weight.

So, we’ve been here for 3 weeks.  Our dear friends, who are empty nesters, have been putting us up the entire time.  We took them out for a great steak dinner the other night as a thank you, but we’ll honestly never be able to repay them for their generosity.

I’ve got some lunches in with other friends of mine here in town and spent some good time with my West Coast bestie and we took a great hike out at Torrey Pines:

We have to be in Dallas no later than November 18 to pick our youngest up from the airport to head to New Orleans for our oldest graduation from medical school.   Our itinerary to get there will be dependent on when we are actually able to pick up our repaired RV.  The good news is the manufacturer is paying for the repairs.  It’s funny, we rushed across country and just grazed Arizona and New Mexico on our way out here last April and now it looks like we’ll be doing the same heading back East.

So, we headed out of Lake Tahoe, climbing for awhile on some hairy stretches of Route 50, then we start 50 miles of downhill to get to Sacramento.  I could tell the RV was taking a beating and dreaded the mess that was going to be inside of it when we stop for the night.

Since it was a hard drive coming out of the mountains, I had us stop for the night in Los Banos.  A quiet night of laundry was on tap.  We got up the next morning to head to Naval Air Station Lemoore.  We had decided after our short trip to Yosemite in the spring that we didn’t want to take the RV through those passes, so we’re going to park it for the entire week and just drive the truck up.

It’s a nice campground, free laundry, close to everything on base.  My only complaint is there are a few long termers there that have too much junk on their pads.  Basically breaking every rule of the campground.  But I would stay there again if we are in central California.

We noticed when we got to Lemoore that our pin box for our hitch was starting to lower into the frame of our RV.  We figured it was just a pin box problem, so we made an appointment to get it fixed in Fresno after we got back from Yosemite.  Not going to worry about it right now.

Off to Yosemite!  We had the most gorgeous and windiest road (Route 49) for the bulk of our drive up to Evergreen Lodge at the north entrance.  We’re following our GPS when we get close and it had us driving the most insane road into the Lodge!  I asked the front desk when we got there if that was the only way in.  She said no, you should have read the email.  It was a fire road we were on with straight cliffs over the side!!

This was my favorite place ever to stay in Yosemite.  We had our own little cabin with a living room and fireplace and the restaurant served delicious food and had great beers!  The grounds were just gorgeous.

We spent our full day there going on a wonderful hike to a bucket list place – Hetch Hetchy!  John Muir was absolutely correct in this being one of the most beautiful places in the park:

 

Our second morning, we had to check out to head to our next lodging.  Tioga Pass Road was open, so we drove out the entire length of it.  So many beautiful things to see and this is a road we would like to stay on more on a future trip.  The lakes, the streams, the domes, the meadows.  Absolutely gorgeous:

We made the drive over the pass and thought we’d make a quick drive to Mono Lake, but then we saw the downhill and turned around!  It was late in the day anyway and we would have been traveling down to the valley in the dark.

So now we’re on a new road to the valley.  Highway 140 was a breathtaking drive down to this special place.  Our home for the next few days would be Half-Dome Village.  We were in a little cabin again.  No complaints, except it had a double and a single bed! I will complain about the food, though.  Cafeteria style, not that good, and too expensive!  And they charged us a corking fee when we brought a bottle of wine to dinner one night.  Are you serious?

Our first full day down in the valley, we drove out of it!   Glacier Point was our destination!  It was closed the last time we were there.  The views were just amazing!  We also hiked up to Sentinel Dome, all uphill for 2 miles, but even more amazing views!

A bike ride around the valley on our second day and to check out places we haven’t seen.  The Ahwahnee Hotel – which is the luxury resort in the valley.  Walked around the grounds a bit and then bike rode over to Yosemite Village to catch a couple films and do some shopping.  It was a nice day.

Our third day, we hiked up to Vernal Falls.  It was one of the few falls that has a constant flow all year, so we have to do it (Yosemite Falls was completely dry).  I stopped part of the way up, it was getting too steep and I was having a bad knee day.  But Ed made it all the way!

We moved over to Yosemite Falls Lodge for our last night in the valley.  It was good to eat some good eats and beer while we watched some playoff baseball.

We left the next morning and headed out of the valley.  Our itinerary for the day was the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.  It did not disappoint:

We spent the night at Tenaya Lodge, right in Fish Camp.  It was a lovely ending to a great week in this magical place.

Onto Fresno and meeting our Jess for lunch at our favorite, Taqueria Don Pepe.  Great catching up with Meghan’s former roommate, who is doing her residency at a hospital there.

Back to Lemoore and pack up for the trip to San Diego.  But first, we have to take the RV up to Fresno to get the pin box issue fixed.