What’s New.
It is not a good time for travel blogs. Our travel like nearly everyone else is on hold while the world deals with COVID-19. We are not sure when we will be back on the road.
We have used this time to migrate the blog to a new platform. For the first six years we used a software called Sandvox to publish the blog. While it was state of the art in 2013, it has been pretty much abandoned by its developer. So we have used the past few weeks in isolation moving to WordPress.org. This project turned out to be more than we thought it would be but the new software allows us to use a more visual and hopefully intuitive approach.
With time on our hands we have begun to write up some of the lessons of our experience traveling. Since most readers of this blog are in the US, and most of the questions we get are about our travels in Europe we are focusing on things we have learned traveling in Europe that may help other Americans thinking about going over there. The experience has been wonderful and we really recommend it. Our latest posts are below.
Driving Our RV in Europe
The most frequently asked question we get from Americans about our experience RV’ing in Europe is how difficult is it to drive? Our quick answer
In Trip Planning
In a previous post we talked about the planning we do before we depart for our trips to Europe. When people ask us how we
Pre-Trip Planning
Over the years we have learned that the more we prepare for the trip before we leave, the more freedom we will have to improvise
WIFI Data in Europe
Like most people we need data to exist. While traveling it is more important. We use it for our daily planning, and for navigating around
February 7, 2020 Portland OR
The drive home was easy. It was clear and relatively warm until I got to the pass over the Cascades where I was met with
February 6, 2020 Burns OR
Today I made like a commercial truck driver and focused on miles and not fun. I covered a little over 600 miles in 10 hours.
Our Blog
Since retirement we have been traveling about 4 months a year. Our plan was to travel a little more each year, but life has kept getting in the way. We keep a daily blog of our activities. We spend our days looking around where we are with Ton taking pictures. In the evening while Ton is preparing dinner I attempt to write up the highlights of the day. After dinner we select a couple of pictures to help illustrate what I have written. Ton takes a lot of pictures every day and many are quite good. Those we like that do not make the blog are set aside for a photo album we keep.
The problem with a daily blog is that some days are more interesting than others, but it does give an idea of the ebb and flow of travel. Also, occasionally the blog does not get written because I am lazy, sick, or we are socializing with our neighbors. I usually try to write it up the next day, but sometimes my impressions fade.
We have daily blogs for 2018 and 2019 . If you are interested in going directly to the daily blogs click on the dates in blue above. Due to a bad decision in editing I lost the daily blogs for 2013 to 2017, but retained all of the posts which are included under destinations.
Destinations
Since we started the blog we have traveled in the US, Canada and Europe by RV. During those trips we have visited 21 US states, 1 Canadian Province, 1 Canadian Territory, and 11 European countries. The summaries are included under destinations.
One of the things we enjoy about reading travel blogs is seeing other peoples experiences in places we are planning to visit. For the US we have grouped our posts by states. For Europe we have grouped the posts by major countries, and further subdivided those by regions. So if you go to Destinations in the main menu and click you will see a post for Europe. If you click on that you will see a post for various countries. If you click on that you will see a post for different regions in that country.
Our RV’s
We currently own two RV’s. That was never our intent, but when looking at the best way to travel in Europe we decided to purchase a RV over there. Our US RV was originally purchased with the intent of being capable of traveling outside the US. For various reasons we decided to not send it to Europe, but have decided to keep it. We have several posts about our RV’s including the decision making process for Scout our US RV, and François our European RV.
Photo Albums
As I said above Ton takes the photos while we travel. Generally we only use a few of the ones she takes in the daily blogs. These photo albums are collections of other photos that we really like. They are arranged by trips. For now I have only included the ones from Europe and the Alaska Highway trip. These are the most tedious thing to move from the old software to the new. Depending on how long we are locked down I may move some more over in the future.
Travel Stories
Things happen while you travel. Sometimes they are good, and sometimes they are challenging. This section includes posts that we have selected from our travels that highlight some of the things we tend to talk about when we meet friends and fellow travelers.
Things We Have Learned
After years of travel we have gained some experience. These are posts about things we have found useful. It includes equipment, planning tools, and general other things that might prove useful to others.
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