I started the day by heading over to the visitors center to see what ranger talks were available today. I was there as they opened and one of the Rangers was running up the flag for the day. I talked to her on the way back in after the flag was done, she told me there were two talks for the day and she was leading one of them.
So with a little time to kill until the first talk at gold canyon, I decided to do a little exploring. I had noticed a sign for another campground above the one we usually stay in here. The problem with Sunset campground is that there is no electricity so all of the big RV’s run their generators all day to power all of the stuff in them. They require generators to be shut down from 7pm to 8am, but nothing ruins sitting outside to enjoy the sunset than the buzz of three or four generators running around you. The Texas Spring campground costs $1 more than Sunset but is generator free and prettier so I moved up here and bought two nights.
Part of Artists Pallette Drive. A really nice one way drive in the park on the way to Badwater.
The first talk of the day was in gold canyon which is one of Ton and my favorite hikes in Death Valley. The person leading it was not a ranger but a young man on an internship at the park. He took the duty very seriously and one thing I learned is that some of Star Wars 1 The Return of the Jedi was filmed in the canyon. Besides that I learned a great deal about fan canyons which Death Valley is famous for.
Gold Canyon.
The second talk was at Badwater Basin which is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 280 feet below sea level. It is one of the must stop photo stops in the park. Besides being the lowest spot in the West it is also an interesting salt flat, and does have a spring which is 4 times saltier than sea water.
Badwater Basin, the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere.
I returned to Texas Springs for sunset and climbed a hill above the campground to watch the sunset. Since the mountains on the west side of the valley are about 5000 feet higher than the valley but quite close, sunset happens about an hour and a half before the light fades which is kind of weird.
The original plan was to drive to Tonopah NV which was about 250 miles. I woke early and while I took my time getting going and doing a trip to Walmart to get some supplies I was still on the road at 8:15.
The route thru central Nevada goes thru some more remote land, though not quite as remote as yesterday. The roads are pretty good, straight as an arrow and posted at 70mph. I took it easy and cruised at 65mph, and while there was not much traffic it was all faster than me including tankers and semi-trucks.
I ‘m not sure what this thing was, but I was diverted to the shoulder so it could get past, and it had another truck hooked to the back to push.
The highlight of the drive was a giant gold mine at a place called Round Mountain Nevada. Gold was originally discovered there around 1880 and it was a very large and initially easy strike as it was surface gold. Over time while there was quite a bit of gold still around it became much more difficult to get at, and according to the signpost at the mine all of the different techniques for gold mining have been used there. At one point it was abandoned, but as mining technique became more sophisticated the mine was reopened and now it is quite a spectacular operation. It is now a pit mine and there are extremely large trucks moving the dirt form the hole to the site where it is processed. I stopped and watched these oversized dump trucks run up and down the hill for a while before moving on to Tonopah.
The Round Mountain Gold Mine with one of the giant dump trucks moving dirt from the pit to the processing area.
It was only about 12:30 when I got to Tonopah, and thanks to the miracle of satellite technology I was immersed in the Arsenal v Chelsea game on the radio so I decided to press on to Death Valley today. This turned todays drive into 380 miles. I arrived about 3 and went into the visitors center to register when I realized I was now eligible for the Golden Age pass which is a lifetime pass for all of the parks in the US. It also gives you 50% off at campgrounds. So taking advantage of my senior status and $80 I now have lifetime access, and half off in the campgrounds. Publishing this is probably going to be delayed as there is no internet at the campground, and really marginal phone service.
Sunset looking at the Panamint Mountains from the campground.
Winnemucca Nevada has been on my radar since last year when we passed thru on the way home. I liked the name and it had an interesting history. It got its start as a railroad stopover on the intercontinental rail road. Their are several large gold mines in the area, and one of it’s banks was robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It has a Basque heritage, and boasts of five Basque restaurants in town. The final reason is that it was only 230 miles from Bend and seemed like a reasonable distance for the day.
Windshield shot of the loneliest road in Oregon. Don’t worry about my safety, I was in the middle of a 10 mile straight stretch of highway without a car in site in either direction.
The first 150 miles of the trip was on Oregon Highway 78 which has to be one of the emptiest highways in the continental US. About 30 miles outside of Burns is a gas station and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT, it comes up again later!) has put up a sign warning motorists that there will not be any fuel for the next 120 miles. Ton and I have driven this road several times in our visits to eastern Oregon and we always comment on the lack of man made objects. This time because I was by myself and had nothing better to do I paid attention, and for a 48 mile stretch of OR78 there are no visible permanent man made objects except the road and the power lines adjacent to it. For a 100 mile stretch of OR78 and US95 there are six man made objects, I kept track. In this stretch all you see are 2 ODOT facilities for road maintenance, 1 radar site for either the military or the FAA, 1 cell/microwave tower, and 2 very lonely ranches. It is hard to envision the emptiness of south east Oregon.
Typical scene along OR78. Sagebrush desert virtually unaltered by man.
Last night while researching things to do on the drive today I came across an entry for Paradise Valley in the Nevada tourism site. It had an interesting history as a gold mining town in the 1880’s and was billed by Nevada tourism as a living ghost town. The blurb showed a couple of interesting pictures. It was close to my route so I decided to swing over for lunch. I know that selling tourism in north central Nevada is tough but they really exaggerated the ghost town. What is there is a small farming community with a couple of well maintained churches, a few nice houses and some derelict buildings that are old. It is certainly no ghost town, and really shows the power of what a good photographer can do to make a mundane site look interesting.
The “ghost town” of Paradise Valley.
I arrived in Winnemucca around 1:30 and checked into a very nice campground a couple of miles out of town. I was debating what to do for the rest of the day but I had noticed that there was a brand new sidewalk all of the way from town to the campground, so I decided if Winnemuca had gone thru all of that trouble to build a sidewalk I should use it. The walk into town was nice as I spent a lot of it chatting with Ton. The town itself was kind of disappointing. I expected more, but it looks like Winnemuca’s downtown has suffered from the suburbanization of it’s shopping so there was not much going on downtown. The tourist information office/museum was closed, and none of the other stores looked interesting. The restaurants looked shabby, and they do not brew beer in town. So after walking around a while I headed back to Scout and cooked up some of Ton’s Larb, which is my favorite Thai food.
We realized that Scout has been lonely in the driveway and has not moved in nearly a year. This is definitely not good for a RV so we were looking for an opportunity to take a trip before we take our spring trip to Europe. Ton has a much more active social life than I do and she was having a hard time freeing up time, and she is also not a fan of cold weather camping. On the other hand I had time on my hands and was going a little stir crazy at home so we made a decision for me to take Scout out on a trip by myself, this means the pictures are not going to be as good. I do not have an agenda besides getting out of the gloom of Oregon and finding some sun. The initial thought is to head towards Arizona.
Today was about getting over the mountains before the next storm runs thru and makes crossing over the passes difficult. Ton and I spent the last couple of days stocking up Scout for the trip. She was even nice enough to cook some of my favorite meals so I can microwave them. So I was ready to make an early start as the best stop for the first night was Burns which is about 330 miles. Last year we took a different route home thru central Nevada and it was really beautiful, so I decided to head south that way and this long drive would get me in position to do it.
The weather was clear and pretty warm on the west side of the mountains, but as I climbed up the temperature began to fall until it reached freezing and a there were a couple of accidents. One of the accidents involved two cars and was pretty serious. Some people get careless and try to drive too fast. One fool even tried to pass two snow plows that were spreading cinders until the guy in the plow made it clear that was not going to happen. Between the accidents and the snow plows the trip over the passes took a while.
Detroit Lake Reservoir had been drained in preparation to receive the spring snow melt. It made for an eerie picture.
Once I descended down the weather was good and the skies were clear. Eastern Oregon was its’ rugged and remote finest for the last three hours of the trip. I love the emptiness of the high desert. Last winter the campground we usually stay at was closed when we went thru here and we ended up in a hotel. This year I checked and their website indicated they were open, and sure enough they were. So all ends well today and I hope my longest drive is behind me.
Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters were out today once I crossed over the mountains.
Finding our way around countries that we are totally unfamiliar with is one of the challenges that we deal with on a daily basis when traveling. This post is about our experience using our GPS in Europe.
What to do?
Driving
For long distance navigation we use the same Garmin GPS unit that we have in the US that we refer to as Greta Garmin. There is a European SD card which can be bought and inserted in many Garmin navigation systems. It is possible to also download the map set into the Garmin directly. The only issue with purchasing the SD card in the US is that it cannot be updated, you have to purchase a new card when you require an update. This became a problem as the French changed the speed limits on most of the inter town roads (N and D roads in the French system) after our second trip, and we needed to update. If you plan to stay in Europe for a long period, or do not want to carry your GPS unit back and forth it may be worth looking at purchasing a unit over there as units purchased in Europe come with free updates from Garmin for the European map sets as they do here in the US.
Other Options
There are other options that we have looked at including using Google Maps, an app called ViaMichelin, and an app called CoPilot GPS. The issue we have with these three options for long distance navigation is that they are internet based, and while we purchase a plan that gives us about 3 gigs of data per day we do not want to use it for inter-city navigation. The CoPilot app has an offline mode that allows you to use the tracker in your phone and a route you download prior to departure. We considered that, but my senior eyes need a display larger than an iPhone to quickly see what is going on.
Our Experience
The initial unit we brought over was a car based system so there was no capability to program any size restrictions. This is more important in Europe than in the US. Roads are far more often restricted by height, width, or weight than in the US. When these restrictions are in place they are usually well marked so you can detour prior to hitting them, but sometimes the detour is not clear. Watching for these signs are both of our responsibilities.
My observation is that the logic for Garmin systems looks at speed limits and distance to pick the best route. Our experience is that there are three broad classification of roads in Europe. Using the French designations as they are not standardized across Europe, “A” routes (freeways)have speed limits of 110 to 130 kph. “N” routes (think US Highways) have speed limits that vary between 80 and 110 kph, but generally are either 80 or 90. The thing that makes navigation tricky are the “D” roads. The speed limit is 80 on these roads but these roads can range from good wide two lanes with shoulders, to a paved one lane equivalent of a US ally with no shoulder, and obstructions on either side, and while the official speed limit may be 80 kph the realistic speed particularly in a RV is going to be much slower. The problem is that Greta Garmin does not know which type of “D” road it is and since the speed limit is the same will pick the shortest route. The other problem is that most of the good stuff you want to see is on a “D” road so you will spend a lot of time on them and occasionally to get where you really want to go you will need to go a skinny road.
A good “D” road speed limit in France 80 kph. (This one is from Austria)Also a “D” road speed limit 80kph.
The other issue is that when you enter the city limits of towns in Europe the speed limit drops to 50 kph unless marked. The same logic applies here to Greta Garmin, she picks the shortest route which can take you down roads that were designed in the middle ages, versus a reasonable modern route with two good lanes that is 200 yards longer.
These signs are standard when you enter a town in Europe. It also means the speed limit is 50kph unless marked differently.
Over time we have learned to ignore Greta’s insistence on turning down single lane country tracks, and continued on the good “D” road we are on, particularly in towns. It usually works out though she complains for a while. As we have gained more experience we have learned more about signage to help us find the bypass routes that keep you off medieval roads.
To try to address this problem of Greta trying to route us down roads that should be used as a last resort, for Christmas I invested in a RV Garmin that we plan to test on our next trip. This will allow us to input the size and weight of François into the Garmin which will hopefully cause Greta to want to keep us on wider roads. I will give an update after our next trip.
The bottom line is that like in the US do not blindly follow your GPS no matter what type you are using. But in Europe in an RV be even more skeptical than you would be here about what your GPS is telling you.
As I said in the introduction to the photo gallery on the south we were absolutely charmed by Italy. As we traveled north we began to run into bad weather and planning began to be more difficult as a lot of the campgrounds shut down in November. Despite that every day brought some new unexpected charm that sold us on Italy.
This gallery covers our travels north of Rome from Umbria to the end of the trip in Italy at Sanremo. It also includes our stay in Nice France, which was also a wonderful town.
We were charmed by Italy. It became clear how charmed when I went to make the photo gallery for our trip to Italy that we had taken to calling Affascinante Italia. It was clear that we had too many photos for one photo gallery so I have made two. Initially we were going to call the trip Bellissimo Italia or beautiful Italy, but as we spent more time there we began to realize that it was more than the beauty that appealed to us.
Italy has a charm to it that really appealed to us. It is a bit rough around the edges, (and sometimes not just the edges) but for us that gives it a character we really enjoy. The beauty of the cities is undeniable. Couple the beauty with the fantastic food and great mostly unpretentious wine and we were hooked. To finish off the charm the Italians we ran into were universally fun, helpful, and nice. Thus by the end we changed the name to Affascinante Italia or charming Italy.
We divided the photos with everything from Sicily to Rome in the southern gallery. This includes Lyon and St. Tropez in France as we were heading towards Sicily.
Our spring 2019 trip took us to Germany and Belgium. As is becoming a pattern we ended up spending more time in France than we planned as we found Alsace to be spell binding.
The majority of the trip is in Germany and we found Germany very photogenic and easy. An unexpected treat for us was the area around Lake Constance where we had budgeted a day, and ended up spending 5 days. The beer in Germany was easy and consistent but we were not wowed.
Belgium charmed us in a way we did not expect, and as we expected the beer was fantastic. We thoroughly enjoyed Belgium and are planning stops in Wallonia the French speaking part of the country in the future.
Our first trip as owners of a Camping Car in Europe was in the fall of 2018. Our target for this trip was Spain, but we had a very difficult time getting out of France. After about 10 days we realized we were still quite a long way from Spain, and we still discovering places in France we wanted to visit.
Eventually we did succeed in leaving France and heading to Spain. Spain did not disappoint us. It was a constant series of exciting and beautiful towns and cities. We spent more time in cities in Spain than we normally do, but they were all worth the extra planning that goes along with urban visits in a RV.
The highlight of the trip was Seville, but there were many other highlights as well. Unfortunately we ran out of time and ended up skipping most of central Spain including Madrid. We will have to plan another trip to Spain in the future.
In 2017 we took our second trip on the Alaska Highway. This is a trip that I think you could do many times without it losing its’ effect. We really enjoy the raw nature, with everything from mountains to tundra to fjords. We had frequent opportunities to photograph animals as well.
On this trip we ventured to the Arctic Circle for the first time, though a problem with tires caused us to turn back short of our goal of reaching the Arctic Ocean. The Dempster Highway is nearly untouched by human hand and was quite a drive.
Our first trip to France in François the rental RV. We spent most of this trip in Burgundy and Provence, but did stray a little bit into southeast France.
We travel to explore different places and cultures, these blog posts are things that delighted. Sometimes we expect to be delighted and sometimes we are delighted unexpectedly.
When you are traveling from campground to parking lot to campground you start to appreciate the little things. This campground has absolutely the best showers
We have traveled the Alaska Highway twice. The first trip was in our ERA class B in 2012, and confirmed the idea of traveling farther afield that led to our moving on to Scout our Tiger RV unfortunately we were not blogging at the time.
Our ERA parked near Valdez AK in 2012.
The second trip was in 2017 in Scout and the blog entries are below. Anyone who is interested in this trip I would highly recommend it. The main Alaska Highway is paved the entire way and the road quality is generally good. There are towns and services spaced along the way so you need no modifications or extra fuel to make the trip as long as you follow the 1/2 rule. If your tank is at 1/2 you fill up at the next gas station you see.
In Alaska the main roads are also paved and generally good quality. Any class B or C RV can handle the main roads on the trip, and we saw plenty of class A and large travel trailers on the highway.
The Cassier Highway is a chip seal surface and two lanes wide. No problem for most RV’s
Some of the side trips involve gravel roads, but again in general they are well maintained and 2wd will suffice. If the conditions have deteriorated the highway departments are good posting road conditions. The two roads to the Arctic Ocean involve hundreds of miles of gravel, but we saw all kinds of vehicles on these roads including cars, semi-trucks and 2wd pickups, though I think some discretion is required.
The Dempster Highway is approximately 400 km’s of gravel to the Arctic.
The sights on this trip are fantastic and make the effort more than worth it. There is everything from majestic mountains, to Fjords, to Tundra. The wildlife is plentiful and I can almost guarantee you will see interesting animals frequently.
Part of traveling is dealing with unexpected things. Over the years we have had our share of things go wrong, but more often than not, someone has come along to help. Below is a list of the posts we call road adventures.
While our last trip home was an adventure and merited some story telling. This trip was without any drama thanks to Delta Airlines. That is how you want a trip to end.
Ton got this shot of the Canadian Rockies from the plane.
This completes our fourth trip to Europe using a RV. They have all been memorable, but we really enjoyed this trip tremendously. We were more nervous about Italy than we had been on our previous trips, and those nerves turned out to be unfounded.
The best thing about Italy turned out to be Italians. They were a kind, helpful, and generally fun group to be around. The food was tremendous both at restaurants and what we bought from groceries and Ton prepared in François. The sites were everything we had read about and exceeded our expectations.
We are hoping for a swift recovery for Venice from the recent floods.
We did travel a little differently than we have in other countries, sticking to campgrounds and using the Autostradas between cities. We used campgrounds early on due to security concerns that had been expressed to us by other travelers. But by the end Ton expressed to me that she liked staying at campgrounds better than less expensive but more rugged options, this may be a result of our aging. The decision to pay to use the Autostradas was due to the nature of the Italian road system and while relatively expensive it saved in stress and time.
One of Ton’s favorite pictures from Italy. It really captures the spirit of the country.
Rome was the biggest city we have ever visited in François, but I was surprised how easy it went. The campground was very accessible from the freeways, and the transport into the city center, and the public transport downtown were easy to use. I enjoyed Rome much more than I thought I would. I also really enjoyed Sicily as it had a rugged beauty and charm that I enjoyed. Ton could not pick a favorite place but she picked three similar places, she really liked the coastal towns picking Taormina, Cinq Terre, and the Amalfi Coast as her three favorites so there is a definite pattern in her choices. I did not expect to like Venice as I had visions of a place crawling with tourists and tourist traps. But in the off season it was not terribly busy, and it is charming so the appeal is obvious. Right after we visited they experienced extreme flooding so I hope they can recover and come up with a plan to preserve the city in the long run. Our biggest disappointment for the trip was Monaco. I think we expected something more in line with Nice or Sanremo, but instead it felt sterile and lacked charm for us.
Another of her favorites.
We covered about 5000km’s on this trip. François performed well and gave us no issues. We are really happy we added the screen door as it made a big difference in warm weather. The SOG unit worked well though Ton with her super sense of smell did occasionally get an unpleasant odor still. Overall one of our best trips.
Another trip is wrapping up. I spent the night hoping we did not run out of LPG for the heater as the temperature hovered around freezing. I lucked out and we made it, though when we return we will be heading right to the LPG pump to fill up. We woke up early and finished preparing François before dropping him off for the winter.
The trip into Paris was uneventful, and we arrived at the hotel at the airport. We have upgraded to a Holiday Inn which is a huge improvement from the Comfort Inn we have been staying at.
Today was cleaning and packing day. On Sundays what little that is open is open between 9am to Noon, so we headed out early to the grocery. I asked to head to Leclerc because I wanted to try to get some LP gas so we could be toasty tonight. Unfortunately the LP gas pumps were closed for Sunday, so I will cross my fingers that it does not get too cold tonight and I will set the thermostat a little lower than I wanted. Bad planning on my part as I thought we would be fine for the rest of the trip.
At Leclerc we did find a very nice carwash that was better than the one we had used in the past. So I spent a half hour pressure washing François while Ton worked on cleaning the interior. The next stop was Auchan to buy some food for dinner, and to give Ton a last walk thru a grocery on this trip. When we got there Ton told me to get lost for an hour so she could pack and I would just be in the way.
As we were leaving Auchan we saw the major traffic circle on the main road had been taken over by the Yellow Vests. Today was the first anniversary of the Yellow Vest movement in France. It has been covered lightly in the US. It is a protest movement against some of the rationalization of the French economy that has been proposed by their President Macron. The folks come out every Saturday and sit in the middle of the traffic circles that are all around France. They occasionally enter the circles and slow down traffic. Unfortunately the protests today became violent in Paris, though the one we saw in Sens seemed very peaceful and was mostly people standing around a bonfire keeping warm. On the way back to the aire we came across another group occupying a different traffic circle who were motorcyclists, we were not sure what they were protesting but one of the signs seemed to say that there were too many photo radars. While we were waiting to get thru the circle one lady came barreling around the cars in line and tried to force her way thru the circle while shouting and getting shouted at by the motorcyclists.
We woke up early with only two things in mind for the day. Head over to the Valrhona Chocolate company, and then jump in François and do a marathon drive on the Autoroute to Sens.
Both missions were accomplished, when we went out for our walk to the chocolate company we were surprised to see two river cruise ships tied up to the docks right next to the campground. The fog was dense and you could barely see them but they loomed in the dark. We think all of the passengers had already taken off for their day trips as the crew of one of the ships were engaged in a vigorous snow ball fight on the top deck, which is usually used for the passengers to enjoy the sun and the views.
The pedestrian bridge across the Rhone shrouded in fog.
We arrived at the factory and Ton did some sampling and shopping while I sampled and tried to figure out why our internet was out of order. Ton was much more successful than I was. After much sampling and comparison we departed Valrhona with a kilo of chocolate to take home to Oregon.
François sitting in the fog and snow 30 yards from the Rhone River which is the source of the fog bank.
We quickly packed up and headed to the autoroute. At the entrance I was distracted going up to the gate where you get the ticket to enter. In France they have a Telepass system where you put a transponder in the car and do not need to stop at the toll gates. As I drove up to one of the two entrance gates I was not paying attention, so when I pulled up to the machine that usually dispenses the ticket you need, nothing happened, and then after a few seconds a recording began lecturing me in French about the fact that I had entered the Telepass gate, after about 20 seconds of being scolded in French, and having a picture taken of our plate (there was a flash at the rear of François which I presume was a camera going off), the machine dispensed the ticket we needed, the barrier went up and we were on our way. I fear there may be a fine in our future.
A windshield shot of a castle along the A6 autoroute.
The rest of the day consisted of us navigating the 430 km’s on the autoroute, and paying a huge toll at the end. Before heading back to the aire in Gron which is our normal beginning and end of trip stop, we also filled up a thirsty François to the tune of €120. The days when we see the least are often the most expensive.
We had big hopes for today, but nothing went well. Our plan was to revisit a town we had fond memories of from our very first trip to France. Tournan-sur-Rhone is both the originator of Syrah, one of my favorite wines, and has a fabulous chocolate factory.
The day started out with a hiccup when we were trapped in the campground after we had packed up. We were ready to roll about 8:30 when we realized the office for the campground did not open until 9 so we messed around for 30 minutes and headed to the office where no one was in sight, they did not arrive until 9:15, so we were an hour late getting going.
To expedite travel today we decided to pony up a large sum of money (€50) for tolls. We needed to cover about 380 km’s to Tournan. The first 200km’s went as planned though we cringed at each toll booth. Then we began to run into a pattern of 30 or 40 km’s at speed followed by 8 to 10 km’s of crawling along in a traffic jam for 30 to 45 minutes. One of the traffic jams was interesting as the Gendarmerie had closed two lanes on the freeway creating a huge bottleneck, and when it closed down to one lane they diverted 100% of the commercial trucks into the two closed lanes and parked them nose to tail, we have no idea why. So our 4 to 5 hour trip was delayed by 1 hour starting and took 90 minutes longer than we planned. The good news is Ton turned the dash of François into an impromptu dryer, so a lot of our soaked clothes got dried out as we crawled along the A7 autoroute.
The French police diverted 100% of the trucks into the right lane and parked them there, we are not sure why, it caused a 6 mile traffic jam as you would expect.
The final surprise was there was 4 to 6 inches of snow at Tournan when we arrived. Luckily the campground was open and we were able to get a spot facing the Rhone. The snow made things pretty, but walking the 1.5 km’s on icy sidewalks and bridges did not seem like a good idea in fading light, so we missed the chocolate factory. Hopefully tomorrow.
We did not expect six inches of snow at our destination today!
The next annoyance of the day is that we are in a cell phone dark spot and have only 2g service on our WiFi. Ton spilled her wine to cap off the day. Well some days are better than others.
We do have a nice view of the Rhone from our cold campsite.
We have a friend who arrived in Paris a few days ago. Ton and her have been keeping in touch and sharing some photos. We thought they were going on to Savona from Paris, but last night she sent Ton a message saying they were going to Mice today. Ton showed me the message and said do you think she means Nice? A short phone call confirmed that she was heading our way and would arrive on a train about 1:15. So our plans for today were set with a happy meeting of friends.
In the morning we took care of our last laundry for the trip, anything that gets dirty from this point is going home with us. The weather was threatening all day but the rain held off in the morning. As we were locking up François to head to the rail station a French couple walked up and hit me with a long and complex blast of French. When he took a breath I told him that I was very sorry but I do not speak French. They switched to English and we had a nice conversation about traveling both here and in the US.
We arrived at the train station a few minutes before the train from Paris arrived and were able to meet our friends at the platform. It was a nice surprise for them as our friend from Portland Boo had not told the other two couples she was traveling with that we were in Nice. After saying hello to Moo, Nit, Jeap and Dit we headed off to their hotel.
We love traveling.
After they checked in we were off to the promenade and old town for a bit of sight seeing and catching up. They are on an extensive trip that started in Paris, they are heading on to Italy to catch a trans-Atlantic cruise to Brazil, after they arrive they are going to linger in South America for a couple of weeks. Ton and I are a little jealous.
Ton and one of her very best friends from Oregon Boo.
Walking along the promenade and the old town of Nice was fun as we exchanged travel stories. The promenade was empty as while it was not raining yet the wind was blowing hard and it was cold. Despite this everyone was having a good time. Ton and Boo were having a great time talking as they walked arm in arm thru town. I think it was good for Ton to have a friend to talk to instead of me and in Thai instead of English.
After a few hours we realized that we had left the key to the gate for the campground in François. The campground we are staying in is gated and they close the gate at 7pm, without the key we would not have access, so we left a little earlier than we wanted to, but this turned out to be a good thing.
As we were walking to the train station it started to rain. The weather report today was pretty ominous actually with high winds and heavy rain called for. It turns out while the wind and rain was delayed, when it hit, it hit with a vengeance. When we got off the train in Villeneuve we were struck with a gust of wind of 20 plus miles per hour and heavy sideways rain, umbrellas were collapsing and people were actually staggering as they stepped off the train. The walk back to François was in a ferocious rain and wind storm, with flashes of lightning to add to the fun. By the time we arrived at François we were soaked to the skin, and now the bathroom is full of wet clothes.
