We Need Your Suggestions

We screwed up we travelled across Michigan, we didn't draw upon the vast knowledge of all of our friends who grew up in that part of the world. When they found out where we were, they provided tons of great suggestions, but some of it was a little too late since we had a tight schedule that required us to be in Montreal on a specific day.

We are heading south out of Canada tomorrow. Our first major stop will be Acadia National Park for a few days. Next major stop will be Salem, Massachusetts with a stop in Freeport, Maine along the way. Then we will make a trip out to Cape Code. After that it's pretty wide open, but we will generally be heading south.

We need your suggestions for the East Coast. We really don't have a lot of experience to draw from for where to go and what to see along the East Coast. So we are looking for suggestions.

So far we have the following on our itinerary:

• Acadia National Park
• Salem Massachusetts
• Cape Code
• Valley Forge
• Gettysburg
• Norfolk Virginia

The rules:
We need places we can stay in our truck camper. We've done State Parks, National Parks and RV Parks, but we are open to anywhere we can legally stay in our truck camper (hey, we haven't done a Walmart parking lot yet). The problem is that up in New England we are finding many of the places where we would normally stay in our truck camper are closing or closed for the season.

We are avoiding staying in large cities (e.g. Boston, New York) because large cities and a truck camper don't always work well together, but we are open to visiting locations near the large cities if you can suggest a place for us to stay in our camper outside the city that is located near public transit.

Thank you for any suggestions you can provide. Our mascot, Jeff the camper fly, who has been with us since Rapid City, South Dakota is excited to hear your suggestions for where he will be traveling next.

Cold Canada

It's getting cold here in French speaking Canada. Really cold for this temperate Seattle boy. Tonight it is suppose snow where we currently staying, Quebec City. I had planned on the cold weather, but what I didn't realize is that in the north country everything RV and camping related starts to shut down in October. We had planned to travel east from Niagara Falls, to Montreal to Quebec City and ultimately to Prince Edward Island before heading south back into the States. However, as I started doing my research (way too late), I realized that there would be no where available for camping or staying in an RV on Prince Edward Island. In fact, most of the campsites and RV parks in Maine are shut down too. It's getting to the point where I'm starting to look for Walmart's for camping in. So I'm writing this from our final Canadian city, from here we head south. I for one will be glad to no longer insult french speaking Canada with my horrid attempts at speaking French, with my "parlez-vous anglais?", only to hear the response "quoi?", to which I would say "um...do you speak english", always to hear "of course, how can I help you?".

Montreal, where we spent three nights, was really our first real large city that we did anything more than drive though since we left Seattle a month and a half ago. We also stayed at our first KOA, Montreal KOA South. It was the closest place we could find to the city where we could stay in the camper. It was clean, nice, and largely empty. Most of the few RVs at the KOA have been winterized and set aside for storage. The manager told us that everyone left for Florida (sounds like a good idea). I found driving around Montreal to be a challenge, not just because it's a busy city and all the signs are in French, it's more than that. Little things in Montreal like the stop lights being square shaped instead of round just threw me off. So I was happy to find that from the KOA it was about a 15 mile drive to the Metro station Longueuil-Université-de-Sherbrooke where we would park the truck for the day and take the excellent Metro into the city. 

Our first day in Montreal we found a nice cafe where we had an early lunch before meeting with my parents. My parents were in Montreal with family friends (Jan and Larry) for a cruise along the St. Lawrence river. The cruise ship was beautiful, and it was quite a jolt going from our tiny camper onto this amazing cruise ship. I personally felt VERY out of place walking into the dining room of the cruise ship in blue jeans and polar fleece looking like I just walked out of the woods (I did). However, it was great getting to see family and friends again.

The girls with my mother on the cruise ship

After leaving the cruise ship, we searched for a place where we could have a nice dinner. After a little looking we found Bonaparte's in the old part of the city. The restaurant was far nicer than any of our previous dining out experiences on the trip, and again I felt very out of place. When I realized that this was going to be the kind of place where we would probably be sitting down to a 2+ hour meal I was a bit apprehensive, but the food looked so good. Kathy and I decided to just go for it and get the 6 course meal, order a bottle of red wine, and hope our girls don't lose it. In the end, it went great! The girls just ordered a simple entree and salad, but shared a bit of of each of our 6 courses and managed to behave and actually seem to enjoy themselves (they didn't even request to play on our iPhones). The downside is we blew a month's food budget (good thing we are headed to Debbie & Mike's soon, and now might have to stay a lot longer than expected).

dinner at Bonaparte's

The next day we explored the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and especially enjoyed their excellent exhibit on Rodin. The one downside to the Rodin exhibit was how crowded it was, with me losing Kathy and the girls at one point and having to text back and forth with Kathy sending pictures of an exhibit in the room we were in to try and figure out where each of us are.

A picture I sent to Kathy, "I'm in the room with Rodin's The Thinker"

After the art museum we went to Biosphere Montreal an excellent museum built for the 1967 Worlds Fair and dedicated to education on the environment.

Biosphere Montreal

As I finish this blog sitting in a KOA just outside of Quebec City I'm realizing that once again we are spending far too little time in another part of North America to really begin to appreciate it. Our visit of Montreal only showed me how much I didn't know there was to see; I barely scratched the surface. Perhaps we will come back again, next time during the summer (or without a truck camper to park).

Thanks Great Lakes State

After a week of traveling through Michigan, we are heading back into Canada to see Niagara Falls, Montreal, Quebec City and possibly even further north, depending on time and weather (we are planning to be in Salem, MA by Halloween). Although we always planned for Michigan to be sort of a “pass through state” we have really fallen in love with the state. We visited four different parks and loved the cleanliness and beauty of all the different areas. Our first stop was Wells State Park on the Upper Peninsula, the park was almost empty but we had a lovely spot right on Lake Michigan, it was a bit windy but we enjoyed the sound of the waves crashing into the bank outside our back door, the girls loved the giant playground, I loved getting to run in the wooded trails and we all enjoyed playing frisbee, football and tetherball in the open field near the beach. We stayed at Wells SP for two nights, which was really relaxing after a number of days on the road. After Wells SP we headed inland and ended up at a super isolated park called Aloha SP, we literally felt like the only people in the park. Andrew registered us with the yellow phone (no attendant at the booth), the only other people we saw felt like they were miles away, but again the campground was clean and well laid out and we liked the quiet evening we spent there. And it was on Mullett Lake – we loved the name, and felt it went nicely with the butt rock/classic rock we had been listening to on the local radio stations. It was probably for the best that the campground was almost empty, this was Monday night, the night the Seahawks played (and barely beat) the Detroit Lions, we didn’t put the flag up because we didn’t want to start any fights, but it was fun to listen to the game on the local station. 



Snack break on the beach after our walk on the Lake Michigan beach.

After Aloha, we headed a little further south and took some recommendations from our good friends from Michigan, we stopped in Petosky and had a great lunch at a fun brewery and then headed towards Traverse City and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (thank you Jen & Chris – we loved exploring your home!). We stayed at Platte River Campground, which was a campground in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. There were a lot more people around but it was a nice, wooded and secluded campground. We stayed three nights here and had a great time exploring the Lake Michigan beachfront, seeing all the leaves changing on the trees and hiking, jumping and playing in the giant Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. The day we did  most of our exploring the sun was shining and we had blue skies the whole day. We were so grateful for the lovely weather and tried to imagine the craziness of this area during the height of the summer. NOPE! We are definetly happy to be traveling in the off season. The second night at this campground we did most of our activities in the rain, but I am happy to report we had another successful cast iron Dutch Oven meal - chicken rice casserole, it was a perfect rainy night meal. This is pretty close to the recipe, I used chicken broth instead of water - but it was delicious and we all enjoyed it, even the girls!

The color of the leaves have been changing in all the areas we have been traveling through. My photos do not even come close to showing how beautiful this transition is.

Photo-op at Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes

After a few days staying put, it was time to move again, we spent a longer visit at Platte River with the idea we would only stay one night on our way to Niagara Falls. We found a nice campground at Lakeport State Park near the border of Ontario on Lake Huron. We pulled in Friday night and who knew the campground is a popular spot for Halloween activities. The park was almost full, but we luckily found a spot among all the other giant RVs, busses and fifth wheels, all completely decked out for Halloween. And when I say decked out – I mean more decorations than we see on houses at home. There were blow up pumpkins, giant corn mazes (seriously), carefully created grave yards and tons of lights, cobwebs and pretty much anything you can imagine. We are sad now that we are leaving early because on Saturday night they have trick or treating. We loved our one night here and our evening stroll through the crazy campground and we have decided Michigan is a special kind of special we have really come to love and enjoy. After talking to our neighbors at the campsite, we know there is so much more of Michigan that we would love to explore, but even with 9 months on the road, we have come to realize we can’t see everything and we will just have to make the time to come back again.

Just one of the awesome Halloween displays at Lakeport State Park

Nadia's Update - Short & Sweet - Just like her :-)

Dear Fellow Followers, 

I know I have not been blogging much, but that means I have a lot to tell you all. We went to Mount Rushmore and I learned a lot. I learned that Thomas Jefferson had two daughters named Lucy. I also learned that Mount Rushmore only took 20 years to build, but Crazy Horse has taken over 60 years to build and is still under construction. Crazy Horse is a newer monument created for the Native American people. A whole family is working on the construction of the monument. I also learned that if you wake up early you can see so many animals, the one morning we got up early we saw buffalo, turkeys, prairie dogs and cows. After we left South Dakota we made our way to Michigan. My favorite adventure has been the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, because we jumped off mini cliffs into the soft sand. That's it for now! 

Update From Siena...

Dear people reading this blog, 

I want you to know that after a month or so we are still having fun, I will inform you that we did stay in a hotel so far and we have recently left Lake Michigan and we are on our way to Cheboygan, we are trying to make our way to Montreal 

A few things that have been fun INCLUDE:

                        

                   Mount Rushmore 

It was really big and we went on a short walk to see the mountain from different perspectives at one point we were right under George Washington's nose.

                     Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse is a private monument and is probably like ten times the size of Mount Rushmore and it is still in the making and Nadia and I got small rocks from the mountain (Check out my Dad's blog for a photo of Crazy Horse - it was to far away for my phone to get a good shot).

                       Wind Cave

Wind Cave is a national park and part of a huge cave system. We took a tour of it at one point of the tour our tour guide turned out the light completely and no one could see there own hand in front of there face. 

                        Wall Drugs

Wall Drugs was pretty much a giant gift shop with some awesome attractions like a jackolope you could ride and a T-Rex that would eat every fifteen minutes.

So those we some of the highlights. 

                        THE END

South Dakota

South Dakota has never really been on my radar for a vacation location. Not that I had anything against South Dakota, but it's a long ways away from home, I don't believe I have any family there, it's not really on the route to visit any family that I would drive to visit, and there is no major ski resorts. However, on this trip, South Dakota was kind of a big mile stone: South Dakota is where we marked one month on the road, it is where we cross the middle of the USA (if you take a map of the USA and fold it down the middle you'll find the Dakota's, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas), and it was the our first real honest to goodness motel stay (in Rapid City).

We had 3 days to explore Western South Dakota with our first couple nights in a motel in Rapid City. As we drove from Billings Montana to Rapid City the last few hours of the drive was foggy with a misty rain, signs kept displaying messages to not use cruise control when the highway is wet. We finally reached the motel that Kathy found a Comfort Inn. The motel seemed like such luxury after all of us living for a month in a tiny box in the bed of a pickup truck. To be able to take a shower when ever you want without walking across a campground with your towel and change of clothes was a very welcomed luxury.

The next morning the weather was still a bit overcast, originally we had planned on visiting Mount Rushmore but decided rather than head south we would head east to the Badlands National Park. I opted to go to the eastern most entrance to Badlands National Park park and head back west though the park. On the way to the eastern entrance, we would pass the visitor center for Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Kathy suggested we stop and check it out. As we pulled up to the visitor center I wasn't sure what I would find, there wasn't much there other than a small building. We went inside and spoke with volunteer, the visitor center had only been open for operations for just a few weeks. Despite being open such a short period of time, the visitor center had a lot of information about ICBMs and the cold war. The museum brought back some bad childhood memories of the 1983 TV movie The Day After, but I was intrigued. We decided we should take a tour of the underground command facility. We got tickets with plans to visit after our tour of Bad Lands National Park.

Badlands National Park was incredible. Coming in from the eastern entrance it we were told to stop at the first spot after we entered the park by the volunteer at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and that from there we could see all the way to Kansas. I don't know if I could quite see that far, but it was a pretty incredible view from an otherwise pretty flat part of the planet. Unlike many other National Park areas, there park didn't seem to have any warnings about not wandering off the trail because you might damage the natural beauty. What they did have were numerous signs warning you about the rattle snakes. That was enough to mostly keep my daughters on the trail.

Lots of scary snake warnings to keep the kids on the path

Badlands National Park did offer a lot of potential hikes. I really would have loved to take a nice long but we had only one day, and we were trying to fit in a tour of the Minuteman Missile command location, and Kathy and Nadia were recovering from colds. So instead we opted to drive though the park and stop at every turn off we found interesting.

Lots of sunflowers in South Dakota

Our home parked in Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park

As we left the northwestern exit of Badlands National Park we got stuck as road construction was limiting traffic to one lane all the way from the park exit to Wall South Dakota. We waiting quite a while for the pilot car to come around and direct us though the construction and ultimately missed our tour of the Minuteman Missile site underground command center.

We decided to make up for the missed tour with a visit to the Wall Drug drugstore in Wall South Dakota, the original Wall Drug Store. It's actually kind of hard to miss because there are signs in a hundred miles in every direction advertising it.

When driving though South Dakota on I-90 you have to stop in Wall and visit the original Wall Drug

The next day the weather had cleared up and promised to offer much better conditions for viewing Mount Rushmore National Monument. The drive from Rapid City to Mount Rushmore takes you though more tourist attractions than I thought possible (Reptile Gardens, Bear Country USA, Old MacDonald's Farm, etc, etc). At Mount Rushmore we got in our obligitory family pictures and then walked the Presidential Trail, which providing countless different angles to photograph the mountain. After a few hours I think we had run out of photograph ideas, and the girls were starting to get tired with anything other than the idea of the gift store, so it was time to move on.

Mount Rushmore

I pushed for a visit to Wind Cave National Park with hopes of making up for a previous family cave experience in the Ape Caves on Mount Saint Helens (turns out an hour plus hike in a pitch dark lava tube with nothing but pen lights isn't a good family activity). The tour of Wind Cave did not disappoint. I even suggested a second tour immediately following our first one, but after hiking over a 1/2 mile to over 200 feet underground, Kathy was ready for some above ground time.

210 feet below ground in Wind Cave in Wind Cave National Park

We decided to stay in Wind Caves National Park at a campground a short distance from the visitor center where we took the cave tour. The campground was mostly shut down, with only one open section and the water turned off, and very few visitors. At night with open skies and very little light we had excellent viewing of the stars, satellites, and falling stars. As we went to bed, we could hear the distant sounds of elk.

The night skies above Wind Cave National Park

The next morning we got an early start. We had planned to make it all the way across South Dakota and camp at a state park in Minnesota, but we still wanted to get in an early visit to Crazy Horse Memorial before we started our journey across the state. Crazy Horse Memorial was pretty impressive considering construction has been ongoing for over 60 years, that the head of Crazy Horse alone will be larger than all of the presidents on Mount Rushmore and that the entire memorial takes no government funds (it's all privately funded).

Crazy Horse Monument

South Dakota is yet another state we will have to return to and visit again. I could imagine a week long visit where we spend then entire time hiking the Badlands and the Black Hills. Perhaps even a visit or two to those tourist attractions leading up to Mount Rushmore.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Wow, its has been awhile since I have made some time to write an official blog, I have been keeping a journal so that I can remember each day and adventure, but we have been pretty busy and I haven’t made the time to focus on a blog to publish, now’s the time. We have been spending the last few days driving since we left Bozeman, we are making our way to Montreal by the 14th of October so we can visit with Andrew’s parents and good friends before they head out on a cruise. We spent 4 days in Bozeman with my brother Danny, it was awesome to see him and also to have a real kitchen, laundry and shower to use. While in Bozeman we got our fix for our craving for sushi – which sounds weird, but my brother works at one of the best sushi restaurants I have been too, Dave’s Sushi, I also may be biased, because he also rolls the sushi, so he makes it really yummy especially for us. We also visited the Museum of the Rockies, which is an amazing museum with one of the largest collections of Triceratops fossils in the country and tons of other dinosaur fossils and models. I couldn’t help thinking of my daughters attending Montana State University and studying paleontology. We also took a beautiful hike to Lava Lake, 3 miles up to the lake, surrounded by mountains. Hiking with Uncle Danny, the girls were super troopers on the 6 mile hike. We finished the night up with a home cooked meal at Dan’s house with his friends. The few days in Bozeman brought us back to our college/early 20’s days – staying up late, sleeping in and playing video games for hours. It was fun to relax and have some family time. 

After Bozeman, we plotted out our route to Montreal, Danny suggested that we take the Beartooth Highway to head East. We took his advice and went through Yellowstone National Park – got to see tons of Bison and the amazing park that we visited last summer and then got on the highway.  I must say I was super grateful my husband was driving this route. This was one of the most beautifully, scary highways I have ever driven on (actually the road to Hana in Maui was scarier – but in the camper, Beartooth was equally as frightening). Tight turns, huge overlooks and an elevation gain to over 10,000 feet. Not to mention, during this drive I had started coming down with a cold, so my ears and head felt like they were about to explode. Once I got over my anxiety and pain in my head, the drive was truly amazing. The views were breathtaking and again, I was grateful to be in the passengers seat. 

After the drive on the Beartooth Highway we made our way to Billings and spent the night in a clean and quiet RV/Campground – we missed the super moon because it was bit cloudy, but we did get one last look at the finals stages the eclipse before we all went to bed. After Billings we made our way to Rapid City, SD. At this point in the trip we had been on the road for a little over a month and we decided to treat ourselves to a hotel room. Rapid City is centrally located between the Black Hills, Badlands and Mt. Rushmore in western South Dakota. We lucked out at the hotel as well, apparently the Comfort Suites we chose was a popular one and the only room available for us was a Family suite – which means it had 2 queen beds, a king bed and a sitting room – we weren’t sure what to do with all the room, but we were excited to figure it out! Our first day in South Dakota we explored Badlands National Park, we hiked around the various trails and checked out the beautiful overlooks. As described by our OhRanger.com pamphlet- “The wind and rain erosion have created an eerie moonscape of deep gorges and jagged sawtooth ridges with rocky layers painted in subtle hues of sand, rose, gold and green.” This area was truly amazing, we understood why it was called Badlands, when imagining early settlers traveling across this treacherous land, it is no wonder they called it the Badlands (we also read it on one of the informational signs). After our day at the park we headed back to Rapid City with a quick stop at the famous Wall Drug. Anyone driving on I90 towards Badlands or Wall can’t miss the multiple signs and billboards for 5 cent coffee and free donuts at Wall Drug and all the other crazy Americana exhibits it has to offer. Wall Drug is basically the biggest souvenir shop, restaurant, museum and drug store, that also includes a Traveler’s Chapel. 

It was a fun shop to see, but also a little bit overwhelming with stimulation. We made it back to our luxurious hotel and enjoyed a delicious dinner at the restaurant across the parking lot, Dakotah Steakhouse, apparently rated one of the best steakhouses in South Dakota, and we agreed. I was still battling a cold, so the chicken dumpling soup was just what I needed. Plus some delicious steaks and yummy sides, we were happy to splurge a little.  The next day the sun was shining, we checked out of our hotel (after our free breakfast) and made our way to one of the highlights of the trip, Mt. Rushmore National Monument. The monument and the history behind the creation of the sculpture is amazing. The amount of money, time and man power it took to create this sculpture was fascinating. After an hour or so hiking around and taking tons of photos, we decided to head out. Even thought we didn’t get to hike into George’s nose, it was still very cool. 

Our next stop was Wind Caves National Park. We took a little over an hour tour that took us 209 feet underground. We took a guided tour of the ½ mile cave system called Natural Entrance. These caves, and Jewel Caves which is a bit further west from Wind Caves, have about 250 miles of explored passageways underground. On the tour we saw a variety of rare crystal formations including gypsum, box work and snowy calcite crystals. What I found most outstanding is that all these passageways are all natural, the volunteers that explore the caves are not able to change or manipulate any of the holes or caves they find, if they can’t fit through the slots, the can’t go any further. And even without any manmade passageways they have still found so many miles of passages. After the caves we camped at a campground in the Wind Caves park. Since it is October, a lot of parks and camping areas are closing up for the season, but we were still able to find a beautiful site over looking the rolling hills with a wide open sky, perfect for Andrew and Siena to take awesome star photos after dark. As we headed out of town we stopped by Crazy Horse Monument, which is still under construction after 67 years. This monument is all privately funded and family run. As a tribute to the Sioux warrior Crazy Horse it will be the biggest sculpture in the world, for size comparison Mt. Rushmore could fit in the head of Crazy Horse. I hope it gets finished, I'd love to see the completed project. 

I have always been interested in seeing Mt. Rushmore, but never really felt like South Dakota was somewhere I wanted to spend my vacation time. After our short visit here, I am so happy we made the time to see it. There is some truly amazing land in this part of the country and it is definitely worth the visit. And now we are traveling on, we have spent 2 nights in Minnesota. First night after a super long drive we made our way to Blue Mounds State Park. Sadly, we got in too late to really enjoy the park and the next day we headed further east to Great River Bluffs State Park. We got in earlier to this camp ground and had time to explore the cool trails that overlook the Mississippi River. Today, as I type we are in Wisconsin, making our way to another state park called Wells State Park which is located on the shores of Lake Michigan. We decided we have enough time to spend a couple nights there and we are looking forward to taking a day off of from driving and enjoy some sunshine and beach time.  So, if you have read this far, now you know where we’ve been. We have been busy and moving fast, but definetly enjoying the sites.