And now for something completely different...

 Hello friends! It has once again been quite a while since we felt inspired enough to a Khronicle. Since we got back home with our RV last April (it's been a year? Really?!?), there just hasn't been much going on. I mean, we did go to Florida again this past winter, but we've done that before. Don't get us wrong - we really enjoyed it and had a great time catching up with lots of old cruising friends - but we just didn't feel inspired enough to write about it.

Now, however, we're actually doing something that feels a bit different. We just arrived today in Brighton, England and are staying with Julie's brother Tony. The three of us will be driving around the UK together for the next couple of weeks, taking in some sights as we head up to Scotland to visit Julie's cousin, then down to Wales to see Jill, one of her high school buddies.

From there we go to Ireland for another 2+ weeks. Neither of us have ever been there and we've both been wanting to go see what all the fuss is about. We're especially looking forward to seeing all the shamrocks, leprechauns, and potatoes we've heard so much about!

So the plan is to write a bit each day and see if we can cobble together a few more Khronicles while we're here. Stay tuned.

Cheerio!

Mark & Julie

You have 3 choices ...

 Location: Spearfish,  South Dakota

Date: 24 May 2023

We pull into the driveway and are met by Mark's cousin Luke and his wife, Sara. They welcome us, and Luke hands us the keys to the apartment above the garage. "It's yours for as

long as you want to stay. The only caveat is that you'll have to move back into your camper for a week or so in August because my daughter's family will be here for the Sturgis motorcycle rally."

August? We're not planning to be here that long!  

"We'll, we want you here for however long you can stay."

What a welcome! 

We all go for a walk along the creek and into town. He says " You have three choices. We can eat at a nice little Latin place, a restaurant next to a brewery, or get a pizza."

Being big fans of Mexican fare, we choose the Latin place. It's really delicious - one of the best meals ever! 

After dinner, he says "You have three choices. We can go get homemade ice cream for dessert, or we can go to the brew pub for a beer, or we can go to a dive bar and see who's playing there tonight."

Being a bit knackered from our drive, we choose ice cream and a walk home. That is some of the best ice cream ever!

Luke keeps giving us choices in groups of three the whole time we're there. Invariably, whichever choice we make, it's the right one. 

For example, one evening we choose "Music at a bar in Deadwood" and are treated to a visit to "#10 Saloon", a veritable museum of the Wild West. This is the saloon where Wild Bill Hickock was killed, as evidenced by his "death chair" on display over the door. There's poker in the next room, and the band is taking requests. Every request taken is played - from country to AC/DC to blues and everything in between - these guys know them all. People are up dancing, and the joint is jumping!  Being the lightweights that we are these days, we

stay for a few beers, enjoy the band and the people watching (there are some real characters here) then head back home early and call it a night.

On Friday, choice #2 leads us up into Spearfish Canyon for a beautiful drive and hikes to 2

waterfalls. Over the ages Spearfish Creek has cut an incredible gorge through the mountains. What beautiful scenery! 

 

On Saturday we pick choice #3 which leads to us helping dig a ditch across their driveway for a new, updated sprinkler system. After taking a few swipes at the compressed gravel and clay with a pickaxe, Mark lobbies strongly for renting a ditcher. Everyone else who has tried their hand at digging readily agrees. Sara and her dad take off and return with a ditcher which Sara proceeds to operate flawlessly, thus saving us from the blisters and backaches we'd all been expecting. 

On Sunday, our three choices are all to attend Sara's birthday party at the park. We choose #1

and, once again, it's the perfect choice. We help set up and meet many of Sara and Luke's family members and have a wonderful time. The kids play in a sandy eddy in the creek. We don't (think "snow melt"), but the kids, like kids everywhere, seem impervious to the cold water. Things wind down, everyone chips in to help clean up, and we all end up back home in our preferred napping spots. 

Our next choice (we can't remember which number it was - they're all starting to run together by now) is to borrow a car and go see something called "Devil's Tower". On the way there, we

pass the Aladdin Mercantile, Wyoming's oldest general store. Intrigued, we park and walk in. The proprietor asks if this is our first visit to which we reply " yes". He says "Well, feel free to look around. If you want a drink while you shop there's a self-service bar over in that room there, and go upstairs if you like and look at our antiques. Oh, by the way, the highway sign says "population 16" - that's true, only 16 people live in this town, but I'm not one of them."

What an interesting store - words can't do it justice, so we've posted some photos on the blog.

Devil's Tower. If you've never heard of it or never been there, you owe it to yourself to visit. You may recall it from Steven Spielberg's 1977 film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

It is the first US national monument, and is sacred to many native Americans. Again, words can't do it justice. We don't even think photos can. Until we stand there taking it in, we had no idea how powerful something like this could be. It's no wonder that it's sacred to so many. We walk around it and feel very small and unimportant and incredibly human. 

As we walk, we begin to see people climbing the 400+ foot rock. Tiny little people hundreds and hundreds of feet up sheer cliffs. We learn

that it is very highly regarded by rock climbers, as well, with lots of ascents, some with names like "Assembly Line", "Brokedown Palace",  "Rock Suckers", "Sunshine Over The Driskill Nation", and "Old guys in Lycra". We both agree that there is no way on God's green earth we'd ever climb up there. 

As much as we've been enjoying playing "three choices" with Luke, its finally time for us to get back on the road. Luke & Sara are flying to New Hampshire for Memorial Day weekend, so we

take the opportunity to haul anchor the same day they leave and go do some real boondocking up on Mt. Roosevelt where, among other things, we see (and go up into) the first ever monument to president Theodore Roosevelt. 

 

More in the works,

Mark & Julie

Location: Spearfish, South Dakota

Date: 17 May, 2023

It's probably about time for us to tell you a little bit about Boondockers Welcome. In RV parlance, the term "boondocking" generally refers to free camping on public land with no services, usually  "out in the boondocks". 

Opportunities for this are plentiful out West where there is a lot of public land, and less so out East save for National Forests and a few wildlife preserves and certain other state and federal lands. Also known as "dry camping" or "dispersed camping" it is our preferred way to camp - free, away from the crowds, out in the country, and often in stunningly beautiful locations. However, being off the beaten path can also have it's disadvantages, particularly when you are trying to make progress back home to Virginia. When that's the case, we prefer to find spots that aren't too far off our route so we don't end up driving miles out of our way only to find the spot is unsuitable - full or not even close to level or requiring 4 wheel drive, etc.

Boondockers Welcome (a.k.a. "BW") is an organization that matches travelers with hosts who are willing to let RVers camp on their property for free. Many hosts offer electricity (with or without a fee), and most stays are limited to only a few nights.  Guests pay around $80 per year for this service, and hosts get the service for free as a perk for hosting. Hosts get to set their own rules (for instance "no more than 2 nights"  or "the camper must be 25 feet or less", that kind of stuff) which are made available to the guest, and guests are expected to abide by them. It is a peer review system in which hosts review guests and guests review hosts, keeping everyone honest. There are more than 3,000 host sites in the US and it's a fantastic resource for folks like us. 

We have used it a lot this trip. We've made new, and we hope, lasting friendships with several of our hosts along the way, and have invited them to come stay with us in Virginia "if you're ever out that way". 

So, back to the story. We decide we want to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, and if we  follow the "green dots" (designated scenic routes on the map), as is our preference, we find Buena Vista, Colorado is one of the towns we pass through. A quick check shows a host location there. We read the host's profile. She's from the UK and his name is Mark. That's good enough for us! We request a 2 day stay and they accept. 

As a side note, we have a Buena Vista in Virginia, and the  residents pronounce it "Byu-na Vista" rather than "Bway-na Vista". Apparently it's the same here in Colorado so we feel right at home.

We pull in, meet our hosts, park, get set up, and make dinner. There are deer wandering around our camper. Nonchalantly. Graze, move a bit, look at us, graze some more. They're very calm about it all and don't seem to mind us being here. 

The next morning we wake up, make coffee, look at the deer some more, and suddenly realize it's snowing! In mid-May! The flakes get bigger and wetter and the ground begins to get covered. We start to get nervous,  since our hosts just told us last night that they got a surprise 3 feet of snow at the end of May last year. Will we be staying here longer than planned? We begin to think "maybe a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park should go on the back burner until another trip later in the summer".

Luckily, it quits snowing after an hour or so with less than an inch of accumulation, the sun comes out, and it's all gone by evening. But still....

In the afternoon while the snow melts, we go for a walk through town to a loop trail called the "bridge to bridge trail". Walk one side of the Arkansas River to a bridge, cross, walk back up the other side and cross at another bridge. As we're walking a young woman wearing a wet suit and carrying a short, stubby kayak passes us. By the time we get to the bridge, she's in the water doing tricks in a standing wave. Flips, turns, back flips, amazing! We watch for a while, take a few photos, and continue our walk.

 We see an RV parked in an empty lot and, as we're always on the lookout for free camping opportunities, we stop and chat with the owner. It turns out there's a big kayaking competition coming up in a couple of weeks and one of the sponsors of the event has allowed some of the contestants to camp in his lot. So, alas, it's not for us. 

We mention the woman we saw in the standing wave and he says "Oh, that's Abby. She's practicing her tricks for the free style competition. She's 19, a three time Jr. National Champion and is on the Team USA Freestyle Kayak squad. She just got sponsored by Winnebago and they've given her a new RV to drive around to competitions. She's camped right over there." 

So, if you feel like an inspiring story that involves, among other things,  camping and kayaking, check out Abby Holcombe -https://nobarriersusa.org/podcast/interview-with-abby-holcombe/ 

 

Okay, so that's our day in Buena Vista. With a 2 night limit to our stay, but not yet feeling like we've seen enough of this area, we get up the next morning and head about 20 minutes south to Salida, Colorado (pronounced with a long "I" like "suh-LIE-da")  and another BW host. 

Salida is another small town on the Arkansas River, also with loads of tourist appeal. Our host site is right in town only a couple of blocks from all the action. This whole area seems to attract very active people. We are, in fact, pleasantly surprised that they actually allow us in without the requisite kayaks and mountain bikes on the back of our camper. 

We again walk along the Arkansas River and for the first time see river surfing. These guys wear wetsuits and helmets and surf on a standing wave in the river. 

There are many standing waves in town and all of them have their contingent of people playing in them. Kayakers, surfers, free style kayakers, river rafters - if there's a way to play in the river you'll find it happening here. 

On our second night in Sailda we are wondering where to go next when our new friends in Buena Vista call and say "we don't have any guests coming tomorrow and we're wondering if you'd like to come back for another night?" 

We accept their invitation and head back up. Another lovely night with the deer, visiting on the patio, and getting to know new good friends better - very similar to our cruising days on Rachel and a pleasant reminder of what we miss most about cruising. We have really begun to appreciate Boondockers Welcome! 

After checking the weather at Rocky Mountain National Park again and learning that the road through the park is still closed, we once again change our ever-flexible plans. A lovely drive through the mountains finally lands us in Longmont, CO , near Denver, at another host site.

Another great stay, this time parked outside the "Garage Mahal" (Mark has contracted a terminal case of "shop envy"), more kindred spirits, yet another invitation extended to visit us in Virginia, and we're off again the next morning.

Our next stop is Ft Laramie, WY, which played a major part in the expansion and settling of the West. Treaties we're made here, later to be broken after George Custer led an expedition onto Indian lands and discovered gold. That pretty much started the Indian wars. 

Finally, we land in Spearfish, SD for a visit with one of Mark's cousins and his family. There's a lot more to come, so stay tuned! 

Desert to Mountains

Location: Army Corps of Engineers Campground near Aquiui, New Mexico

 

 

We leave the Chaco time warp and head back to the present going East and North toward the Rocky Mountains. The camper is covered inside and out with a fine grit from all the wind and blowing dust. As are we! Try as we might to seal it out, it still manages to find ways in and we're getting tired of it. As beautiful as the desert is, and as much as we've enjoyed it this trip, we find ourselves longing for trees, green grass, and, yes,  humidity. 

 

As we drive we begin to notice some old friends:

Hey! There's some standing water!

Ooh - a patch of green grass!

A creek! Look! The water is actually moving!

Dandelions! (Wait a minute - do we really miss dandelions?)

Trees! Woohoo! Trees and grass and creeks and no blowing dust! Yay!

We begin to climb some winding roads into the mountains and spend one last night in that space between desert and mountain. It's breezy, and the trees are small and stunted, but at last we can go outside and breathe.

 

 Farewell desert, hello mountains, and on to Colorado!

More soon!

Chaco

 We finally left Redding on 2 April and started heading back to Virginia. Our track thus far includes a lot of North and South and not all that much East. We've been having a great time and the new (to us) RV is doing great, keeping us warm and cozy on cold nights and cool and comfortable on the hot ones. It's a great fit for us and we're very happy with it. 

 Among other things, we have

 - visited Lake Oroville, CA and had wild turkeys courting in our campsite

 

 - spent 3 days with and made new friends in Grass Valley, CA, and toured the Empire Mine, the largest hard rock gold mine in the US. This is a scale model of the mines. Each little wire represents a shaft directly below the town of Grass Valley

 - drove over Donner Pass and down the east side of the Sierras near Mammoth Lakes which got over 40 feet of snow last winter

- visited Death Valley, this time with relatively pleasant springtime temperatures in the mid-90s

 
 

 

 - visited Pinoche, NV and their lovely small town museum (no photos, sorry)

 - saw our first cowboy of the trip in Nevada, who then proceeded to entertain us by falling off his horse, getting up, dusting himself off, and with his dog, start running to chase down his horse (sadly, no photos again, it all happened so fast as we were driving by)

 - headed south to warmer weather to Page, NV where we spent a couple of days wandering around the desert taking in the beautiful views and the profuse wildflowers. As an aside, it having been a pretty wet winter, we have been enjoying the spring wildflowers everywhere we've been so far on this trip

 

 

 - saw some traditional Navajo drumming and dancing in Farmington, NV, where we also had arguably the best salsa ever at Francisca's - an old, secret family recipe at a small family run restaurant. Yum!
 
 

 

 

 

Now we're in a campground at the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. This is our first trip here and we are finding it fascinating.

Chaco is a world heritage site and we can see why. Over the course of about 300 years (from about 850 AD through about 1150 AD), native people created an incredibly complex series of buildings. The largest one

here, Pueblo Bonito, contained over 600 rooms and used 225,000 logs from forests 50 to 70 miles away for beams - all carried to the site by hand! It was arguably the largest building ever built in North America until the 19th century.

Linked to various settlements by over 400 miles of roads, these great houses were sacred places and became the centers of Chacoan society. They continue to be revered by the Native American Indian tribes who trace their roots back to these sites.

We'll spend another day here soaking up as much of the ambiance as we can, then start working our way up to Rocky Mountain National Park. That is, if it's not snowed in by the time we get there....

 

 

Movin' along,

Mark & Julie

Almost on the road again...

Date: Tuesday, 28 March, 2023
Location: Redding, California

We made it! Six months after we bought our RV, we finally flew out to California to pick it up on 8 March. We have been here almost 3 weeks and have been busy little beavers learning our way around the idiosyncrasies and fixing things up to our liking.

The weather has been interesting. While it's been mostly cold and rainy (with several inches of snow our second day here!), we've also had a few warm and sunny days that we've been all too eager to take advantage of making a couple of short shakedown cruises. We're  very happy with our purchase so far. It's been cold, so we've been exercising our propane furnace and are happy to report that it works great! However, as of last night we're just starting another bout of rain, predicted to last about 10 days. At least we'll be warm and snug in our new little home.

Mark continues to be impressed with the build quality as he installs new equipment and explores the existing systems. This turns out to be a well thought out and very well built RV. Being 25 years old, it lacks some of the more refined features of newer models, but that's fine with us - less stuff to break!

We were able to stay with Julie's son Dan for the first week while we got the RV's systems up and running. He's been very helpful to us. He has set us up with some new tires, arranged to have the air conditioner serviced, had a new fan belt installed, given us a solar panel (with controller and inverter), and continues to serve as our Amazon package shipping and receiving department.

On top of that, he has also been a great host. We've been out on Lake Shasta several times in his houseboat, and he hosted a party for us at his house that provided great food, new friends, and stimulating conversation to all who attended. He's come to visit us most evenings after work, and has been good company. Thanks, Dan!


Unfortunately, somewhere along the line we have both come down with colds involving lots of nose blowing and emptying box after box of tissues. After a few days of this Mark is on the mend and Julie is

just coming into the really snotty part. Luckily, some friends Dan introduced us to on our last trip out here have offered us a spot in their back yard (with electricity and loaner tools!) for as long as we need. Thanks Ryan, Ryann & family!

We're finding our transition back into travel mode relatively easy. We're a little older and a little more cautious than we used to be - perhaps not such a bad thing. For example, like little Timmy the Toyota, there's an "upstairs" berth above the cab. Unlike Timmy, however, access is via a 5 step ladder that we have unfortunately found is a bit much for us. And, after awkwardly clambering  up, it would be about a 5 foot fall if one were to misstep getting out in the middle of the night - something we'd obviously like to avoid!

As a result,  we've opted to sleep on the fold-out sofa. This means we have to make the bed every evening and unmake it every morning. Surprisingly, though, we're not finding it too onerous.  It turns out we actually find a certain satisfaction in the ritual of changing our space from day use to night use and back again. Plus, the "upstairs" gives us loads of storage for our bedclothes (and plenty of other stuff,  too, as it turns out).


So we are sitting tight for the moment, finishing up a few more jobs (like installing a battery monitor and a rear view camera, fixing hinges, etc.), and blowing our tender, red noses until we feel better and are finally ready to head out. We still don't know where we're going or when we'll be back in Radford, but we do know that we still love living in tiny spaces together and traveling together and are really looking forward to getting moving.

We'll keep you posted as things develop. In the meantime, be well and safe and happy! And have a wonderful spring!

Almost back on the road again,

Mark & Julie 

 Date: 10 September, 2022
Location: Radford, Virginia

Yep.  You read right.  "Location: Radford, Virginia".  Still.

We've had a lot of people asking us how our trip is going (since we
supposedly left on 30 August), and the short answer is "it's not...yet".

As we were preparing to leave, reality set in and we realized we still
had a lot of unfinished stuff that we needed to take care of before
taking a couple of months off.  So we decided to slow things down a bit
and delay our trip.

The RV is sitting safe and sound at Dan's house out in California,
patiently waiting for us to come West, while we're busy here in
Virginia, taking care of business before we go to pick it up.

We'll let you know when we are ready to finally pull the trigger on the
trip.  Until then, please bear with us while we "hurry up and wait..."

Like bad pennies...

 
Yep. We're back. Again. Like bad pennies. After an almost two year hiatus we're dragging the old Khronicles out of storage, dusting them off, and seeing where they take us this time around.

As some of you already know, a little over a year ago we tracked down and bought back our old Toyota Escaper (a.k.a. "Timmy" or "Houdini") from the young couple we sold him to. Unfortunately, he was in pretty rough shape and we spent the better part of last year fixing stuff. Then, in June, we decided to sell him again. Since then, we've been looking for a somewhat newer replacement with a little more room.

We don't know if any of you have been in the market for an RV in the last year or so, but it's an absolute zoo out there. We found the available choices to be limited, stupidly expensive, and anything under 25' and moderately priced sells within hours of being posted - usually before we even get to see it advertised. After a few months of this, we were beginning to get really discouraged. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Julie's son Dan sent us an ad for a 23' motorhome from his local Facebook Marketplace out in California.

We talked to the owner, Dan went and checked it out for us, the price was right, so we bought it and he drove it back to his house. All in the course of about 24 hours.

It's a 1998 Fleetwood Tioga 23B - a "class C" motorhome, very much like Timmy's big brother - but it's 11 years younger with half as many miles on it. 

We fly out there on 31 August to finally see it in person, set it up, get new tires, etc., and drive it back East. We'll be taking our time (it's over 2,200 miles as the crow flies), getting back in late October or sometime in November.

Julie's been hard at work going through our logs and plotting our previous routes on an old road atlas. Once she's done, we'll be able to easily see where we have and haven't been, making our day-to-day and longer term planning a lot easier.

We are looking forward to getting back out on the road and seeing where we go this time.

It's good to be back! See you again soon,

Mark & Julie

The Firepit

Location: Radford, Virginia

Boring.  That's a word we've heard a lot lately - and not just from other people (yawn). It's been about 10 months since we last wrote a Khronicle just after Covid hit.  Mostly that's because there just hasn't really been much going on for us to write about.  It's not like we've been travelling to exotic locations or doing cool or funny stuff.  On the contrary, like many of our friends, we've been leading relatively quiet, boring lives these days.

You know the drill.  Get up, make coffee, read the news, have breakfast, decide what we're going to do today. For us these days it's been mostly house jobs and going for walks.  Having been isolated for so long, we've given ourselves a long list of jobs; floors, kitchen cabinets, painting - you get the idea...

One of the highlights of our fall and winter that hasn't involved work has been the fire ring Julie requested for her birthday. It's really extended our outdoors time together, as well our ability to socialize well into winter.  Several of our ex-cruising friends who are now RVing have stopped by on their travels to visit for a day or a few.  Since they are traveling with their own homes, we can stay isolated in ours.  And with social distancing by seating them on the other side of the fire, it's almost like the "old days" pre-Covid.

There's nothing like sitting, chatting, quietly staring into the fire, feeling the warmth in front and the cold in back, taking turns to periodically mess around with it, pushing the coals around, adding wood, moving your chair to avoid the smoke, etc.  Oh, and let's not forget the ring toss game...

Actually, maybe our lives aren't so boring after all....

And, as an extra bonus this year, we got to wake up to a white Christmas!

All the best,

Mark & Julie

The Veggie Boat

Location: Radford, Virginia

When we were living on our sailboat, Rachel, in the San Blas Islands off Panama's northern coast, the arrival of the "veggie boat" was a very big deal. Open fishing boats about 20 feet long, they did double duty as floating grocery stores and provided us with the necessities of life - like vegetables, chicken, and occasionally wine - all for very reasonable prices. A few of the islands had "grocery stores", but these were not always convenient or well stocked. The veggie boats, also not always well stocked, would make their seemingly random rounds of random anchorages on some random schedule that none of us cruisers could ever figure out.

We always had a shopping list prepared on the off chance that today would be veggie boat day. After being there a few months, we came to the realization that our list was actually not so much a shopping list as it was a wish list. 

 A shopping list, at least to us, implies that one will go to a store and buy what's on the list. In the San Blas, however, one "goes shopping" and buys whatever the veggie boat has on board. You may not really want bananas or cabbage or "pollo entera" (chicken, plucked, with head and feet still attached) but when that's all there is, that's what you buy, whether it's on the list or not. Needless to say, mealtimes often required a certain amount of creativity.

And there was always the awareness that, if we bought more than we needed, someone else further down the line might not be able to get what they needed. We were all in the same boat, so to speak, and were very aware of that fact. That being said, however, your chances of getting what you wanted were directly proportional to your position in the fleet - distinctly better if you were among the first boats visited rather than among the last.

We've found that, to some degree, going to the grocery store these days is a bit like shopping from the veggie boat. We never know what we'll find or what will be out of stock (other than hand sanitizer and toilet paper, of course). Obviously, the range of options is much broader here at home than in the San Blas, but all the same, we are grateful for our "wish list" mentality and the lessons we learned shopping "veggie boat style".

Please keep others in mind, buy only what you need, and may your veggie boat always come in,

Mark & Julie