All articles by Kat
A Well-Traveled Dog
We had to say farewell to our very good boy, Opie, last week. He was 14.5 years old, surpassing our wildest dreams and staying with us for 13 years before leaving. Opie is the end of many eras for us: the last LRR.org dog we fostered (and adopted); the dog that made it through 7 years of...
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San Diego – warmth, friendship, & more games
After five stationary weeks in Vegas, we looked forward to a nice change of scenery in San Diego. The surgeon gave Opie the green light to take longer walks but avoid swimming for another 6 weeks or so. Apparently dogs can overextend their legs while swimming, which could cause possible damage to the healing bones....
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It’s been awhile
Yes, we’ve fallen very very behind on our blogging. This past year has been our “year off” (more on that later) and we also found a bunch of new hobbies which have taken our interest away from our usual pursuits of blogging. I have clawed myself back onto the blogging wagon to catch up on...
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Down Mexico Way…
After the Xscapers Annual Bash, we headed back to Yuma for a week to relax since we were planning to attend another Xscapers convergence. Yeah, I know, it’s totally crazy for us to do back-to-back group meetups but we originally signed up for the Mexico Convergence, then saw that the Annual Bash (AB) was just...
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Xscapers Annual Bash
It’s a good thing we had some “introvert” downtime in Yuma after all our socializing in Tucson, since we signed up for even more socializing at the Xscapers Annual Bash in Lake Havasu AZ. Xscapers is an offshoot of the Escapees RV Club. Xscapers was created to cater towards the working-aged RVers. It’s not age-related...
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Tucson, friends and warmth
We always look forward to our stays at Catalina State Park in Tucson. Thanks to Mike’s super-planning, we snagged two full weeks there for the winter. Since we’ve talked about Catalina a few times now, I’ll stop boring you with the details and talk about what’s new for us this year. Catalina, and Tucson in...
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Chilly cold but worth it
Once again we made our yearly trek back “home” to the VA/MD/DC area to visit friends and spend time with family for the Thanksgiving holiday. Suffice it to say there was way too much eating, but as always we had a fantastic time. We also ended up using this time to add solar panels to...
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Canyons and coasters
Since we’ve visited the Grand Canyon South Rim, Grand Canyon North Rim, and Black Canyon (Gunnison NP), it was time to make a trip to the “Grand Canyon of the East”, Letchworth State Park. Located on the western edge of New York, Letchworth is a narrow long park that surrounds the Genesee River through deep...
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Vermont – so much food
The nice thing about following RV blogs and social media is sometimes you can just steal all their hard work for yourself. This was the case when we visited Danville, Vermont. Chapter3Travels had visited the Cabot, VT in the past and their itinerary sounded perfect to us so we just decided to plagiarize most of...
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Meetups and Hangouts
Games, games, and more games! The last few weeks, we’ve been back in Red Bay, AL finishing the rest of our warranty work on R2. While it does keep us busy, there isn’t much else to do in Red Bay which meant no more excuses and time to catch up on blogging. So back to...
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Cape Breton Island
After our colorful stay in Lunenburg, we moved to the northern side of Nova Scotia to Wolfville for a few days. Wolfville brought us back to the Bay of Fundy which meant we were back in the area of high tidal ranges and chocolate colored water. Since Opie was such a great sport about staying...
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Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
Since we fulfilled our Opie hiking duties in New Brunswick, we felt guilt-free about leaving Opie in the RV so we could play tourist in Lunenburg, especially since Mike’s brother and his wife came to visit for a few days and co-tourist with us. Lunenburg is a tiny port town (less than 2 squares miles)...
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Dog hiking in Acadia
Almost all the hikes in Acadia are dog-friendly. There are a few exceptions, mostly due to iron rungs/climbing and there are some trails that are not recommended because of rock scrambling and steep inclines; however if you have a flexible and active dog, those trails may be fine with a little human help from time...
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Everyone is right about Acadia…
It’s flipping amazing! While Acadia National Park only encompasses 49,000 acres of the Atlantic coastline in Maine (comparatively Yellowstone is 2.24 mil acres), making it the 13th smallest National Park by size, it contains almost 150 miles of trails, 45 miles of carriage roads (perfect for biking), 7 peaks above 1000 ft (small potatoes compared...
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Boston, history and traffic
Continuing our journey north, we stopped for a few days outside of Boston to hang out and visit some history. We stayed in Acton, an hour outside of Boston at Boston Minutemen Campground, a nice small wooded campground near the train station. The campground feels more like a county park than a commercial RV park...
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Wildly weird Rhode Island
First of all, it’s not even an island! It’s firmly attached to Connecticut and Massachusetts. Second, the official name is State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. So while it’s the smallest state in the US (by size), it has the longest official name. Third, while the island part of the state is officially called Rhode...
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New York City – So Much of Everything
While we aren’t big fans of cities (many are similar with little to really distinguish them), NYC is a whole different beast and we had to immerse ourselves in the experience. NYC isn’t RV friendly (yeah, I know…brilliant observation) so RVers, including us, use Liberty Harbor RV Park as home base. It isn’t pretty (it’s...
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Lamest blog post ever
For a while, I didn’t feel like blogging for a couple of reasons. First, we were having fun and doing things and who has time to write about it all? Then after the fun and games, who wants to sit down and actually concentrate on writing about it all?!? So I would keep putting it...
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Making R2 better and stronger (or at least more organized)
It was great to be back in VA/MD to visit with friends and family; however a blog post filled with “we visited friends and family, ate and laughed a lot, and caught up on gossip” is 1) boring and 2) really short, I decided instead to focus on some modifications we’ve made to R2 in...
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….AND we’re back!
When we decided to get serious about buying a Phaeton, we had to decide on a Tiffin dealer. We bought Rover through Lazydays in Tampa for a number of reasons, but we decided we would not buy from them again (great sales dept., terrible service dept.). Many folks have recommended Davis and Sherman dealers for...
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Too Much Southern Hospitality
It’s been a while since we’ve posted but it’s taken us some time to recover from our stay in Red Bay, AL before we could relive the experience. Then we got caught up in celebrating the holidays with our family and blogging went out the window. So now I’ve finally buckled down and I’m ready...
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DragonCon – Where Nerds Go To Be Normal
After the eclipse (we still haven’t been able to stop gushing about the experience), we made it to Atlanta GA in time for DragonCon, a huge multi-genre convention held every year over Labor Day weekend. Every year it grows larger, with an estimated crowd size of 80,000 people this year. This is our third time...
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East Coast Humidity… and a Total Solar Eclipse
After our giddy and awesome visit to Red Bay AL, we finalized our order, including our custom color. With two weeks to kill before the solar eclipse, we decided to spend the time in West Memphis AR, right outside of Memphis TN. We stayed at Tom Sawyer’s RV Park which is situated right on the...
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Jello travels
Other than Opie’s daily (bi-daily?) swim in the Colorado River in Grand Junction during the 100 degree days, we avoided being outdoors in that awful heat. Unfortunately we couldn’t enjoy the cool mornings or evenings either because the mosquitoes came out in force!! The first night we were there, I (no joke) got over a...
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Dinosaur country
After two weeks in mostly wilderness, it was nice to hit “civilization” again at Cody, WY (pop. 9700). While we still needed to wait until Denver for a Costco or Trader Joe’s, we were able to find nice supermarkets and Walmart again to stock up on food and supplies, plus a nearby dog park (with...
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Yellowstone: Part 2
After a couple of days fighting with the crowds on the west side, we drove to the north side of the park through Norris and up to Mammoth Hot Springs. We stopped at Artists Paintpot which contains a nice array of geological formations: fumeroles (stinky gas and steam, no water… we were making fumerole jokes...
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Yellowstone: A Completely Foreign Planet
Above: Grand Prismatic Spring While the views at our boondock site in Grand Teton were, well, grand, the warming weather brought out ridiculously large mosquitoes in droves so we were not sorry to pack up and head north to Yellowstone. Since Yellowstone is just north of Grand Teton, we didn’t expect our drive to take...
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Grand Teton National Park
From SLC, we made a two-day drive north to Grand Teton National Park. We chose to boondock for free in the Bridger-Teton National Forest adjacent to the park thanks to the good reviews on Campendium. The nearby National Park campgrounds were either $52-70/night with electric, or $28/night with no hookups, in a forested area where solar power...
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Utah, it’s May and snow??
Originally we planned (we use that phrase often) to hit Monument Valley and Moab after Sedona but had to take a sharp u-turn back to Yuma so I could get some quick work done on my crown covering my implant. The positive was that Dr. Urena (my dentist) got me in quick and replaced the crown...
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Sedona hiking and more hiking
We decided to make our first hike easy and short to start warming up our legs. Fay Canyon is a 2.5 mile, flat out-and-back hike through the densely-vegetated canyon floor. The maintained trail ends at massive boulders in a wash but we felt adventurous, plus the first mile was more of a stroll than a...
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Sedona – so much red!
After Phoenix, we stopped at Camp Verde at a full-hookup campground for a couple of days so I could do our laundry, even more important since we planned to boondock for a week in Sedona. This was meant to just be a place to clean up, guzzle water, and clean out our black tank but...
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Phoenix – warming up our hiking muscles
While we usually stay at Catalina State Park when in Tucson, the county and state parks near Phoenix have great reviews so we’ve been slowly trying all of them over the last couple of years. This year we stayed at Lost Dutchman State Park for a week, then Cave Creek Regional Park for a week, which...
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The Glamorous Life of a Full-timer
After Organ Pipe, we got back on track and headed to Yuma for my last dental appointments. One year after starting on this crazy Mexico dental journey, I now have two implants (hopefully) firmly stuck in my mouth. The implants cost me 1/3 of what the US dentists normally charge and I was extremely happy...
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Detours can be a good thing
After finishing with Texas, we headed to our favorite winter destination, Tucson AZ. Since we had to make it through most of Texas and all of New Mexico, it did take us 3 straight days of driving to get to Tucson. Poor Opie was having some cabin, er RV, fever by the time we reached Tucson....
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Everything is bigger in Texas
After leaving Tampa, we took the ubiquitous Interstate 10 straight through to Texas. I-10 is the major east-west highway through the southern U.S. so it’s the most convenient and direct route; however it does have some rough patches in Louisiana and we were sure we might lose some screws, or at least a side mirror...
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Meandering through Florida
Recently we’ve had better luck running into friends we’ve made on the road, and while we were in Florida we had a chance to catch up with Jeff and Sue of Fools Rush Out in nearby Naples FL. In fact, we spent an awesome evening drinking and snacking on the beach watching the sunset and...
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The interlude
Have you ever watched a TV show or movie where a bunch of stuff happens, then the screen fades to the next scene, and it says “3 months later”? It’s a great way to cut out all the boring stuff and get right back into the action. Well, this catch-up blog entry is our quick summary...
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Last National Park of the year
From Denver, we headed north and west to Estes Park CO to visit Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), which will probably be the last NP for us this year. After Colorado, we make our way back “home” to the DC area to see family which means lots of people time, not much sightseeing time. Estes Park...
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Denver and our first 14er
After a steep and careful drive over (and through) the Rocky Mountains we made it back to “civilization”, so to celebrate, our first outing was to the nearby Costco to get our staples. No longer can we buy truckloads of toilet paper, but Costco does have a few things that we can rely on without overflowing Rover. We...
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Ouray, the fun part!
While we had some sleepless nights fighting the mouse war, we were finally able to get out of the RV and do some sightseeing. My friend, Debbie, came out from Virginia to visit us so we spent a few days doing the fun touristy stuff around Ouray and Silverton. The town still has a very old-fashioned...
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Ouray Colorado’s unwelcome guests
Before we started RV’ing, we had never heard of the majority of the places we have ended up visiting, including Ouray (pronounced either YOU-Ray, or You-RAY) Colorado. Mike’s Mom’s neighbor mentioned Ouray as a great place to visit so we added it to our list, and we’re glad we did. Ouray is a small town...
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San Diego – land of wet dog
The last time we were in San Diego, we stayed at Santee Lakes Recreation Preserve, about 40 minutes outside of the city. While we enjoyed the park, driving into the city to do sightseeing became tedious quickly. This year we decided to stay inside San Diego at the Mission Bay RV Resort. It’s located right next to Mission Bay,...
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And Zion Makes Three
After Bryce, it was time to change directions and start South since we have to get back to Yuma and Mexico for my next dental appointment in mid-June (yuck). That meant a fond farewell to Bryce and a howdy to nearby Zion National Park. Of course that also meant getting to Zion during Memorial Day...
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More than just Bryce, thanks to Opie
After our rest stop in Page and Kanab, it was time to hit our next National Park. We packed up our stuff, deflated the Sleep Number bed, and took an uphill journey to Bryce Canyon, elevation 8000 feet. Small tip: make sure all your top-down bottles are placed upright or you will have some explosions when...
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Sedona – A whole new world of hiking!
While we’ve done some great hikes (Glacier National Park comes to mind), Sedona is in a class of its own! Everyone we talk to, and I do mean everyone, who has been to Sedona raves about how beautiful and wonderful it is so we were looking forward to our visit. After being here, we can see...
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Dusting off the hiking boots, packs, and poles
The time had come to stop lazing about and start stretching our muscles again. Our next few stops are well-known for fabulous scenery, hikes, and gorgeous weather which meant dusting off our hiking equipment. Opie, of course, was ecstatic at our change of pace. We made it to Cottonwood Arizona about 1/2 hour southwest of...
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4 weeks of a whole lotta nuthin’
We decided to wait out the rest of winter in Tucson and Phoenix before heading further north in the spring, so back to Tucson we went. Being back at Catalina State Park almost feels like coming home since we’ve been here multiple times and it’s still one of our most favorite places to stay. When you’re home,...
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Lake Havasu, not just for Spring Breakers
When we (ok, Mike) originally made our winter plans, we were going to split our time evenly between Borrego Springs and Lake Havasu City. After further research, we (ok, Mike) shortened our stay in Borrego Springs and lengthened our stay in Lake Havasu which turned out to be a good decision. The various sculptures in Borrego Springs...
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Dental tourism in Mexico…no, really!
Having no dental insurance, we decided to join the thousands of other RV’ers (and other non-insured folks) who travel to Mexico for dental and vision work. The cost of dental and vision work in Mexico tends to be anywhere between 50-75% of the cost within the U.S. so dental tourism has become a huge draw for many...
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Boondocking: the good, the bad, and the ugly
above: desert art at eye-level (top-left) isn’t fully appreciated until viewed from above with a drone! Being back in the Southwest meant we could finally put our solar panels to use! On the east coast and much of the south, the dense population and lack of open public land makes it almost impossible to find any free land...
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