Lassen Nat'l Park, CA

Our visit to Lassen Nat'l Park was a super one. This park is an area with volcanos, Lassen Peak had a series of eruption from 1914 to 1917. Mt St Helen erupted 1980, so this is an indication of what to expect there as the years pass and nature does it's thing. The lake behind us was formed when one of the eruptions moved rocks to block a stream at the time. We had super weather for our stay and enjoyed 3 days in the park.

This is Cinder Cone, a volcano (inactive). Note the trail winding up the side. After a 1.2 mile hike to this cone you then have an 700 ft ascent to the top. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that the trail is all cinders and very loose. Oh my! Les made it up much faster than I but I did make it, much to my surprise. We were rewarded with beautiful views. Check out some of our other pictures of this trail in the slide show. Oh to get to this location we drove a 7 mile gravel road. That sure did make our camper and bikes dusty and the vibration shook some things loose but the camper fared out pretty well.

This is a thermal area of Lassen, Bumpass Hell, a trail that takes you up 500 ft in a mile and then drops down 250 ft to the thermals was a much easier walk than the cinder cone trail. How interesting to see the power of the underground!

We have been able to take advantage of some Nat'l forrest campgrounds along our way. Here we are at one just outside Lassen as we make our way to our last Nat'l park stop: Great Basin Nat'l Park in Nevada.

The drive from Reno to Great Basin is a very stark and beautiful one. It surprised us that we found a campground, a Pony Express station, with wifi! A few days at Great Basin and we head east for some long driving days home. Just in time as the forecast for this area is that the cold fall weather is coming in just a few days!! That will push us home fast. Our target to arrive in PA is Oct. 12th.

Oregon Coast and visiting Aaron in Eureka

The drive south on Rt 101 was very nice. We took 3 days to make the drive and stayed at state parks. At one stop we toured a lighthouse and saw whales off the coast. The coastline is so pretty along Oregon and Northern CA. We are so looking forward to seeing Aaron at the end of this drive.

We arrived in Eureka Thursday. It was so great to see Aaron. Aaron had a super idea for us to camp with him in Shelter Cove at the south end of the Lost coast. We explored the Black sand beach with it's wild tide and tidepools. There were seals on the rocks to watch also. It was a real nice 2 days.

We had a nice disc golf game with Aaron in a Redwood course. We were impressed with Aaron's ability playing. He is also a super tutor.

We turn east now. Our plan is to visit Lassen Nat'l park and Great Basin Nat'l park then head home.

Vancouver Island, BC

We met up with my sister Lori and her husband Chris in Seattle. We all headed to British Columbia to explore Vancouver Island for a week. Ferries are a the mode of transportation between the islands. We had a 2 hours trip to V island and then a 10 min hop to Quadra Island.

Our first stay was at a house of a friend of Lori's on Quadra Island. A small island in the Discovery Island group off V island. What a lovely setting. A wonderful deck faced Heriot Bay where we watched boats and birds. We stayed 3 days here. Biking to Rebecca's Spit, picking blackberries, hunting petroglphs were some of the opportunities there.

Our second stay was at an interior park and the Ralph River campground. This island is very thinly populated with most of the population on the coast. The interior is very rugged and beautiful. We only spent one night here and with the number of misquitos, that was a good thing. But the surrounding was so worth the trip.

Our last stay was on the west side of the island at the Pacific Rim Provincal Park, Green Point, Tofino. Oh how lovely, with large pine and cedar forrest coming right up to the beach. Here we could ride our bikes on the shore, explore the coastal town of Tofino (where they have whale/bear watching and hot springs tours), watch the surfers (this is a big area for surfing), and take in some First Nation culture. We ate really well with Lori and Chris on this camping trip. Check out the Dungeoness crab they were preparing for one of our meals on the slideshow.

Monday (19th) we begin working our way down the coast to Aaron's. We are looking forward to the beautiful scenery and to get to hug our son!!

Yellowstone Nat'l Park

We had a wonderful time at Yellowstone Nat'l Park. We had 5 days to explore the park and enjoy the beautiyful weather, although with the high altitude here. the evenings were cold (31o to 330).

We enjoyed some excellent hiking along the rim of a canyon and some of the back country trails.

We biked some "off the beaten path" trails and one took us to our own private geyser display. Below you see a coyote that walked up to and around us while we viewed a thermal spring. Then in the slideshow you see a herd of buffalo that were grazing around the trail we were biking. The males were in rut and we saw some interesting behavior as the males were picking their females. Very interesing when you are standing just 25 feet away!

We arrived in Seattle Sept 8th, and are all traveling up to Vancouver Island for a week of exploration. We have a lovely trip ahead of us. We will return Sept 17th and may be able to post before we head down the Oregon coast to Aaron's.

The Badlands Nat'l Park

The scenery here is amazing. Such beauty. We are being treated here at the Badland and on our drives but beautiful wildflowers. They really dress up the already spectacular views. The first day here was rainy, but that was fine as we were so tired from the 4 long driving days to get here. We enjoyed a day to nap!

We had a nice sunny day the second day of our Badlands stay. Les and I hiked a trail to an overlook. See the ladder that was part of our trial? My thighs are going to be talking to me the next couple days.

I then dropped Les off at a trailhead to walk another 2 1/2 miles on a different trail. He enjoyed that trail although it was getting hot by then.

We drove 10 1/2 hours today (Wednesday) to go to our next destination, Yellowstone. We stopped in the town of Grey Bull which is still about 3 hours from our first campground in Yellowstone! Things are so far apart here. But we are seeing some amazing sights. We plan 5 nights in Yellowstone in three differents areas of the park. I'm afraid that we will not have cell or wifi there so we will post again later.

Aug 28 Storm in South Dakota

This only shows a small bit of what we drove into today. It is strange to voluntarily enter a storm looking like that! Thank the good Lord, there was no hail in it. Just a session of strong winds. Once we drove through this front we were back to sunny skys and 80o temps.

We were hoping to camp in a Corp cg or a State park along the Missouri River tonight but most of them are still closed from the bad flooding they had this summer. So we are in a KOA.

Tomorrow we should be in The Badlands and camping in a Nat'l Park cg. We are looking forward to slowing down now and doing some exploring.

Glad to hear that the hurricane did not do what they had predicted to the east. Fair skies ahead for us all?

August 27th Iowa Rest Stop

Here we are at a rest stop in western Iowa. They have wifi and dumping facilities at there RA's. Wow! Little things please us. ;-)

We stopped last night in Elderidge to visit with our friends John and Geralyn Osen. They treated us to a wonderful meal, we then slept in the camper parked in front of their home (they offered their guest room but we declined) and then they fed us a wonderful breakfast before we headed west.

The weather is in the 80's and sunny here in the midwest. Hope there is not bad flooding in PA.

We will post again when we can.

Northwest Adventure

We are off for a fall trip in our new Itasca Navion purchased this summer for trips west. No we are not selling our Pegasus, it is perfect for our FL winters right now and allows us to take our "toys" (kayaks and bikes) in the bed of the truck. But this motorhome will be more compact and powerful for the terrain of the west.

We will try to blog our trip but that is dependent on the access of wifi. Check us out periodically to see if we were able to update.

Our plan: leave Aug 25th, drive to Seattle, WA to visit with Chris and Lori. While there we will join up with them to spend a week on Vancouver Island. Sept 11th head down RT 1 and the Oregon coast to visit with Aaron in Eureka, CA. After leaving Aaron we will continue in the Northwest to work our way home, hoping to hit Yellowstone if the weather there is OK and no snow?? We should return around Oct 10th.

The Good Lord sure has blessed us and I am grateful.

Myakka River State Park Arcadia, FL

What a lovely stay we have enjoyed here. We are more inland, about 15 miles from the coast, and in the largest of the state parks we have visited. With it’s large size, there is more wildlife here. There is also a wide variety of hiking and biking trails here.

Along with some good kayaking, above you see me paddling in the wilderness area where access is limited and therefore you see more wildlife. We saw a lot of alligators on this paddle, but they behaved themselves as did we!

We had two special birding treats while here. The picture shows sandhill cranes dancing for us at the lake. We were treated with this scene the first day here and haven’t seen them since. They are very large birds and quite stately.

Here is a Burrowing Owl. These little owls actually dig and live in shallow burrows in the sand. Can you see the sand flying out as the mate takes its turn digging? You will see pictures in the slideshow at the side of an owl that took a short cut and adopted a drain as its burrow. You will also see that these owls are “city dwellers”.

There is such beauty here. God’s artistic hand is so evident here. The weather has been so summerlike. Les is in seventh heaven! We move Saturday, March 5th, more inland to Highland Hammock SP. Some camping friends, Gerri and Leon, will be there as they are volunteers this year there. We spend a week there then move to a new park in the Tampa area.

Oscar Shearer State Park Osprey, FL

This is our second week here at Oscar Shearer SP. The first week was cold and rainy but we met and met up with camping friends to occupy our time along with hiking the trails here in the park. Valentines day brought more sunshine and some warmer temperatures. Above is the wonderful chicken kabobs Les made us for dinner, Yum.

The weather this week has brightened and is gradually warming. We have had the opportunity to go to the beach some and it is so nice to hunt shark’s teeth. Someone once told me that walking the beach was better than blood pressure medicine and I must agree.

We have met so many nice people while camping. Here we are enjoying a sunset with Dottie and Frank from NY. And tomorrow we go to visit Trish and Steve from RI to do some kayaking to shell.
We leave Saturday for two weeks at Myakka River SP. There is always some good wildlife there and I hope the kayaking is good this year.

Everglades National Park, FL

Oh my, we had such a good visit to the Everglades. Our theme for this stay was birds. We stayed in the most southern campground called Flamingo four days. Most of the sites are dry camping, no hook-ups, but they do have 41 sites with electric. After three days our battery was very low so we moved to an electric site to charge it. We will be researching solar panels for these situations.

There were many osprey nests in the Flamingo area and great sightings of osprey with fish. We also sighted a nest where the baby was up and getting fed. See the slideshow for pictures. It was amazing to have regular experiences with hawks sitting in low branches with their catches eating.

This red shouldered hawk fed off the grass beside our camper everyday. Wow, we would sit in our chairs and the hawk would pop down just feet from us feeding on grubs or worms in the grass. An eco pond just outside the campground had a great gathering of birds early in the morning: snowy egrets; great egrets; green herons; little blue herons; wood storks; roseate spoonbill; and red shouldered hawk. All those in one area of the pond chatting away. It was so neat to experience.

For our last day we moved about 38 miles north in the park (Everglades is a very big park) to a second campground available, Long Pine Key. Here there is no hook-ups at all. What we really enjoyed about these campgrounds is the silence. How nice. Here at Long Pine you are in more pine forested area and found the biking very nice.
A short drive to a trail titled, Anhinga Trail, gave us LOTS of great bird viewing. Baby Anhinga, purple granule, common moore hen, grebe, green heron, great blue heron, cormorant, white egret to mention a few. This cormorant bit off more than he could chew! I’m going to try to get my new slideshow on today but I may have to wait a few days to do it?
We moved to Oscar Shearer State Park Feb 5th. We will be here two weeks. I will post on this park next week. On Feb. 19th we then move to Myakka River State Park.

Long Key to the Everglades National Park

No pictures on this post. The wifi is not good still here in the Keys. We leave the Keys and move to the Everglades National Park. This will be our first visit to the southern regions of this wild land. We will dry camp for 5 days there and will have no wifi or cell service while there.

We are looking forward to the birds and wildlife we are hearing about from other campers who have been there. Hopefully we will have good pictures to share here with you the first week of Feb?

We will go to Oscar Shearer State Park Feb 5th. They are located south of Sarasota and have wifi IN the park. How nice that will be. I should be able to post from there that first week. Two weeks there and we go inland to Myakka River SP where we really enjoy the wildlife and paddling.

God Bless to all.

Long Key State Park Marathon, FL Keys

Sorry that the blog has not been updated for awhile. We are not finding reliable wifi here in the Marathon, FL area. This is a week behind so I have posted two entries: this and one on Curry Hammock SP below. We will probably not be able to post again until the beginning of Feb when we get to a park that has wifi there.

All four state parks here in the Keys are unique. The special thing about this park is that all campsites are on the beach. The ocean at high tide is just a yards from your camper. The water here is so pretty with the shades of turquoise.

This park offers a very nice nature trail and some biking. One bike trip is to a two mile fishing bridge just a few miles south and accessed by a bike trail. We have also been able to do some paddling here in the ocean. There have been some good calm days that make using our kayaks on the open water pleasurable. We haven’t seen any sharks yet.

This land crab thought our tire was a good hiding place. We sure don’t want to shake hands with him! The weather here has been great most days. We are experiencing summer in January most days. Today a cold front blew in and dropped the temps from 78o to 64o. We can’t complain knowing that PA is getting 20os right now.
We leave this park Jan. 31st and this view. We plan to dry camp in the Everglades Nat’l Park for 5 days, if our battery allows us. We are looking forward to going there for the first time. There will be no wifi there and probably no cell service. Feb. 5th we will move to a state park south of Sarasota. That park offers wifi at the park which will be nice. The next posting will probably not be until then. God Bless all!

Curry Hammock State Park Marathon, FL Keys

This is our last week at Curry Hammock SP. We have enjoyed good weather the most of this first week. A cold front is blowing through today, that means it was 51o this morning. The wind is very gusty though and that will keep us in most of the day. Good we have a camper with some inside space now.


Tuesday we paddled our kayaks around this little key where the park is. It was a nice trip but the sun was very intense that day. We had to make sure that we did it at high tide as some of the waterway is very shallow.

This big fellow was on a tree along the inlet. He is quite different from the lime green iguana we normally see here in the Keys. These are invasive creatures that are becoming a big problem in southern Florida. People have released their “pets” when they became too big to be cute and they are thriving in this environment. Unfortunately they have no natural predators here and are harming the native animals that compete for the food. There are a lot of them in this area and they are big.
Here is a hermit crab we found. He is a big one for what we usually see. He was not happy with us at all for picking him up. I included this picture for Evan. Maybe he will like seeing it? We miss you Evan.

Winter Escape 2011

We were a bit nervous about the weather again this year. Last year’s FL winter was very chilly, but nothing like the temps at home. When we stopped at our first campground in NC, we thought that we were in for another cold one. This area had gotten 12 inches with that Christmas storm and it was not going away quickly. The morning temp was 24o, brrrrr….. But on the road again and keep heading south. The weather soon turned to the normals and Les was thrilled. Day temps soon were 70’s.
We stopped again at my cousin Jan’s home in Jacksonville and visited with them for New Year’s Day. She treated us once more with a sumptuous meal and we had a chance to see her son Nathan and his young family. His son, Bradley, is the age Evan will be next year and that was cute to see.
A stop at Jonathan Dickinson SP on the way down I 95 gave us a chance to meet up with David and Barbara. These good folks were one of our references for our African adventure and it was great to meet them and share pictures and stories. They surprised us by taking us out and treating us for supper.



We arrived at Curry Hammock Jan. 3rd. Oh my, our site is perfect and so is the weather. We wake to 68o and it tops out at 80o in the afternoon. The wind is calm so paddling is very nice.

One day we paddled out to Deer Key to see a rookery there. My, the pelicans and cormorants were packed on the mangroves.
All around us as we paddled were birds diving in the water for fish. We were treated to a music jam fest just next to us. Some folks played accordions and a wash-tub base and we enjoyed some down-home folk music.