RV ALASKA - Lake Louise & Moraine Lake (Banff National Park)

As we transition into sightseeing mode, I’ll take a moment to set the stage for this great adventure.  Alan and I are traveling in a 2024 GMC Sierra 2500HD 4x4 pickup truck and towing a 2017 32’ Outdoors RV Creek Side travel trailer, affectionately known as “The Lodge.”   We left our kayaks at home, but brought our bikes – two Diamondback hybrids that work well on pavement and adequately on dirt or gravel trails.  We lock ‘em up everywhere we go because we love them and don’t want to lose them.  We’re also traveling with a small Honda EU2000i generator, a bunch of tools, two spare trailer tires, one spare truck tire, 10 extra gallons of gas, a marine radio with weather alerts and, believe it or not, a porta-potty for day-long expeditions in the outback.  Combine camping with boating (or boating with camping, depending on your perspective) and you come up with the oddest selection of gear.

RV ALASKA - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

After Alan and I left the Bonner County Fairgrounds in Sandpoint, Idaho, and were heading north toward the Canadian border, we agreed that we finally felt like the RV ALASKA trip had begun.  Although we had been on the road for just over three weeks, our days had been full of camping with family and friends and dealing with routine chores and the infamous truck/trailer issue.   With all of the angst behind us, our spirits were lighter and our sense of adventure had rejoined the trip.

RV ALASKA - #%&*! - Or How We Spent National Go RVing Day

We came to La Grande, Oregon, to have our trailer brakes and bearings replaced by an RV repair shop in town, run by a couple of guys with long histories in the RV industry.  Just routine maintenance – or so we thought.  After all, this travel trailer has over 40,000 miles on it.  While we were in La Grande, we were trying to resolve the “check trailer wiring” and “service trailer brake system” messages we were getting on the new truck.  Luckily, the GMC dealer in Baker City squeezed us in to take a look.  They said it was the plug where the trailer connects to the truck, but they didn’t have one in stock.  They were kind enough to call around for us, and found a shop along our route in Spokane, Washington, that had the plug and said they would be able to fit us in on Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m.  With a four-hour drive and at least one gas stop ahead of us, we left La Grande a little after 6:00 a.m. on Saturday.  Until that day, the alerts we had been getting were intermittent, and the trailer brakes always came back on.  Not so on Saturday.  We had no trouble at all during the entire drive to Spokane, and we believed that replacing the trailer brakes had fixed a problem we didn’t realize we had.  But when we were about a mile from the dealership, our trailer brakes went out completely – and didn’t come back.

RV ALASKA - Life on the Road Ain't Always Glamorous

Traveling by RV is often romanticized in movies, books and, of course, on social media.  Every new day is full of adventure and perfection.  Well, in real life, that’s not always true.  As Alan likes to say, “No bad days,” but that’s more about our attitude toward the day and less about what the day, itself, contains.

RV ALASKA - Severe Stress Over Severe Weather

There’s a reason we don’t usually travel through the Midwest during the spring and early summer.  It looks like this:

We often pack our handheld marine radio on our travels for access to NOAA weather radio alerts.  Crossing the Midwest at this time of year made the radio more of a necessity than a luxury.  When we left Shady Creek Recreation Area in Iowa, Alan and I were planning to spend one night at the Buffalo Country Fairgrounds in Kearney, Nebraska, and the next at Cabela’s campground in Sidney, also in Nebraska.  After checking the weather forecast on the morning of our departure from Shady Creek, we realized we might need a Plan B.

RV ALASKA - Working Our Way West, One Mile at a Time

Life on the road.  I don’t want to say that you love it or hate it.  I think it’s more that you take to it – or you don’t.  Alan and I must be kindred spirits; we’ve been roadtripping together forever.  There’s a certain rhythm to life on the road, with responsibilities and routines falling into place.  Because we don’t camp at all from late fall until spring, the first outing of the year always involves a little bit of discombobulation – for me, anyway.  Inevitably, I make rookie mistakes – turning the water heater on LP gas when we’re plugged into electric.  Failing to get the black tank chemicals and two gallons of water we add to it after we dump prepped before we need them – nothing serious, just annoying.  Then, we fall into the rhythm of the road, and all is well.  I love life on the road.

RV ALASKA - The Journey Begins!

Our family camped at Northampton Beach Campground on Great Lake Sacandaga for the first time in the summer of 2009, and we immediately fell in love with “the lake.”  Located on a beautiful piece of property in the foothills of New York’s Adirondack Mountains, the state-run park also offers a boat launch and a day use area with a beach and picnic tables. This year would mark our 16^th year of family vacations there, and we didn’t want to break our consecutive streak.  So, even before knowing our exact travel dates for Alaska, we booked two waterfront sites at the lake for opening weekend in mid-May through Memorial Day.

RV ALASKA - North to Alaska - Finally!

Five years ago, in celebration of our 40^th wedding anniversary, Alan and I planned a trip to Alaska, just the two of us.  Our airline, car rental and hotel reservations for a week were in place, plus we had booked a sweet little balcony cabin on a cruise ship for a one-week trip down the Inside Passage.  Then, we had to cancel for business-related reasons.  SO disappointing!  COVID followed, and we ended up canceling an extended trip to the Oregon coast, too, leaving our travel calendar in even worse shape.  Here we are, five years later, with the 49th state back on the schedule and our 45th anniversary just ahead.

Back to the Coast after a Disappointing Visit to Crater Lake National Park (National Parks Trip #3)

This post represents another installment in the series documenting our West Coast National Parks trip in the summer of 2017.  Alan and I, along with our 18 year old daughter, Kyra, logged a total of 8,513 memorable miles of adventure over the course of five and a half weeks during the months of July and August.

Whenever we visit a National Park, our preference is to camp within the park itself – assuming there’s a campground that will accommodate our 32’ travel trailer.  On this trip, though, we had planned a one day visit to Crater Lake, and it seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth to haul the trailer all the way east to the National Park for just two nights.  So, I decided to look for a campground west of Crater Lake, trading a longer drive on the actual day of our visit for a shorter one during which we’d be towing the trailer.  It wasn’t ideal but, as with any trip of this magnitude, concessions were inevitable.  As it turned out, this particular concession proved to be beneficial.

A Day Full of Alliteration - Bandon, Bakery & Bullards Beach! (National Parks Trip #3)

This post represents another installment in the series documenting our West Coast National Parks trip in the summer of 2017.  Alan and I, along with our 18 year old daughter, Kyra, logged a total of 8,513 memorable miles of adventure over the course of five and a half weeks during the months of July and August.

The next stop on our West Coast National Parks trip was Crater Lake National Park.  Our destination on this Day #22 was Griffin Park, a county park about 14 miles west of Grants Pass, Oregon, that would be our base camp for a visit to Crater Lake.  Trip planning for this expedition was like working a jigsaw puzzle.  There were quite a few irregularly shaped pieces that needed to be fit together to successfully complete the picture.  From Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park campground, it was a straight shot to Grants Pass which was about an hour and a half to the northeast.  But we had no intention of missing anything along the Oregon coast that had made the trip’s bucket list.  So, back to Highway 101 it was for another jaunt up the coast on a circuitous route that would, eventually, deposit us at the campground in Griffin Park.

Falling in Love with the Oregon Coast (National Parks Trip #3)

This post represents another installment in the series documenting our West Coast National Parks trip in the summer of 2017.  Alan and I, along with our 18 year old daughter, Kyra, logged a total of 8,513 memorable miles of adventure over the course of five and a half weeks during the months of July and August.

Day #21 of our expedition dawned clear and sunny.  Alan, Kyra and I were looking forward to crossing into Oregon and exploring along the coast.  We couldn’t have asked for more beautiful weather.  Looking back on our photos of the trip, I realized that we were extremely fortunate weather-wise.  With a tight schedule to keep, we wouldn’t have let bad weather derail our plans; still, it was such a pleasure to be out and about on so many gorgeous days.

Before we headed up the coast for the day, we had planned on a short and easy hike over to Stout Grove – accessible directly from our campground in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.  Kyra decided to sleep in and skip the hike.  Whether she was well and truly tired or simply needing a break from being with her parents 24/7, we’ll never know.  You can’t always tell what lurks in the minds of teenagers.   On to Stout Grove!

I Digress: Another Rant About Customer Service

I just couldn’t contain myself, so I’m jumping up on my customer service soapbox.  Please note that I am not receiving compensation of any kind from the companies mentioned favorably below; I’m simply sharing my opinions and observations.  The photos accompanying this post were taken at the Missouri Route 66 Welcome Center Rest Area located at milepost 111 (eastbound and westbound) on Interstate 44 in Conway, Missouri.  The picnic table shelters are all miniature versions of Route 66 buildings, and they are ADORABLE!  In case you’re interested, we enjoyed our picnic lunch in the Texaco gas station.

Customer service has been a frequent topic “around the campfire” here lately.  Regular readers might remember that Alan and I are sticklers for good customer service.  Over the course of the past several weeks, we’ve had an exceptional run of bad customer service experiences, mitigated by a couple of shining stars.  It boggles our minds that management at so many companies does not stress the importance of good customer service with their staff.  Alan and I are favoring two main reasons for this inattentiveness to customer service and satisfaction.