Last year while I was at Elk Lake with the kids, Will went to a seminar about life’s endless possibilities. As we discussed what we talked about as possible we both agreed we should travel. We researched and bought a 1996 Fleetwood Bounder. It had a good engine, but a 1980’s interior. We ripped carpet out and put down laminate and we painted. We decided in June to go on the road for the summer.
In the following blogs, I’ll document some of our adventures that exceed this simple post. Our plan was to travel across the US to Maine and back.
June: Oregon to North Dakota
We put our home on AirBnB and lived in the motorhome for a week before we started our trip. We traveled over the Rockies without much to say and stopped in Missoula. We spent the night in Drummond, MT and visited Garnet Ghost Town again. While in Drummond, we stayed in a city park next to a river. The river was swollen, but by the morning we left it had overflowed its banks.
Our next stop was Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
As we traveled across the flat plains of North Dakota we witnessed thunderstorms like we had never seen before.
July: Minnesota to Michigan
My mom’s side of the family is from Minnesota and we stopped to see my Aunt Bev and kept her place as a jumping off location to the next two parks.
Before we left for our next backpacking adventure in Voyageurs National Park, we tested our raft and motor on Rice Lake, near Brainerd Minnesota. It was a good idea, because otherwise we wouldn’t have had enough battery to get across Lake Katagoma.
When we returned we took a few days to ready for Isle Royale National Park. A 2-hour ferry ride into Lake Superior. This was the remotest adventure we have had yet and we had opportunities to see moose up close.
After picking up the motorhome we were ready to move onto Michigan then into New York. We also travelled home during July for a wedding and the kids summer camp (yes, I see the irony of that). A little side note here, I’m tired of writing individual blog posts about the various places we traveled and since we didn’t actually backpack past Isle Royale, I’m going to give you the Cliff Notes version.
On our way to New York to see some of our most loved friends we travelled north around Lake Erie through Canada, our destination was Niagara Falls. I’d remembered stopping there as a kid. We stayed at Four Mile Creek State Park few days on Lake Ontario while we took day trips to Toronto, Cayahuga National Park in Ohio, and Niagara Falls.
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As a person from the west, I hear people talking about the east as a place that is ‘historic’ or ‘old’. It’s interesting that while we were there we felt that age. There wasn’t anything in particular that made you feel that way, but overall the feeling was historic.
August: New York to Maine to Oregon!
Our August was jam packed. We had to reach the coast of Oregon by the end of August for our son, Josh’s engagement party.
After our stay near Buffalo, we travelled to visit our good friends who had moved from Portland to Ithaca. On our way to Ithaca, the motorhome started having an issue with the propane sensor. We needed to get it replaced. We stayed with our great friends and played in Ithaca for a few days.
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While the motorhome was in the shop we travelled to Maine via the car we towed behind. Me, trying to make every moment interesting chose to make the trip a loop. We left Ithaca and crossed into Canada and had the best Chocolate Fondue in Montreal.
Desserts in Montreal must be a thing, the chocolate shop we stopped at was modern, had outdoor seating by the fire, it was bright and inviting and the place, like a Starbucks here in Oregon, was a huge chain. They had a dozen chocolates to choose from and someone made your chocolate dessert and called out your name. In another life, I’m definitely opening up chocolate shop.
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After spending the night in Montreal, we saw hiker trash from the Appalachian Trail. One day, I hope to hike the AT. Finally we arrived in Maine. We stayed for four or five days and saw Acadia National Park. It was super fun, but not really like any national park we had visited, maybe it was the season. It felt like summer camping, we stayed in a campground that was like a KOA with a pool. Each day we did something and then came back to the pool. We saw the sunrise on the eastern most point of the United States with a hundred people, went to the lake and played with a thousand people, dipped our feet in the Atlantic Ocean with a million people, we hiked the coolest rocky trails with a billion people, and we ate pop overs with a gillion others. It was different from what we had done before at other parks, but it seemed to be what everyone did there.
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Our time was running short, we picked up the Motorhome and made our way down to Washington, DC where my sister Mary Beth lives. We had a little apprehension about visiting, she likes to take things over the top and we are not over-the-top type of people. However, out of our entire trip, this was the absolute best part. We stayed in a state campground just a few miles away from her IN DC and she wasn’t like we thought. She was just what we needed, she took us to the Natural History museum and the Smithsonian. She didn’t seem tired or bored and matched our excitement at all the cool things we discovered, even though she had seen them a million times before. It made me so excited to come visit her again.
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After DC, we made our way to Shenandoah National Park and had the best scones of the trip. They were cheesy, chiveey, buttery deliciousness. We did a few hikes in the park <where Isabel encountered some poison ivy>, but didn’t stay long. We again, saw a few AT hikers and I envied their journey … one day.
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We travelled through Virginia, West Virginia, and most of Kentucky and stopped at Mammoth Cave National Park. It was a pretty quick trip. We did the underground cave tour and left. As you are inside, you forget you are underground, the sheer size of the caves is breathtaking.
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We made St. Louis at nightfall and were, at this point, running pretty behind. So rather than waiting until the next day to visit the newly named, “Gateway Arch National Park” we visited with maybe 30 minutes to spare. We ran through the museum and oogled the arch. Due to time, we weren’t able to go into the courthouse. For us, the 20 minutes in the museum set in place our homeschooling decision. History has been told in such a singular way and we want our kids to be open to the world and it’s surroundings. We want them to see there are two sides to every story. The museum did a great job of representing both sides and changed our lives forever.
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The next day on our mad rush back to the Oregon coast we travelled through Missouri, Kansas, and made my old college friend, Floyd’s house in Denver. I wish we would have had more time to explore those states. We stayed for a couple of days with Floyd. Out of all the places we visited, Denver would be on top of our list of places to move. We didn’t have any time to visit national parks, so we decided to save those for our next road trip.
I love interesting things, so when Dinosaur National Monument was only an hour out of our way, I knew we had to stop. Somewhere in my head, I always thought dinosaurs didn’t exist, so seeing is believing. I am no a firm believer in dinosaurs. See the dinosaurs and the shallow ocean that would have extended from here to Guadalupe Mountains National Park helped me (and hopefully the kids) to understand plate tectonics and how our world moves. It’s not a static place and trying to keep our world preserved rather than conserved is a lesson in futility.
As we finished up at Dinosaur National Monument, we went through what was the coolest thunderstorm and lightning of our trip. It was terrifying! We travelled through most of Utah with the sky lit up as day with massive thunderbolts coming down around us.
Just outside of Burns, Oregon the motorhome died, like wouldn’t start, stalled out died. We were so close to family. Less than two hours away! When we had started the journey our “Service Engine Soon” light would turn on intermittently, but in our model motorhome if the problem remedies itself if 20 miles then the code automatically erases. Also, if you turn off the motorhome the code erases. So we were never in a good position to figure out what the problem was. We had visited a mechanic before we left and had a clean bill of health and we visited two others along the way and none of them were able to figure out the problem. We called a tow truck, but the tow guy said it would take him a few hours to get to us and the kids were hungry. It dawned on me, I have a mobile restaurant! So I fired up the oven, pulled out the lawn chairs, and we ate Totino’s pizza on the side of the road that night waiting for the tow truck. I followed the tow into Burns and we discovered it was a simple fix that gave us all the trouble. It was our fuel pump, it would intermittently send an error, but would continue to work until we were 3 hours from Portland! Suffice to say, we drove the Versa to the beach, enjoyed dinner with Josh and his new fiancé and ended the trip on a high note.