Season 2

A year in the rear view mirror!

By Time2Geaux Unplugged

January 1^st, 2020

A year in review, WOW!

There was a method to this madness!

17,031 miles towing, 38,998 miles driven, 4 countries visited, 110 campgrounds visited, $9,273 in fuel, 48 days boondocking

Most memorable: The Icefield Parkway and Disney Cruise to Cozumel

Favorite: Turquoise lakes in the Canadian Rockies

Most disappointing: Glacier National Park, not many glaciers in Glacier National Park.

Best site for wildlife: South Dakota, Badlands

Most fun: Trip to Italy

We hope everyone had great Christmas and a blessed New Year. We pray that this is the last Christmas our military has to spend away from family for our country. We pray that 2020 will be a year that will bring many blessing to you and your family.

We are spent Christmas with family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. While in town we had the camper serviced and made some modification to prepare for upcoming year and our trek to Alaska. We also are headed to sea with our grandson Dawson for a Disney cruise in December which was a lot of fun but the grandparents came back exhausted… and Dawson wanting to go again… we were relieved Santa had other plans!

This year has been full of travel! We have towed our little home over 17,000 miles this year! The focus of this year was a month in Canada to test our system as we prepare to travel to Alaska next year. We had installed a solar system on our rig and needed to test it and to ensure it was adequate for our needs and learn to modify how we camp. We also lost our faithful traveling companion, Bella. She developed a brain tumor and she went to puppy heaven. We were close enough to home to be able to take her back to Louisiana and bury her on puppy island near our pond.

This year’s travels started with a focus on the Heart Land, the middle part of the US. We ended up in Michigan and took a two-week vacation from the vacation by traveling to Italy with my newly discovered brother. Being adopted and raised as an only child it is quite a change to have brothers and sisters now. We were able to enjoy southern Italy and Sicilia together where we ate great food, drank too much wine and made some great memories! After returning we got back on the road and headed up into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and then over to the Boundary Waters. After a relaxing stay on Lake Rainy we crossed the border into Canada at International Falls and drove across the open plains of Saskatchewan and to Calgary where we caught the last weekend of Stampede, Canada’s largest rodeo. What an event! Reminded me of the Houston rodeo but different. For example, the chuck wagon races are a big event, not a filler like in Houston. We really enjoyed the mini chuck wagon races that had teams of ponies pulling little wagons only large enough to hold the driver.

From Calgary we headed into the Canadian Rockies, the focus of our travels this summer year was to spend a month in Jasper and Banff. What an amazing place, active glaciers and the lakes of turquoise. To be able to walk on a glacier and drink the ice-cold runoff was quite a treat! The wildlife was abundant in Jasper and we loved it. Banff had much more tourist vibe but was still manageable. Most everything was along the Icefield Parkway that ran between Jasper and Banff so the two national parks are easy to navigate.

After heading south, we spent a week in Glacier National Park where I ran into a childhood friend that I hadn’t seen in years. Glacier was nice but the glaciers are almost all but gone in the park but we got a first look at a grizzly bear! Luckily, he was across the lake from us and we were able to enjoy him without looking for a place to run. Our favorite hike was from Logan Pass to Hidden Lake where we got up close to mountain goats. They were walking down the trail and we had to get off the trail as they passed, and they even had babies with them! Truly special to see.

After a brief stay in Custer South Dakota, we quite by accident were there at the same time as the Sturgis motorcycle rally. We thought that Custer was almost 100 miles away we would be ok but there were riders everywhere. Looked like a black leather Mardi Gras. We headed east for the trailer manufactures’ national rally where we took classes about aspects of the trailer and this lifestyle. Mostly we meetup with friends and made new ones. After the rally we headed back to South Dakoda and spent two weeks in Custer where we got to enjoy the Black Hills. Not that we don’t like motorcycles, but after coming around a hair-pen turn on one of the parks mountain roads at 15 MPH and coming face to face with a rider cutting the turn short, we just didn’t want to get someone hurt.

Running from the cold, headed south to Colorado where we caught the leaves changing. The yellow aspens are much different than we have experienced in other parts of the country. Worth seeing at least once. We kept heading south and found out some old friends were at the International Balloon Festival so we ran to Albuquerque and got to experience the hundreds of balloons that take park in the Balloon Festa.

We are so blessed to be able to live this lifestyle, while this lifestyle is not for everyone, we have really enjoyed it. We are looking forward to traveling with family and friends and continuing this nomadic lifestyle for the foreseeable future. After Alaska we may cut back on the miles and stay longer in each location to live more like a local rather than a visitor.