RoaDi

Carlsbad, Las Cruces, Deming, Tucson, Camp Verde, Laughlin Well we have put a few miles on the van. All these travel days have much the same pattern. The dogs start to whimper from under the bed. So I roll off take a step and I’m in the bathroom. Then whether Ross has sat up or not I fold up the top duvet (now he’s up and dressing) and power the bed into a sofa. I put the table leg in and then I get dressed. Ross walks the dogs, I fire up the Rancilio and make breakfast. After eating it’s dishes then pack up and drive. The morning is either sightseeing locally or shopping or driving and then the afternoon is driving. We do photo stops regularly. The highlights have been good the last week. In ... read more

Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque These have been interesting cities. We had to leave Taos because of the chance of freezing at night (altitude) and we couldn’t get the heater to work. We looked around the Old Town in both T and SF and mostly did window shopping and picture-taking. We went to the Georgia O’Keefe Museum but I was a little disappointed since there weren’t very many of her more famous paintings. It was interesting to see her work’s progression and I like many of her quotes on life. I got some cool reversible earrings at the gift shop. Then when we wandered around the streets. I found an overwhelming amount of beads in a store I think Marilyn may have mentioned. It took quite a while to get through the shop as I was trying ... read more

Denver We didn’t leave St George until around 1:30 because we did the free medical testing to find out basically the same things as 2 years ago – crooked spines that need chiro or phys therapy, systolic high (salt in the 2 big dinners out the 2 previous nights), and so on. We drove 6 hours through rain, hail and a bit of snow. The cloud forms were fantastic and the scenery kept changing every few minutes. We stayed in Green River at a place called Shady Acres. The Garmin was leading us there and all we could see were empty fields in the dark so we pulled into a gas station to ask if they’d ever heard of the place. It was the place. The sign was burnt out. Again nice clean washrooms and sites. ... read more

RoaDi Trip #4 Utah to … Getting There Lots of driving. Only one incident where Ross thought I was going to hit the car in front but I was manoeuvring to go into the passing lane. His yell made me brake and jerk the car right instead of left where I was going. Scared everyone especially Ebby who was spun around on the floor. Scenery has been interesting and we’re listening to an audio book which is not so interesting but helps with the long hours of driving. Started at 1:30 on Fri and stopped at 7 pm at Blue Sky RV camp not far from Seattle. Sat was from 9 to 9 driving with about a total of 2 hours for food and dog breaks. Fell into bed at 10:30 without bothering with dinner. Sunday, ... read more

Sep 20 Warm-up Walk After a leisurely breakfast and a last walk around town we had the taxi take us to St. Remy de Provence (Sherpa organized). The taxi was doing 120km in single lane traffic. We flew by everything and were in Remy 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Checked in to a beautiful hotel and then did our warm-up walk. St Remy has 21 Van Gogh posters on sign posts around town and in the nearby Roman ruins. We walked all over trying to get to them all. The route just happened to take us through many of those little alley ways that are loaded with quaint shops selling all kinds of specialties. I gave up on the posters and instead tried to see as many of the shops as I could before closing at ... read more

Sep 19 Avignon City Tour We have spent the day walking. There are 4 walking tours around this city – one that climbs a hill even and we did them all. It didn’t seem difficult at all because the shops were open. I walked extra steps in quite a few even tried some clothes and shoes on but prices are rather high and what looks good on all the young French girls doesn’t look quite the same as on me. But I did buy some rather unusual things – drinking straws to impress A&A because they are 70 cm long and just fit the suitcase, a fruit dispenser and drinking glass markers. I did try the usual tourist purchase of L’Occitane products but I can get it cheaper in the States. My hands are nice and ... read more

Sep 15 to 18 Enroute via TGV Never got a chance to write in Paris – too busy eating and sightseeing. Now we are flying through the French countryside on one of the super fast trains and we will be in Avignon in half an hour. Great views out the window until about 20 minutes ago when it started raining. Black and grey clouds ahead of us. Our flight from Moscow was slightly delayed and we had a very short turnaround time in Munich to catch the flight to Paris. I only started my minor panic when we were taxiing to the terminal and I realized we only had 10 minutes until boarding time and our plane was not stopping right at the terminal. We were deplaning in a large parking lot with accordion buses to ... read more

Sep 12 – 14 Moscow Deb and Marilyn were wonderful curtains last night at the talent show. With much bouncing and flourishing of a shawl they made the most of their 3 minutes total time on stage. Then when the show ended they went crazy dancing to country music and that YMCA song. We sailed through the Moscow canal and through many locks and then docked in Moscow about 1:30 pm. We did a city tour which gave us a sample of Sunday traffic in Moscow. It felt like Vancouver rush hour with construction delays and yet in many places there were 8 lanes each way. This is one busy traffic jam almost 24 hours long. However if you are a politically important person you get a Kojak blue light to put on the roof of ... read more

I think I will wait until I am in France to do my Moscow experience. Nothing horrific, lots of sights, traffic is unbelievable - it makes the Mexican drivers and NewYork traffic jams look like a country village.... read more

Sep 11 Yaroslavl was very quiet. There was hardly any traffic for a city if 600,000. We visited a couple of churches and then at 5 there were special services in every church for the victims of the air crash. There is talk of the corruption with technical checks for aviation similar to the tourist ship that sank a few months ago. The town has a nice feel to it as it’s quite an educational center 4 universities, many colleges, academies, etc. We saw several wedding parties. I actually had an excellent cappuccino and a truffle chocolate in a café here. It’s a little weird now though to have someone smoking in a building. Russian men especially smoke a lot and cigarettes are very, very cheap in Russia. Our city tour guide was a riot – ... read more