We have long been interested in the Chemin de St Jacques, the Pilgrim’s Way from all over Europe to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Well, not enough to actually walk it ourselves but it has been fun to follow the adventures of various friends who have walked it. One of the trails passes through Montpellier and we have walked the route through the city, several portions of it before we discovered the streets we liked to walk were actually part of the route. In our readings about the Camino, we found references to St Guilhem le Désert, a small town not too far from here. The web site says it is one of the most beautiful villages in France. How could we pass that up? Our preferred method of exploration is to look places up ... read more

Our latest adventure takes us back to France where the centre piece is a five week stay in Montpellier visiting with Mr. Darcy, the cat we sat with in 2017. Several other stops are planned in what will be a 68 night trip. In the two months between Dec 20th when the big windstorm hit Pender (and other locations around us) and Feb 20th when we left for France, things were pretty wild. Lots of devastation because of the wind storm (but no fatalities) and two major (for us) snow storms cancelled lots of activities. Snow on Pender is a problem because of the hills and limited snow removal equipment. So it was with some pleasure we left for France and temperatures forecast in the 17-20°C range Our itinerary took us through Vancouver and Frankfurt. Both ... read more

So we have finally arrived at our last stop in Utah: Moab, a city near Arches National Park. The heat has continued so we were glad to have some shade in the campground. We made sure we got out early to do our hiking. And the wind was often with us. It was so windy when Dianne was preparing supper one night that she put the salad on the plates in Ziploc bags so it wouldn’t blow away. Arches National Park The park is aptly named. Most of what people come to see is arches and there are lots of them. The park is huge and you can put on a few kilometres getting from one place to another. There is a lot of up and down travel but this lends itself to lots of spectacular ... read more

Dianne had rearranged our schedule so we wouldn’t be arriving at Mesa Verde on the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. A good plan. The National Park campground was listed as First-Come, First-Served. We got there early but when Dianne asked for 4 nights, she was told we could have Thursday and Friday but Saturday and Sunday were booked solid. Huh? What about First-Come, First-Served? It appears you still have to have a reservation but the reserved sites are handed out First-Come, First-Served. First time we have seen that. The woman at the desk did provide us with a reference to a commercial campground just outside the park that was actually quite nice. More about that later. Mesa Verde National Park One thing I found out about Mesa Verde after we were well into this trip is that ... read more

The second target on our trip was Bryce Canyon National Park. We decided when we entered Zion to buy an Annual Pass to the National Parks even though we didn’t get the American Citizen rate or a seniors discount. I am not sure if it was a financially good deal but it was certainly convenient. There are a couple of ways to get from Zion to Bryce. One is to go back the way we came and take the long way around Zion (147 miles). The other is a shortcut (72 miles) that involves a road with many twists, turns and switchbacks plus a one mile tunnel. There are rules about over height and over length vehicles as well as stories about delays when they restrict traffic to one way to allow these behemoths to use ... read more