The journey begins...

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After the cruise we headed back to The Dalles, spent one night there and headed our on our big journey. Before we got to Washington state our trailer awning decided to come down while we were heading down the freeway. Now this was big problem as we had never actually learned how to use the awning yet. So we figured it out on side of a busy freeway.

Our first overnight stop was the air force base in Spokane Washington. They have an RV park on the base and we figured we could stay there for a lot less money than a regular RV park. We had a shocker. First of all, it was difficult getting on the base with all the security we had to go thru. They had to completely inspect our trailer and truck, once we got cleared, we had to drive our way thru an obstacle course of cement barriers and orange cones. Imagine doing that with the beast. Once we got to the RV park it got worse. The park was full and the bathrooms & showers were just yucky. We ended up parking in a nearby field with no hookups at all. We really expected better than that. Oh well, moving on.

Montana was fine. Very pretty. Wyoming was interesting. We saw a lot of wild antelope in the pastures along side the interstate, but no buffalo to be seen anywhere. South Dakota was very different. Everything is very flat and there are roadside billboards everywhere. But they are a bit misleading. You’ll see a billboard telling you about something at the next exit, but the next exit is maybe 30 miles away.

Minnesota was bit scary. Once we crossed the state line I felt like we were in the twilight zone. We stopped seeing other Rvs on the road and the road construction got really bad. We had planned on stopping overnight at Wal-Mart (Rvs can park overnight for free in their parking lots) but when we got to our chosen location outside of Minneapolis we saw signs telling us we couldn’t park there. We had to wait until about 10pm before we could get back on the interstate and try to drive to the next Wal-Mart. The traffic was just too much for us to handle during the day and during the commuting times. When we got to the next Wal-Mart it was in a very scary area. We almost left again. We didn’t like Minnesota at all.

Michigan was ok. Lots of bugs though. We had our first pastie (meat pie). We took a much needed 3 day break in St Ignace on Lake Huron.

Spent a couple of days driving through Canada. Lots of trees and moose crossing signs. We dropped back down to the US in upstate New York. At last we could buy gas in gallons instead of liters. Once we got to New England area the scenery became very nice. Lots of forest valleys and hills. Absolutely no billboards. New England has a law against roadside advertising. It took us about 50 miles to realize what was missing.

The Ben & Jerry ice cream factory was a nice stop. The tour took about 45 minutes and the tasting at the end was much too quick.

Our 2nd day back in the states saw us reaching our destination. We rolled into our campground late in the day. We picked our campsite out started the set up. What a mess. It was about 5pm and there was little black flies swarming everywhere. They followed us everywhere we went. We actually had to take breaks inside the truck cause the flies were so bad. They bit too.

But we got hooked up. The view from our trailer is very scenic. That’s all for now.

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