Summer 2017 Adventures

June 6, 2017 – After several days of packing up the RV for multiple adventures, we hit the road mid-morning.   The first part of our trip is totally unplanned; a wander toward Hood River, OR.  For those of you who don’t know, our oldest son, Jim, left Boeing in Seattle and has moved to Hood River to work for a new company, Insitu, which is also owned  by Boeing but is operated as a separate wholly owned subsidiary. 

New Motorhome setup

Late last summer we sold our 2007 Winnebago Navion (Mercedes Sprinter) motor home and bought a brand new 2017 Winnebago Sun Star LX 27N motorhome.  It is 5' longer than our older one, but still only 28' long plus 3 slide outs which make it more of a "tiny house".  We have a queen sized bed in the back, a nice kitchen area, a bigger dinette and TONS of storage.  We are also pulling a 2001 Jeep Wrangler with the bikes on the back for getting off the beaten path.  We have taken several shorter trips with the motor home and REALLY like it.  We had to give up the Mercedes diesel engine that got 15mpg, for a Ford 10 cylinder gas engine that gets about 8mpg, but so far we are very happy.

Our nephew, Nicholas, sometimes summer support driver, traveling companion, and all around good kid (now young man) is flying into Portland, OR on June 28^th to join us for the second part of the trip.  The plan is to spend time in Hood River with Jim and Heidi, then Seattle, Jasper and Banff.  Ted plans to leave for his Continental Divide trip on July 12^th from Banff for all points south to NM.  Nicholas and Beth will then take the RV and head to MO to visit with relatives.   Beth will then drive the RV back to ABQ to return to work.  Ted should make it to the CO/NM border toward the end of Aug. or first of Sept.   We will joint blog for the first part of the trip.  Ted will then draft his adventures whenever he can for Beth to post.  Beth will continue to post until Ted finishes.   So, check in frequently from now to Sept.

Echo Amphitheater just in front of the RV

With no particular destination in mind other than the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park sometime this week, we started north.  Our stop tonight is at Echo Amphitheatre north of Abiquiu, NM.    We have stopped here when the kids were young on our way to or from Wolf Creek for skiing.  Echo Amphitheatre is a semi-circular

natural rock formation that (of course) echoes what is said in front of it.  Our campsite looks south toward the Jemez Mountains and a better view could not be found.