Know Your Limitations

Park Loop Road BridgeI’ve been meaning to write about this for quite some time now. But I guess I’ve just been putting it off in fear of triggering nightmares about the day we almost got stuck in Syracuse, NY. Literally.

After a long day of driving and one missed turn, we ended up amidst the suburban sprawl of outer Syracuse in stop and go traffic at rush hour. As we rounded one corner, I noticed a bridge and barely saw the 12′ 9″ low clearance sign with just enough time to take the last possible turn before heading under. While we might have made it through, it was just too close for comfort and wasn’t worth the chance. Our rig measures 12′ 5″ at the the tallest point. To know this is a good thing.

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Watch Out for The Mansons

When you’re roaming about the countryside, be careful who you tell your story to, or you could end up as a member of the latest Manson Clan.

Vermont Farmers Market SquashYesterday while shopping at one of the last Farmer’s Markets of the season here in Vermont, we stopped to admire some homemade bread being sold by vendors who appeared to be typical Vermont farmers. We sampled the breads they had, and they were so good. They were “heavenly.” Even though bread looked as dense as bricks, each sample we tasted was light and tasty. So we were blown away when the farmer told us that the breads were wheat free, and made with spelt flour. Spelt?

Isn’t spelt some some earthy, nasty ingredient that hippies bake with to snake out their colons or something? Ick! Now we’d eaten it!

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Chasing Down Biodiesel

Biodiesel in VermontWhen we picked out our Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck, one of our requirements was that it had to have a diesel engine, so that we could run biodiesel or straight veggie oil (SVO) in it. We wanted to offset our footprint by buying such a large vehicle. So we took a class on Making Your Own Biodiesel, learned the ins and outs of producing and buying it, and set off on this trip with the hope that we would find it in lots of places. Eventually, we’ll make our own, but for now, we have to rely on Biodiesel.org to tell us who’s selling it and where.

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Spontaneous Gardening in Our National Parks

Hitchhiker II RV sizePeople often ask us, “What do you do without a TV?” Well, sometimes, the best entertainment is just people watching in the campground.

For instance, last week at Acadia National Park in Maine, we watched in shock as our neighbor tried to get his 35′ fifth wheel out of the campground. This was a very tall rig. Nothing wrong with that, but as many of you know, many government campgrounds aren’t often designed for today’s RVs.

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Creatively Making Money with Digital Scrapbooking

Creative Memories Digital StoryBooksPeople often ask us if we miss our “stuff.” Well, the only thing I miss are my scrapbooking and card making supplies. I hated to put them in storage, and thought I’d have to say goodbye to my favorite creative outlet for a while.

But recently, I was introduced to Digital Scrapbooking, and fell in love with it. The digital way of preserving family memories is so much less expensive, more flexible — and saves a ton of space, because everything is done on my computer.

I’m enjoying it so much, that now I’m teaching others about it. Even people who don’t consider themselves “creative” are finding that they can design crafty “coffee table” style, archival quality photo books.

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Donde Esta La Familia?

Families that Go RVingIn just our first few months on the road as full-timers, we’ve met tons of great, fun people. Now that school’s back in session, we’re meeting more fulltime RVers, most of them retired. One thing I’ve noticed is, there hasn’t been a person of color in the whole bunch (I’m assuming this of course, based on outward appearances, however right or wrong that may be). But as a brown skinned person, this kind of observation is just something that one tends to notice throughout life. Please; I’m not saying it has any sort of impact on what I think of people or places, or whatever.

But I find myself wondering; why aren’t people of color getting in on the full-time RV lifestyle?

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Living By Instinct: Discovering Plainfield, Vermont

 

Plainfield Vermont Food CooperativeNot Just Aimless Wanderers

Not having to watch a clock has given us the really precious gift of being able to go with the flow, follow our intuition and just let things happen. How sad that life as working fools, we are all too busy to meander down streets of different places, or stop to chat and get to know people. Why should this great learning experience be reserved for retired folks only?

Not charting a strict course is less about aimlessly wandering around the map, and more about listening to intuition, so that we can open ourselves up to what lies ahead. Doing so has brought us many adventures, and helped us to learn tons about where we might want to set down roots.

We Found a Contender: Plainfield, Vermont

Recently, after leaving Burlington and moving toward New Hampshire, Jim and I were completely starving for some grub. We kept looking for a good place to turn into, but the countryside’s driveways don’t give much room to stop an 8,000 pound trailer. Finally, we spotted one of Vermont’s unobtrusive roadside business announcement billboards (Vermont, Maine, Alaska and Hawaii are the only four states that have outlawed billboards).

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Beware of Moose

Beware of Moose when driving New England Roads. RV and Auto collisions with moose cause severe damage and injuries. Readers share their stories and photos.

Third Time’s a Charm

Hammock TimeWhen we embarked on this trip, I often imagined kicking back in my hammock with my Powerbook and enjoying my new office. Well, the first couple times that I have actually strung up the thing I ended up not spending any time in it at all. If my hammock time wasn’t called on account of rain, there was either too much on my RV honey do list or simply too much of the outdoors to go enjoy.

I am now happy to say that my vision has finally come true. The view from my new office is well worth the wait. The only thing missing is our internet connection.

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But Can We Stand the Weather?

We’ve traveled many miles searching for our ideal community. A few times, we thought we might have found it. But . . . The thought of moving into a small town is nice, but few have the diversity that we feel makes life more interesting. We crave the solitude of 40 acres in the sticks, but fear we might go nuts being so isolated. And …

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Epilogue: Shaking the Family Tree


Toronto City HallRené asked me if I felt any more Candian now. Truth is, I have always felt part Canuck – though my home team would be the Maple Leafs – since I learned my mother was from Toronto and I went to the Snow Festival in Quebec as a child. After all, I am supposedly half French Canadian and half Scottish Irish. And one of my closest, dearest friends hails from Winnipeg eh. But I have to admit it felt good being Canadian at least for a day. Especially since that day happened to be September 11th.

It was actually nice to not be bombarded by the regular American media suspects forcing us to remember in vivid detail the tragic events of 2001, as they have every year for the past six. The only sign whatsoever that it was in fact 9/11 was a group of peaceful demonstrators in downtown Toronto proposing that the World Trade Center tragedy was an inside job. And personally, I was glad the morning paper didn’t carry a full page image of the burning towers that has been burned into my psyche the very day it happened.

Coverage of events at Ground Zero made it to page eighteen of Canada’s national newspaper. The front page was reserved for a 30th anniversary tribute to the beating death of Steven Biko by South African police. I found the story educational, enlightening, and touching. Perhaps it was buried deep in U.S. papers, I don’t know. But I doubt this important reminder of apartheid in the world made the front pages.

I just had to play Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” from Shaking the Tree on the iPod as we crossed the border back into the U.S. after being questioned by a stern guy playing the role of a Nazi officer. So do I feel a bit more Canadian? You bet eh. And it feels good.

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Climbing Down the Family Tree


Jim and Rene at the AltarWe haven’t blogged in a few days because we took some time to trace my roots with a brief trip into Toronto. While we accomplished our mission of finding the church where my parents were married and the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, we also discovered that the trip was far too brief to discover everything we wanted to know about living in Ontario, Canada.

Although we have budgeted for a few hotel nights each month on this trip, our stay at Melford Cottage Bed and Breakfast in Oakville Ontario was the first time we have left the comfort of our trailer since selling our stick house and putting our bedroom furniture in storage over three months ago. While it did feel a bit weird leaving all our possessions in the trailer at Four Mile Creek NY State Park campground to take a little vacation from our “vacation”, Heather Donaldson’s home served as a great base to search for my Mom’s roots around Toronto and gave us a chance to reconsider what the future holds for us once again.

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