Karen & Collins' Great RV Adventures

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Wow, Winter, Spring & Summer 2020. Winter 2021

What can we say about 2020 except WOW.

This is going to be pretty short & sweet because it was a crazy year. We started Dec, happy & at "home" in our winter place, Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic. Until the beginning of the year, there had only been a few of us here, but soon all our Canadian & US friends started to arrive.

We have a beautiful view from our condo & the water was crystal clear

We also had beautiful sunsets

Great views at night

We celebrated Collins' Birthday Jan 6th with friends Cathy & Bob

We had dinner with 2 friends from our first year here, Ellen & Richard. Both have lost their spouses, but return to Marbella.

By mid January most of the gang had arrived & were soaking up the warmth & the sunshine. Unfortunately, we had a tragedy strike our Marbella family. Katie & Stewart had arrived from England just a couple days earlier. Stewart collapsed early one morning & died from an apparent blood clot. The medical examiner seemed to think it was caused from him not moving around the plane during their long flight. Everyone offered support for Katie until her son & step daughter could arrive. It was such a sad time, but amazing to see how everyone came together for her. She, her son & her step daughter had a memorial dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. Lots of tears & good memories were shared that night.

Snuggles isn't too sure she likes having Velcro Visit for the day

There are several of us here with dogs. Collins & I have become the resident dog walkers when the others go out for the day. Snuggles won't go with anyone else & we don't usually leave for long periods of time.

Every year one of our Canadian friends plans what they call a "pub crawl". Pub is a very generous word for most of the places they go. It has never before worked out for us to go, but this year was the one for us.

There were about 20 of us walking along the streets of Juan Dolio. Most of the places we stopped are mostly visited by the locals here.

We started about 2pm & ended up at a little pizza place down the street. We literally took over the whole place. What I learned from a "veteran" before we started, was to have water at some of the places, rather than beer. That worked out great. No hangover for us the next day. Good thing we had our fun while we could. We had no idea what was around the corner.

Saying goodbye to all our Canadian friends

In early March, the Canadian gov’t notified their international traveling citizens they had 10 days to return or they would lose their Health Coverage for Covid 19. Regardless of the propaganda to the contrary, if given the choice between losing their Health Insurance or first born, many would not know which to choose. For the next 7 days, the DR airports were overflowing and we lost 25+ couples that we interact with every year from our complex.

This gave us a few days of indecision: go or stay? We finally chose stay; The weather was definitely better than Illinois & virus far less of a concern. Hence our 3 ½ month stay turned into 7 months, and we never regretted it.

Even Snuggles came to enjoy walks on the beach - even got her paws wet

As the DR shut down travel between provinces, enacted strict 13 hour curfews and closed bars & restaurants, except carry out, the complex became literally our private domain. While the gym & pool were closed, we were able to enjoy walking the otherwise empty beach, have great meals, & incredible trays of brownies, delivered to us by the ladies from upstairs who owned one of our favorite restaurants & were doing takeout from a limited menu (including the brownies). Collins is a chocoholic.

Around the beginning of June, we were so happy to see the girl who sold fruit on the street

The weather remained mild (upper 60’s nights, low to mid 80”s days, & a 24/7 cool breeze off the ocean, which our 8^th floor balcony faces) until the last of June. During the first 5 ½ months, we didn’t run the air-conditioning for a cumulative 30 hrs.

On July 7^th we returned to Chicago & then drove to Elkhart, Indiana where we had left the RV for major interior updating. I forgot to take pictures, so will have to post in the next blog. We returned to St. Charles, IL, where we went through our annual battery of doctor visits. Having received an OK, or repairs as needed, we again hit the road.

First was KY to see Karen’s 95 year old mother, who will clean your clock in cards if given a chance. She lives in her own apartment in a Senior Living Facility, so life has been pretty boring for them the past few months. I'm really proud of the way, she's handled the whole lockdown experience. they've had to eat all their meals in their rooms & basically no social activities.

Then it was off to Virginia. We've stayed in parts of Virginia before, but never been on the Shenandoah skyline or the Virginia part of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We were on our way to Florida so figured this would be a good year to do that. We were trying to chase the changing tree colors, so ended up staying longer in Virginia than we had originally planned, but did see some pretty colors.

One day we went to the Luray Caverns. It's pretty amazing to look at the stalactite & the stalagmite formations.

We finally made it to Florida about the middle of November. We started in Jacksonville for a couple weeks. They had Osprey in the park where we stayed. They're certainly large birds.

We were also able to watch one of the night space launches from our campground. Yes, it was far away, but it was still an awesome site.

We went a little closer to Orlando as it got near Thanksgiving. Our daughter, Collina, her finance, & our granddaughters & great grandson are not too far from there. We hadn't seen our granddaughters & great grandson in several years, so we did an outdoor, social distanced Thanksgiving. When we got back to the RV that night, I realized none of us had taken any pictures. Guess we were too busy enjoying good food & great company.

After Thanksgiving we moved to our last Florida spot for the month of Dec. It was in a town named Tavares & turned out to be a great find. We'll probably return there.

We mostly stayed around the campground, but there was a close by town, Mt. Dora, which had a beautiful Christmas light display.

We celebrated an early Christmas with our daughter, Collina & her fiance Mike, granddaughters, Brittany & Lexi & our great grandson, Blake. It was a fun evening.

Before we knew it, it was time to put the RV back in storage & head back to the Dominican Republic. That has become our winter home for 3 or 4 months. This year is pretty quiet. Most of our Canadian friends & several of our US friends did not return this year. You may think we're crazy to be in a foreign country with the pandemic going on. However, all of us here, actually feel safer here than in the US. During the week, there are very few people here, everyone wears a mask on the elevator, in the lobby & on the street. The weekends can get pretty crowded, so Collins & I decided before we came, we would just stay in our apartment on the weekends. Believe me, it's no hardship. We have a beautiful view & a great breeze blowing thru, so we're not missing out on much.

We hope this finds all of you & your families in good health.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

2019

Well my friends, as you can see, I've gotten very lazy & not posted for more than a year. Things are well with us & we're still moving along in our RV. I'm sure many of you follow our facebook posts, so you have a pretty good idea of where we've been. I'm going to try to recap without going on forever.

As usual, we started 2019 in the Dominican Republic. Anyone who follows this knows we consider that our winter home. We arrived Jan 2 & stayed until the end of March. Our usual collection of friends, mostly Canadian, were there also.

Love this view

Collins & Snuggles started off right with a nap

Met up with Friends Leigh Ann & Terry

Our Son, Doug, came for about 10 days. He lucked out & came during the worse days of the Chicago winter.

After Doug left, our yearly visitor arrived. That would be my friend Sue. She stayed almost 3 weeks this year & we all had a great visit.

Celebrating her Valentine's Birthday at our favorite restaurant.

Yevette, the girl I buy my fresh fruit from

We ended our stay in the Dominican Republic at the end of Mar & went back to IL.

Luckily, our son, Doug, was kind enough to let us stay with him for awhile. The campgrounds near by don't open until the beginning of May & we wanted to sell one of our rental properties. Once again, that meant painting & fixing & cleaning, etc. All our hard work paid off & we sold the property the first week we put it on the market. That left us with 3, hopefully to sell in 2020.

Birthday Girl, Becca, in the center

During this time period, we were also able to celebrate our granddaughter, Becca's, 21st Birthday.

We also had, grandson Tyler's, high school graduation

Tyler & Ryan

Us with Tyler

Karen with Tyler & daughters, Paula & Pam

Grandkids, Ryan, Katie, Tyler, Becca & Danny

Ready for takeoff

This is how Snuggles traveled

Also, the first week of June, we were headed to Europe for another Great RV Caravan with our favorite wagonmaster, Thomas Grossman & his wonderful tailgunners Michael & Sabina. We were spending a month traveling from Hamburg, Germany To Denmark, Sweden , Norway & back to Hamburg. It's such a great way to see Europe. Since I've waited so long to post this, I'm going to mostly post pictures bc I can't remember every place we were.

DENMARK

Our traveling companions

Swans are plentiful in Europe

The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, Denmark

An Ice Bar, where everything is made of Ice

We saw some unique campers

Had to stop for a beer (or 3) after our sightseeing trip

Collins was "feeling " that high alcohol, dark beer

The plants at this castle & museum were huge

We've never seen such huge lilacs

This was a unique RV at an old car museum

This huge field was all red poppies

Changing of the guard at the Copenhagen Palace

At Tivoli Gardens with our "drinking" buddies

SWEDEN

Kalmar Castle

Stockholm, Sweden

Waiting for a train to take us to Stockholm from our campground

Restored Viking Ship at the Vasa Ship Museum

Viking Ship

Restored Ship

What the ship looked like when built

Rest stop & snuggle time

Dala Horse Shop

Making Dala Horses

Dala Horses are handpainted

Lupines grew wild along most of the roads

NORWAY

Of all the countries we visited, we would have to say Norway was our favorite. It was by far, the most beautiful, with waterfalls everywhere you looked.

One of our first stops was the ski jump from the 1994 Winter Olympics. It's a long way up, whether looking from the bottom or the top down

It's a long way down

As we were driving there were sheep everywhere along (sometimes on) the highway.

Even when we parked, they came right up to the RVs

Happy hour along a river

Rest stop

Road side souvenir shop

Thomas decided to buy a sheepskin & make it his pet dog

The Voringfossen Waterfall is the 83rd highest waterfall in Norway

Trolls are very popular in Norway

The Hydrangas were huge. That is Collins' hand

The bridge across Eidfjord

This shows a roundabout inside a huge tunnel

Roundabout in the tunnel

Oh no, another troll

We took the train to Flam a town on the Aurlandsfjord which is a branch of the world's longest fjord.

A stop at the Kjos Waterfall

Information on the ferry below. We took this back instead of the train

View of Bergen

Collins at the Double Waterfall

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Haddal Stave Church

Snuggles is checking out the campground

Frogner Park

All the sculptures in this park are of some form of humans. Many are in twisted positions. They were strange

This ski jump in Oslo is quite a site. Wouldn't care to try it.

Overlooking Oslo

Viking Museum

The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in this room

Ice Burg Sculpture in the bay outside the Oslo Opera House

This Opera House is Unique in the fact that if you walk all the way back you will be level with the roof

Nesting Swan

Group Dinner at the campground

Giant Hollyhocks

Lubek Germany

We made a stop for dessert at the Niederegger Cafe, Maker of famous marzipan. There were so many choices & they were all delicious

Our last Happy Hour & Snuggles finally sat in Thomas' lap

Upon returning to Hamburg, Germany, Collins & I stayed a few extra days for some sightseeing.

This is their brand new Opera House

The following pictures are all taken at the Miniature Wunderland. In additon to over 1,300 trains, it has 100,000 moving vehicles, 500,000 lights, 130,000 trees & 400,000 figurines (all in miniature). They have recreated airports & cities from all over the world. We spent over 5 hours here & really could have spent a couple more. It starts with daylight & progresses thru the day to night & back to daylight again. This is definitely one of those "don't miss" places.

After returning to the US from our great European RV trip, we managed a dinner out with all our adult kids. It was such a fun evening.

Dave, Paula, Karen, Collins, Doug, Pam & Aaron

After a couple weeks stop in Illinois, we were off to the Allegheny Mountains for the remainder of the summer. At one of our stops along the way, our neighbor had a pet duck they brought camping with them.

At one of the camprgrounds, they had a cardboard boat contest on the Allegheny River. Some of the participants were quite creative. For the others, it was a good thing the river was quite shallow there.

One of the best parts of our trip to Pennsylvania, was meeting up with our Canadian Friends Shelagh & Ron Furtney. It wasn't a long visit, but we had so many laughs for those few days.

On our way back to Illinois, we stopped to visit our grandson, Ryan. First year of college at Bowling Green

In front of his Dorm Building

Upon returning to Illinois, we started getting the RV ready for it's renovations, which were to be done while we were in the Dominican Republic. We had a hard time choosing the flooring, but with some help from daughter Pam & granddaughter, Katie, we finally made a decision.

After that, the hard part began. We had decided to rip out all the old flooring ourselves, I should say Collins. That was a horrible job.

Plus, we decided we were sick of the boring wall coverings, so we painted. And yes, We did get a little dramatic.

Before we left for Indiana, we had a chance to have dinner with our grandson, Danny & his girlfriend, Morgan. It's so different when your grandchildren are adults.

We also had time for another adult kids dinner, this time with daughter Collina & her Fiance joining us from Florida. Another fun evening

From left, Aaron, Pam, Mike, Collina, Doug, Karen, Collins, Paula & Dave

Collina, Doug & Collins

Enjoyed the beautiful fall colors

We took month trip to Alabama, it was warmer than IL & a stop to see my mom in Lexington, KY before our Indiana drop off.

After dropping the RV in Elkhart, IN we went back to IL. Since we were leaving for the Dominican Republic Dec 17th, we celebrated an early Christmas with the family there.