Karen & Collins' Great RV Adventures: 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.