End of our 16th summer trip

The ones that read my blog know that my wife and I are from out of the States and that we RV every summer for 4-5 months , at the end of each trip we store the rig and fly home for the winter, in the following Spring we pick the rig from the storage and discover new to us States/Provinces.

Because we hike allot mainly to waterfalls, View Points, Lakes and Mountain Peaks it took us 16 years to "cover" most of North America main areas.

This year we started in Bend Oregon and ended in Spokane WA, hiking Mt Helen,Mt Rainer,Mt Baker and visiting the beautiful Washington West Coast ( scroll back to my previous posts ).

It is a challenge to store the rig each time in a different place without worrying all winter what is going to happen to the trailer and the truck during these months, will mice adopt the trailer, will ants enter, will heavy snow damage the roof or will the sun "burn" the walls, in any case there is no alternative for us and so far no major damage happened touch wood.

The storage process starts few days before our departure to the closest Airport , it includes: removing all foods, cleaning the trailer from inside from all remaining foods that might attract mice, shutting the fridge ,disconnecting the battery,winterizing,packing bags that fly with us (mainly clothes and presents for grandkids), lowering trailers front to get rid of snow and water , covering the wheels and the air-condition, putting wood boards under the wheels and asking someone to start the truck every 2 weeks for 10 minutes and hoping for the best.

Sometimes like this year we are lucky to leave the rig on a friends property instead of a RV storage place , we know that it will be in good hands and can always find out through e-mails how are things going.

After all these preparations we start our trip back home that can take in some cases 2 days:

We were booked with United Airlines from Spokane via Denver to Toronto to visit our son before flying home, the connection in Denver was 55 Minutes, which is OK if the flight arrives on time to Denver , in our case the flight to Denver took off 3 hours later than scheduled , so we stayed in Denver overnight and continued on the next day, it was not bad if you are familiar with the Airlines regulations and demand them to pay for accommodations, transfers and meals .

All in All we are having a blast in the last 16 Summers, everyday is a new "adventure", we manage the bank of time as we wish, we like it then we stay -we don't like it then we move, we can hike an area using the truck for days before moving to a new spot with the trailer and most of all we made many friends that enriched our lives ,some we are in touch constantly and meet again after a year or two.

LIFE IS GOOD IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT AND DO THINGS THAT YOU CAN AFFORD AND LIKE .

Thank you all dear friends and RVers that shared great times with us, may you all be able to do what you want to do but had no time till today.

See ya all next summer.