Johns Trippin'

When we started this trip, we had a lot to figure out in a short amount of time. Task number one was finding an RV . We also had to deal with the sale of our house and the matter of what to do with everything we owned (some in the RV, some in storage, and most given away). Ultimately, we didn't have time to deal with our secondary vehicle, a Honda Odyssey minivan. We knew we couldn't flat tow it (because it had no "true neutral"), and we didn't want to deal with a dolly (which gets the drive wheels off of the ground). We decided to use it as a chase vehicle. I'd drive the RV and Julie would drive the van. It wasn't ideal given that we would need to double-pay for fuel, but it did give Julie some quiet time! It worked well enough... for a few weeks. It quickly became apparent that the van wasn't up to the task. It had a lot of miles, but it was a Honda, and it was running well at the start, so we figured it would be fine. We were wrong. Our largest expe...

Channel Islands isn't the first park we've visited that has been an expensive challenge to access . At least this one was located in sunny Southern California!   The Channel Islands are a group of eight islands off the coast of Southern California, five of which are in the National Park. (Mac users out there will recognize Catalina, which is one of the three that is not part of the park.) Given the difficulty accessing the park (being a set of islands, it's only available by ferry), the best way to experience them is really by camping for a few nights. And even then you have to pick a single island. Camping wasn't an option for us, so we just had to make the most of our limited time. We started the day early by driving the RV (a story for another post) to the port to board an 8:00 ferry for the 90 minute ride to Santa Cruz island, the largest of the eight. It was a beautiful day, if a bit chilly at that time of morning. We saw a pod of dolphins on the way out, which thr...

It's called Shoshone RV Park, because there's only one RV park in Shoshone and the town has a grand total of 13 residents. The RV park has a little library and a hot spring fed pool. On the way here, mom rode in the RV for the first time because we didn't have a car .  The next day on Sunday, we climbed up the big hill behind the RV park a fter we watched church. This is how close we were to the Death Valley NP boundary I managed to get the whole town in one picture. RV park is across the street from the pool. The one-strip Shoshone Airport is parallel to the road in the top right of the picture.  On Monday, a very nice guy gave us a ball nerf gun and a big 40-bullet nerf gun! We played with the guns in the parking lot next to our campsite a lot. Then we went on a little nature trail called the Pools Trail. It had warm pools and Shoshone Pupfish, which only live in that one spring in the whole world. On the way back, we went by a small culvert where the water from the pool...