Monthly Archives: August 2014

Ichetucknee Springs in north Florida

Our amazing journey is over, a grand total of 8300 miles traveled in the RV and countless more in the Jeep, while out exploring our environs.    We celebrated our return to Florida by visiting one of the pristine springs located throughout Florida.   Located in north Florida, Ichetucknee Springs is a first magnitude spring, which means that 63 million gallons of  chilly 72 F water flow out of the spring every day.   A three hour leisurely tube ride down the river is a very popular summer activity and although we didn’t do it this time, we’ve done it in the past and hope to do it again sometime. Continue reading →

The Theodore Roosevelt NP

As we begin our trek eastward we want to travel on a different route than the one we traveled when we went west. In our quest to escape the crowds and major highways we thought we would travel on Hwy 2, which runs parallel to the Canadian border, all the way from Montana to Minnesota. A very helpful couple who live in Montana and are originally from Minnesota strongly advised us to change our plans.  Apparently the oil boom towns of the massive Bakken Oil Field are in the northern part of N. Dakota along Hwy 2. We heeded their advise and chose wisely, as others also told us of the crime and chaos in that area, which it is much like the gold rushes of the late 1800’s with no housing, astronomical prices, horrible traffic, etc. Continue reading →

The border crossing at Chief Mountain

We made our border crossing at the very small, frontier-like outpost of Chief Mountain between Waterton NP and Glacier NP. There were only 1 RV and 1 car in front of us and no one behind us, and we were asked a total of 2 questions. What a breeze. Continue reading →

We left the Rocky Mountains and decided to go to Drumheller, Alberta, the home of a major Canadian tourist attraction, the Royal Tyrrell Museum. The museum, located 84 miles northeast of Calgary, AB  in the Canadian badlands, is a center of palaeontological research and is noted for its collection of more than 130,000 fossils. The first dinasaur fossils were discovered here in 1884 by geologists searching for coal seams and since then fossils continue to be found. The collection continues to grow and now contains at least 40 mounted dinosaur skeletons. It was a great museum and I’m glad we made the little detour out there. Continue reading →

Wow, talk about having a bad day! .

We arrived at Lake Louise in Banff National Park on a Thursday before one of the busiest long weekends of the summer, BC Day, on Monday Aug. 4^th. Even though we arrived by 11am all the campgrounds with hook-ups or in the most popular areas were already taken. We were anticipating this and decided to try a first come/first serve campground on the Bow Valley Parkway called Johnston Canyon, suggested by Pam and Rob’s friend Tracy. We got lucky and got the last site available for a unit our size for 4 nights. It was dry camping at its best and ideally situated between Banff and Lake Louise. Continue reading →