Bruno’s brother, sister-in-law, and niece made the overseas trip from France to visit my parents in our neck of the woods this summer.  In fact, the visit from Bruno’s family was the entire reason behind the crazy summer road trip Bruno and I have undertaken since May, from Baja California, Mexico, all the way to the east coast of Canada.  In all, we drove almost 10,000km to reach Bruno’s family in time!  If that’s not love, I don’t know what is!

Once we reached home, though, our time on the road wasn’t quite finished.  Along with my parents (in their new RV) and Bruno’s family (in their rented RV), we embarked on a 9-day road trip through Nova Scotia.

Now, perhaps, you understand the radio silence!  Will you forgive me, loyal reader?

Three Weeks in Quebec

Most of July was spent in Quebec, a gigantic province with so much to offer that we had purposely driven most of the Canadian portion of our road trip the previous month.  We wanted to slow down and begin to enjoy summer in Canada – and what better place to do that than in Quebec!

Bruno and I spent four nights in Parc National de la Mauricie.  We weren’t the only ones there – summer had officially arrived and people were all out camping in nature.  Though neither of us is used to being somewhere during high season, it didn’t stop us from enjoying the park.  In fact, I sort of dug the festive, convivial atmosphere at the lakes, waterfalls, and campgrounds.

We weren’t the only ones admiring this waterfall on a glorious hot summer day in Parc National de la Mauricie!

Then we headed toward Lac St.-Jean, the Fjords of Saguenay, and the Tadoussac area to try to spot the thirteen species of whales in the St. Lawrence River.  We succeeded, and had a great time with the whales!  The zodiac whale-watching adventure was my birthday gift from my parents (thank you so much!) and, since I managed to get a discount from the company, Bruno and I continued our birthday celebration that night at a cute little café called Kiboiquoi (French-speaking people, can you figure out the play on words?) which offered live music that night.

The rest of my birthday celebration at Kiboikoi, post-whale-watching.

Live Quebec music at Kiboikoi.

Next we put our Big Blue Bus on its first-ever ferry ride to the Gaspé Peninsula (la Gaspésie) and spent just over a week exploring this stunning and unique region of Quebec.  I haven’t had a chance to write a blog post about our time here, and what with all the lovely photos we collected, I simply can’t skim over it here.  You’ll just have to wait to hear (and see) about one of my new favourite regions of Canada!

Our ferry arriving in port.

A few other ships in the St. Lawrence that day.

This one was at port and there were like 60 crew members, dressed alike, to put down the sails. Very cool!

A first view of the Gaspe Peninsula.

A Week in New Brunswick

I was pretty pumped to visit the northern region of my home province of New Brunswick, as it has largest concentration of Acadian people in the world.  Since I’m surrounded by the Acadian language and culture every summer, I really wanted to learn more about their history.  Bruno and I made it a priority to visit Caraquet’s Acadian Historic Village and, despite high expectations, both of us were blown away by how fantastic this living museum was.  I think a blog post about Acadians – a people you may never even have heard of! – is in order on the blog soon.

Bruno and I took the coastal route home, stopping in lovely Ile Miscou, at the northeast tip of the province, before meandering our way south.  We made stops at many of the province’s lovely beaches.  Before we knew it, we were welcomed home by five members of our families.

Welcome to the Acadian Peninsula!

Le Village Historique Acadien.

Our boondock on l’Ile Miscou, at the NW tip of New Brunswick.

Ten Days in Nova Scotia

As part of their tour of the region, Bruno’s family had rented an RV in Halifax for nine nights.  All of us decided to tag along, so we went on an epic three-RV road trip!  We spent the majority of our time on the stunning island of Cape Breton, and finished with a few days near Halifax and Lunenburg.

I love getting to share a bit of the road with loved-ones, and this trip was definitely one of the highlights of our year.  It was well-worth the months of driving to arrive in time to join them!  I cannot wait to post what will undoubtedly be a very photo-heavy blog of our Nova Scotian road trip.

Our 3-RV family road trip to Nova Scotia!

Prepping a picnic in the spacious kitchen of our giant bus! (Couldn’t have done this in Totoyaya, that’s for sure!)

Following the first two RVs in our convoy along the Cabot Trail.

Statistics:

KMs driven: 4,304km in 40 days.

Provinces: 3; Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia

Ferries: 1; from Baie-Comeau to Matane.  There are three ferries that cross the St. Lawrence, allowing travelers to hop from one “rive” (river bank) to another.  For a vehicle our size (and two adults), it’s pretty expensive ($130CAD) but it was even more expensive to cross at Les Escoumins!  The company that does the Baie-Comeau crossing is Traversiers.

Bruno enjoying the view over the St. Lawrence River as we travel from one side to the other.

Big Blue having her first taste of life on the sea!

National Parks Visited: 3; Mauricie and Forillon National Parks, both in Quebec; and Cape Breton Highlands National Park, in Nova Scotia.

Times our Vehicle got Stuck: 2. Yes, two!  We started off the month by getting stuck in the mud as we tried to leave a free campground.  It had rained heavily over the previous 24 hours and the campsite was full of mud.  As we tried to manoeuver out of the tight space, our back wheels got stuck.  Together, in the rain, we shoved rocks and wood under the wheels and Bruno managed to get us out.  It took about an hour and we were super muddy after, but we were happy to have made it out.

We weren’t so lucky on our second try.  Following a GPS point to a coastal boondock, the gravel road suddenly turned into sand.  We did a three-point turn to get the heck out of there, but it was too late.  We tried the same method as with the mud, but this time we couldn’t get ourselves out, and on each try we buried ourselves further into the sand.  It is here that we realized we are simply too heavy – in Totoyaya we wouldn’t have even gotten stuck in the first place!

After about an hour of trying, I got on the phone with our insurance company.  I must have spent at least 90 minutes with them (mostly on hold) as they tried to organize a tow truck.  Finally, Bruno lost his patience.  He found a local who knew a farmer who had a tractor, and that farmer agreed to come help us out.  It took all of 20 seconds.  All we needed was a little extra pull.  We should have tried that right at the get-go!

Working on getting ourselves out of the mud. Success!

Getting towed by a friendly farmer out of the sand. Thank you!

Mechanical Problems with Vehicle: 1. I mentioned the two times our engine shut off driving north of Phoenix in May.  The problem happened a few more times early in the month, and then we experienced a slight variation on the engine shut-down with greater frequency throughout the month.  It took us a while, but we managed to find a reputable Freightliner mechanic who had the right computer adaptor to read our engine.  The codes pointed to an injection sensor that is apparently notoriously faulty on the 2001 model.  We replaced it, and we’ve been golden ever since!  Glad it wasn’t anything more serious!

Noteworthy Boondocks: Quebec is very RV-friendly.  There are “haltes municipales” (little rest areas) along national roads on the outskirts of town that you can often overnight in, and many towns offer a free overnight parking spot for RVs.  Almost every place we stopped was nice – many even offering lovely waterfront views – but here were our particular favourites of the bunch:

1. The Sand Dunes outside Tadoussac (N48.15607, W69.66614)
2. Quai de Les Escoumins (N48.35111, W69.39823)

Enjoying breakfast over the St. Lawrence from our boondock near Tadoussac.

The view of Les Escoumins from its wharf, where we also boondocked.

Free Campground: Le Grand Géant Motorisé, St-Ambroise, Quebec.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this place, as it was chock-full and not at all scenic, but it was a practical stopover and offers great resources (store, repair shop) for RVs and overland vehicles.

Highlight of the Month

July has been a really great month, and it’s difficult to pick a single highlight.  The weather has been great, we’ve finally felt like we’re on holidays, and Quebec proved to be a lovely province to visit.  I might have to do a top three list:

Number 3: The Acadian Historic Village.  I can’t wait to write about this wonderful open-air, living museum in a future post.

Number 2: Whale-watching in the St. Lawrence River.  Being on the zodiac was the culmination of that adventure, but the entire lead-up to it was pretty wonderful, too.

Number 1: Going on a ten-day, three-RV road trip through Nova Scotia with both Bruno’s family and mine.  In one word: epic.

Highlight of the month (and maybe even the year): an epic family road trip!

On the Cards The Next Few Months

Bruno and I are pretty exhausted after clocking in an average of almost 3,000km per month for the past three months.  It’s a pace neither of us is used to, and one from which we now feel like taking a break.

Big Blue, our newish bus conversion, isn’t finished, either.  And so, after a second half of August that will prove to be just as busy and family-oriented as the first half (my brother and his girlfriend arrive tonight), Bruno and I are going to spend September working on Big Blue.  In October, we will be in France for yet more family visits.

It appears that, after eleven months of overland travel, we’ve arrived at my family home and looped one giant North American loop!

Our route these past 6 weeks.

Our 11-month North American loop comes to an end. It’s not the end of our North American travels, however!

Over the coming months, I’m going to be taking a break from my weekly blog posts in order to focus on family, relaxation, and our bus.  I still have many stories and photos to share from the remainder of our cross-Canadian road trip, but I plan to do so at a more leisurely pace over the coming months.  There won’t be radio-silence on Wandering Footsteps, but I think it’s best to cut back to twice-monthly posts until we’re back on the road with more adventures to share.

In the meantime, have a great end to your summer and a happy fall!  I’ll be in touch again soon!

Since we started our cross-Canadian road trip a month ago, Bruno and I have seen tons of evidence of Canada’s big birthday, from giant signs on buildings to merchandise being sold in tourist shops.  We were recently in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, where they were gearing up for their biggest Canada Day celebration yet, with expected crowds of over 500,000 people.  I was tempted to stick around for the festivities, but instead took pity on poor Bruno and his fear of crowds and cities.

Canada’s sesquicentennial birthday. Every Canadian learned a new word this year!

We’ve been seeing signs of Canada’s big birthday ever since we entered the country last month.

Ottawa gearing up for its biggest Canada Day ceremony yet.

This month, Bruno and I have traveled through three Canadian provinces – Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.  Although I had already been to both Saskatchewan and Ontario, the route we chose was entirely new to both of us.  We emerged into Canada at Grasslands National Park, visited Saskatchewan’s provincial capital, Regina, and then spend several days in Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park before stopping by Manitoba’s own capital, Winnipeg.  In Ontario, we traveled along the coast of the massive Lake Superior, skirted the tip of Lake Huron, and then headed eastward toward Ottawa.  We are ending the month just before the border of Quebec province.

This is a lot of kilometers!  Canada is really rather massive!  Between driving and visiting, we haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on our bus, which was something we’d been hoping to do this month.  We did manage to accomplish the following this month:

– install kitchen cabinet locks (they work perfectly and we’re so, so happy with them!)

– build ourselves a shoe rack

– finish the bookshelf (love it!)

– install a carbon monoxide detector

– upgrade our converter and add two electric sockets to the walls

– install a third solar panel to the roof (after traveling through Ontario’s almost endless grey, rainy skies, we realized we didn’t have enough wattage)

I love my new bookshelf!

Another practical addition – our bookshelf and coat rack. We have a mud room in our bus!!

Bruno installing a third solar panel on our roof. Hopefully this will help us be better equipped when weather [Canada, cough!] doesn’t cooperate.

Bruno working hard – and causing a disaster – in our bus.

It’s kind of hard to live in the bus and work on it at the same time.

I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts and experiences in central Canada, but will save the stories for a couple of upcoming posts.  Stay tuned!

Travel Statistics:

KMs driven: 3,712km.  Another heavy driving month!  Honestly, it’s been sort of exhausting, and we’ve felt like we’re always behind the wheel and transiting through places, which isn’t the way we enjoy traveling.  That’s what happens when you have a date with family on the other end of the continent!  Hopefully we’ll slow down next month.

Provinces Visited: 3; Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario

National Parks Visited: 2; Grasslands N.P. (Saskatchewan) and Riding Mountain N.P. (Manitoba)

Noteworthy Boondocks:

1)      Picnic Lake, White River, Ontario (48.607720, -85.264030): This quiet parking on a little peninsula along a lake was beautiful and peaceful.  While we might not have enjoyed the 120 mosquitoes that managed to get inside our bus that night, we did appreciate seeing a gorgeous sunrise after being awoken by their buzzing!

A boondock on the very edge of a lake. Love it!

The 120 mosquitoes inside our bus were the reason we witnessed this sunrise. Should I thank them?

2)      Terrace Beach Bay and Marina, Terrace Bay, Ontario: The municipality allows free overnight parking at their beach.  Very pretty sand beach along Lake Superior with a waterfall flowing into the lake.

Free Campgrounds:

1)      Nipigon Township Marina & Campground, Nipigon, Ontario (49.0094, -88.2575): Not technically free, but the municipality’s position is that if there’s no employee there to collect $17, then it’s free.  We stayed two nights and never saw an employee.

2)      Montreal Soaring Club, Hawkesbury, Ontario (45.616800, -74.646950).  Overlanders can camp here free for a night or two because a member of the association is an overlander and wants to give back to our community.  Yay!

Highlights This Month:

The overall highlight has just been traveling through new parts of Canada and therefore getting to know my own country and to share it with Bruno.

More specifically, a few days ago, I celebrated my 33^rd birthday in Ottawa.  I had lived there back in 2010-11 and so really enjoyed showing Bruno around, getting happily nostalgic about places I used to frequent, and sharing a special dinner with old friends.

Happy birthday to me in Ottawa!

A wonderful birthday dinner with old friends. Thanks Ashley and Julia for helping make my birthday special!

On the Cards Next Month:

In July, we plan to drive less (haha!) and to enjoy spending more time in each place.  We will spend most of the month in the province of Quebec, where we will visit La Mauricie National Park, do some whale-watching in the Saguenay region, and cross into the Gaspé Peninsula.

At the end of the month, we will enter my home province of New Brunswick to meet up with both my family and Bruno’s.  We’ll take off for Nova’s Scotia, where we will be doing a 10-day 3-RV trip!  The summer promises to be jam-packed with wonderful places and experiences, so I’m guessing we won’t find much time for bus renovations!

So much has happened, in fact, that it’s hard to believe that only three weeks ago, we were putting last-minute touches on our Big Blue Bus in Baja California, Mexico. Along with Pepe, Marco and his team, we managed to finish the chassis storage compartments in time for Bruno to complete our propane installation.  This meant we could head out with our stovetop and hot-water shower in working order.

The boys at Pepe’s gave us a little goodbye present of sorts – they redid the turquoise blue paint job on our bus.  We received a warm and enthusiastic farewell and exchanged promises to visit them next all next time we’re in town.  Thank you to the whole team for all your help in making our dreams come true!

Big Blue gets a shiny new [partial] paint job!

Bruno’s propane installation in the chassis compartments.

Thank you to the entire team at Pepe and Marco’s. What a friendly and generous bunch!

On April 8^th, Bruno and I removed the cardboard that had been protecting our panelled flooring for the past two months.  That, in combination with the stocked-up kitchen and map collage I had completed the night before, made our home welcoming.  Bruno quickly installed the bathroom door so we could use the compost toilet (which, in fact, we ended up not being able to use for the first week, anyway, because the 12V fan we’d installed blew a fuse) – and we were off!  (To read about our experience of living in Big Blue these first few weeks, click here).

Working on my map collage. This is pushing my artistic abilities to the max.

Unveiling our floor, after months of it being covered in cardboard, was a very exciting moment for me!

Connecting with Friends

We stopped in Phoenix to do a few bus-related errands: get a used spare tire, make a few Ikea returns, and try – unsuccessfully – to replace one of our solar batteries that wasn’t functioning up to par.  We took advantage of an opportunity to see an old friend who happened to be in town for the week with her husband.  I hadn’t seen Nanette and Karl since 2014, the summer of guests in New Brunswick, so it was wonderful to catch up with them and to finally introduce them to Bruno.  One of the things that makes me the happiest about traveling in North America is getting to connect with friends spread around the continent.  Our pool day with Nanette and Karl was a great way to [re]kick-off our North American adventure!

Catching up with my friends Nanette and Karl when we popped through Phoenix.

We got to show them our new home-on-wheels, and even spend the night in the hotel parking lot!

Up next was yet another visit with friends – this time, the parents of my friend, Erin (whom I’d visited last summer in Washington, DC).  Sharon and Glenn have been wonderful to us these past few months, allowing us to use their address to send mail (I may have gone a little crazy with online shopping for the bus) and for our vehicle insurance and registration.

They were just as wonderful – if not more – when we spent three days with them in Dewey, Arizona.  They both love traveling, and they’re passionate about their region of Arizona (they moved here from Michigan almost a decade ago), so they were tour guides par excellence.  On our first afternoon, we visited the nearby town of Prescott, which happened to be hosting an adorable arts and crafts fair in its town square. The town, too, was adorable, with an old western feel to it.  We even visited a historic saloon where Steve McQueen filmed a fight scene for an old cowboy movie.  Bruno, I might add, is obsessed with Steve McQueen.

At the arts and crafts fair in Prescott town square with Sharon and Glenn (not pictured).

There he is! We went out for Italian for Mothers’ Day, yum!

Check out these amazing cowboys at the historic saloon where Steve McQueen once filmed a fight scene!

The following day – which Sharon had kindly taken off work – we were whisked off to the spectacular city of Sedona!  On the way, we drove through picturesque mountains, and stopped in one of Glenn’s favourite places – the old mining town of Jerome.  It was just as cute as Prescott.  Have I mentioned how nice Arizona is?

Sedona blew me away.  I wasn’t expecting to confront such beautiful scenery, but those red rocks literally made my jaw drop.  Sharon and Glenn took us to all their favourite viewpoints, and we spent the entire afternoon gazing at red rocks on blue skies.  It never got old.  And any description or photo I present here will simply not to Sedona’s scenery justice.  Have I mentioned how nice Arizona is?

The red rocks of Sedona – more beautiful in person than in any photo we’ve taken.

I love Sedona! I love being a tourist!

Sharon had never seen these cacti flowers, so we counted ourselves lucky to witness so much beauty in a single day!

Registering our Bus

On our last day in Dewey, Bruno and I went to Prescott to change the registration of our vehicle from commercial bus to motorhome.  We’d spent the last three months filling out the list of Arizona’s requirements in order to conform to motorhome standards (things like electricity, a bed, a heater/air conditioner, and a toilet).  We expected the registration process to be rigorous, and Bruno (coming from France) wasn’t even sure we would pass the first time.

So when the officer gave a cursory glance inside, exclaiming your conversion is way nicer than most, before checking the VIN and giving us the OK, Bruno and I were shocked.  That was it?  We’d waited about an hour, had a two-minute inspection, and waited another 30 minutes to change the paperwork on our registration (where we paid a whopping $12 fee) and we were off!  Quick and painless! We are now the official owners of Class-A motorhome!

Glenn took me on a celebratory motorcycle ride around the area that afternoon.  Sorry mom!

Glenn’s a super safe driver, mom, so don’t worry. Do you remember your motorcycle ride in Thailand?

Thank you Glenn and Sharon for an amazing visit!

And thank you for letting me use your home as a mail depot! Sharon and Glenn even contemplating putting up a Christmas tree to go with all those packages!

When we’d left Ensenada, it had felt like a grand departure because we were finally hitting the road after so many months of work.  When we’d departed Phoenix a week later, it felt like another grand departure, because for the first time in a while, we would be heading into new territory.  And when we left the Dewey that morning, we felt as though we were marking another grand departure – now our work was done and we would get to be tourists!  Bruno, Big Blue and I were headed north to discover the continent!  Our summer 2017 road trip had begun!

Thank you, Glenn and Sharon, for your amazing hospitality during our stay in Dewey.  We had a lot of fun and are very grateful for all the things you shared with us.  We have wonderful memories – and photos! – of our time with you, and can’t wait to do it again someday soon!  In the meantime, thank you, also, for your continued help with the practical side of our nomadic life!

The National Park Circuit

It’s amazing how quickly your environment can change in North America.  We’d left Ensenada, a week earlier, in a crazy humid rain storm, had struggled to keep our bus and fridge cool in the 40 degree [Celsius] dry heat of the Phoenix desert, and now we were in the forest near Grand Canyon National Park waking up to frost!

The cold (and the snow) remained a recurring theme for the next ten days.  After a quick visit to the most grand canyon I’ve ever seen (once again, no words, and once again, have I mentioned how nice Arizona is?), we transited through Utah.  It was difficult to pass by so many national parks (Utah is Bruno’s favourite state for good reason), but we had very limited remaining time on our U.S. visa and we wanted to use it to visit a region of the U.S. neither of us had seen before – Wyoming’s N.W. corner.

We spent three nights at Grand Teton National Park and another four days in Yellowstone National Park.  It was a special week, but I think I’m going to have to devote an entirely separate blog post to our U.S. national parks’ visits – there are simply too many photos to share!

Grand Canyon National Park!

Horseshoe Canyon, at the border of Arizona and Utah. We camped here. Yup.

Utah is so pretty!

Those Teton peaks are absolutely mesmerizing.

Yellowstone National Park and its hot springs, geysers, and crazy hydrothermal activity!

We left Yellowstone via the Bear Tooth Highway, an infamous All-American road that had been recommended to us by Glenn that takes you through a 3,300 meter mountain pass.  The pass had just opened two days earlier and was filled with more snow than Bruno had ever seen (though not me, I’m Canadian, after all!).  The drive offered gorgeous alpine views, still-frozen lakes, and yellow-bellied marmots.  It also gave us a sense of the local culture, as the peaks were filled with winter-loving skiers and snowmobilers playing in the snow on a sunny long weekend.  Such a different way of looking at cold weather.

Bruno and I near the beginning of Beartooth Pass.

Beartooth Pass, over 3,300 meters altitude.

The snow on the side of the road was taller than our bus!

Ploughed by nothing less than THIS.

A few of the creatures that inhabit these mountains:

The mountains gave way in Montana to plains and ranches with grazing cattle. This gave us a hint at the scenery we would soon experience in Canada’s Grasslands National Park – our fourth national park of the month, and our first in Canada!  This is where we are finishing off our very busy, very adventurous, and very wonderful month of May!

The plains and farmland of Montana.

A first taste of Canada’s Grasslands National Park – and our first campground shared with another bus conversion!

This Month’s Statistics

Countries Visited: 3; Mexico (Baja California), United States (5 states), and Canada (Saskatchewan)

Kilometers Driven: 3,901!  This is approaching our all-time record (when we drove Route 66 in November)!  But Big Blue has handled the roads beautifully, and we’ve even managed to get her fuel economy down to under 13L/100km on the plains of Montana, so our fuel costs have been substantially lower than expected.

National Parks Visited: 4; Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone in the United States, and Grasslands in Canada.

Our Camping Situation: We still haven’t gotten the knack of finding and reaching BLM land in the U.S. for boondocking purposes, but we’ve done of our fair share of it in national forests!  And it has been wonderful!  I love that it’s free (balances out our slightly higher fuel costs) and especially that we no longer have to worry about water, showers, or toilets.  Now that we’re in Canada, we’re going to have to learn how to camp on Crown Land.  Any tips will be appreciated!

The only times we have paid for camping were when we camped in national parks.  We’re both happy to pay the fees to support the parks in any way we can, and we both enjoy camping in the lovely natural settings the parks provide.  So far we have slept in forests and prairies, by meadows and creeks, and at the foot of mountains!  It’s been great!

Score! A wonderful free campsite in a national forest at the edge of Beartooth Highway.

Norris campground at Yellowstone National Park offered us a great view of the meadow, with the most perfectly-curved creek passing through.

On the Cards Next Month

We’re definitely planning on slowing down our pace of travel next month, but we do still have a lot of kilometers to cover.  We’ve begun our cross-Canadian trip (although it’s not truly cross-Canadian, since we’re starting in Saskatchewan) and we plan to be in New Brunswick by late July.  This month, then, we hope to drive through southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba and through northern Ontario (in time for the June infestation of bugs, yippee!).

We hope to find a spot or two in which to spend a few full days doing a few improvements to Big Blue’s interior (finishing the lighting and electrical setup, fastening our kitchen cabinets with locks, maybe adding a piece of wooden furniture or two).  But most of the month will be set aside for exploring Canada’s landscape (including another national park or two) and culture.  I’m very excited to finally explore my own country this way!

I can think of practically nothing else, and with any free moment I am staring at maps and guide books, day-dreaming about the impending moment when Bruno and I are free!  I don’t even care that our bus won’t be “truly” finished – it will be liveable and we will be able to cease this crazy full-time work schedule and begin to decompress and return to our regular selves.  Jump for joy!!!!

Progress on our Bus Conversion

It’s taken a lot to get to this point, of course (find proof here).  This month has been as frantic as the previous two, though in a different way.  Rather than working non-stop inside the bus, Bruno has spent most of it at Pepe and Marco’s RV shop in Ensenada.  As I mentioned in our last bus conversion update, we found a place in town that was willing to do a few projects for us that we couldn’t manage ourselves.

Adolpho, our personal helper at Pepe and Marco’s RV Repair shop, paints our new RV door.

Adolpho working on storage compartments under our chassis.

What we found out later was that they’d said yes to be nice, but that they neither had the time nor the experience to do the things we’d asked!

Progress has thus been slow.

Every morning, Bruno leaves the house by 7:15am, drives into town and spends the next 9-10 hours there, overseeing Adolpho as he installs our RV door, builds storage boxes on the sides of our chassis, and installs a bike rack in the back of the bus.  Bruno manages to accomplish minor tasks inside – fixing the driver’s seat and fans, installing the curtain rods and closet rods, building walls as you walk into the bus – but because he’s parked on the side of the street and has one eye on Adolpho, progress inside our bus is just as slow as outside.  (In the midst of all of this, Bruno had to deal with a pretty big diesel leak that took a few days to get under control.  It was stressful to have precious diesel dripping out of the tank every time he drove, and he had no engine manual to help him figure out the problem, but after a couple tries, he changed the o-ring and we haven’t leaked since.  Phew!)

The guys at the RV shop trying to help Bruno figure out this diesel leak.

Drip, drip, drip.

Adolpho is on the left. Sometimes we get an extra set of hands, too.

Bruno insulating the inside frame of our new RV door.

Most days I stay home and deal with other types of tasks, like finding fabric and a tailor to sew window curtains, foam and an upholsterer for our dining room cushions, and keeping up with day-to-day tasks..  When Bruno arrives home, it’s become a sort of game to try to notice where progress has been made that day.  It’s not easy to spot the day-to-day difference.

It is only when I compile a list here of what we’ve worked on this month that I can see what we have, in fact, accomplished.  Between Adolpho and Bruno, we now have a fully-finished and insulated RV door.  We have a bike rack installed behind the bus.  And we are about two-thirds of the way finished with our four chassis boxes (which will store our propane tanks, grey water tank, spare tire, tools, and kerosene tank for our heater).  These are all key tasks before our grand departure – if you recall, when we took our road trip from Tucson to Mexico, we had the RV door and bicycles inside, and we traveled without propane or a spare tire, none of which was at all practical.

The installation of a bike rack behind the bus starts with a few cuts.

Here’s our bike rack!

We’re getting storage compartments under our chassis!

Adolpho gets a bit of help one afternoon from his son.

There were more steps involved in making these storage compartments than we expected!

Yesterday, Bruno finished installing our Eberspacher heater (which is great news because we hope to be in Yellowstone National Park in a few short weeks, and they’re still getting snow!)  We were both quite amazed that the thing started on the first try because, not only is it a complicated electronic system, but Bruno had to redo a lot of wiring in order to complete this new installation.  We turned the heater on this morning, just for fun!

Between the heater, the curtains and cushions, the work at Pepe and Marco’s RV Repair shop, and the carpentry work our HelpX volunteer, A.J., did for us earlier in the month, we’re sitting pretty for our grand departure.  We won’t be finished Big Blue – there are still a few pieces of furniture to build, all the finishing work to do, and Bruno has quite a few more mechanical items on his list – but we’re much better off for this road trip than last month’s!

Bruno’s Erberspacher heater installation, now up and running!

Grey water tank now installed under chassis in one of our new storage compartments.

Our new foam cushions. Please excuse the mess – this is still a work zone. Please also excuse the pattern explosion – the fabric on the table is only there temporarily as protection… we’re not that color blind!

This picture, for me, epitomizes the month of April – the cushions and curtains (my contribution, as well as the upholsterer’s and the tailor’s); the book shelf and storage door (A.J., our HelpX volunteer’s contribution; the RV door (Adolpho and Bruno’s contribution); and the wall behind the passenger seat (all Bruno).

Being in Baja California

We arrived in Baja California at the end of March and are renting a villa at a resort and RV park along the coast south of Ensenada.  Mona Lisa Beach was probably nice a couple decades ago, but it’s pretty run-down now.  When we moved in, it was obvious no one had stayed here in a long time.  The villa smelled of must and rat piss, the garden was overrun with weeds, and the furniture was rusty.  Nonetheless, it was a vast improvement over the Air BnB where we were supposed to spend April, the price was less than half, and there was a big work space and parking space for our bus.

We’ve opted to continue sleeping inside the bus, which has sometimes proved challenging when we’ve created a cloud of dust over the course of the day’s work.  But it’s been cozy and comfortable in the back of Big Blue, and I still can’t believe we have an actual bedroom in our new home-on-wheels!

Mona Lisa Resort and RV Park, our temporary home for the month.

Our bus parked in front of our villa. We’re the one right behind the tree.

We’re right on the beach, but I can count the times I’ve visited it on one hand.

The living area inside. We use it for cooking and bathing.

… and as a workshop, of course.

Though most of our time has been spent working, it has been a refreshing change to be in a new country this month.  We hadn’t been in a “developing” country in over a year – since Morocco – the longest I’ve gone since I started traveling over a decade ago.  I’ve been practicing my Spanish (it’s really hilarious to listen to) and enjoying the local market, public buses, and taco stalls.  I’ll write specifically about my impressions of and experiences in Ensenada and the surrounding area in a blog post soon.  All I’ll mention today is that that being here in Mexico has substantially lowered our cost of living for the month (almost in half!).  We also spent a lot less on the bus this month (we’d purchased 90% of the things we needed while in Tucson), which is great since we’re over budget for our bus conversion project.

This Month’s Statistics

Kms Driven: Only 288, all of them to Ensenada and back.  It’s pretty astounding that, in so few miles, we already managed to have a diesel leak (that’s in addition to the transmission problem we had weeks after buying the bus in Phoenix!).

Countries Visited: 1, Mexico (if you can call what we’ve been doing “visiting”).

Playa Mona Lisa, just south of Ensenada.

As you see, Ensenada is really only barely into Mexico. We’re almost at the northern extremity of the Baja Peninsula.

Highlight: Getting so many difficult and important projects done on the bus.

Biggest Challenge: Getting so many difficult and important projects done on the bus!  No, but seriously, the biggest challenge was probably being a HelpX host, which is what I talked about in my previous post.  A close second is being so close to the finish line and trying to find that last burst of energy and momentum to get to the end.

On the Cards Next Month

Let’s bring it back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this post – because, let’s face it, this is all I can think about these days: in May we are hitting the road!!!!!!!!!  Our plan is to register our vehicle as a motorhome in Arizona mid-month, then take about two weeks to drive straight north toward Canada, hopefully hitting up a few national parks along the way, like the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone.

The idea of being camped in a national park, with no cares, no to-do list, no crazy schedule, no pressing needs is, without exaggerating, one of the most intoxicating thoughts I’ve ever had (no wonder it’s on constant replay).  Now let’s cross our fingers that everything works out the way we hope!

Make no mistake – this bus is far from converted.  Since my last blog conversion post (where I highlighted our challenges and proudly displayed our progress on the dining room benches, composting toilet, bed frame, and shower walls) we haven’t done a whole lot.  In fact, since we no longer had any HelpX volunteers and we were busy organizing last-minute pre-departure issues, the only new bus addition to report is that our Ikea kitchen is officially up and running.  We cut and fit butcher’s block, installed the sink and faucet, and added the cabinet and drawer fittings.  The only issue we still haven’t solved is how to keep all those doors closed – we tried neodymium magnets (very strong rare earth magnets), but they don’t even manage to keep the drawers closed when we turn!  Back to the drawing board for that issue.

One afternoon I came home from running errands and Bruno had THIS to show me!

Look at those beautiful kitchen cabinets!

And that lovely butcher’s block!

The reason, then, that Bruno and I have moved into an unfinished big blue bus is that we’ve almost arrived at the yearly maximum stay in the United States (six months per year) and we need to save a few weeks to register the vehicle as an RV in Arizona and to hightail it up the US into Canada.

And so, on March 26^th, after staying in our lovely Air BnB home in the equally lovely city of Tucson, we moved out.  For obvious reasons, we didn’t get much chance to visit Tucson, but I am working on an upcoming post about why I loved what I did experience of Tucson.  Stay tuned, especially if you had no idea (like me) that Tucson was so cool!

Bruno and I knew that things were going to be a bit chaotic inside Big Blue.  Not only was the conversion itself not finished (no propane so no hot water or cooktop; minimal lighting installed; no toilet door; incomplete storage so many extra boxes of stuff that we couldn’t hide away; no dining table; no bike rack so bicycles would be transported inside the bus – which actually turned out to be good news since they held our kitchen drawers shut!) but we would also be transporting all our unused construction materials with us.  This included cedar planking, several white cardboard sheets, plywood, paint, insulation, tools, and a massive RV door.

I expected not even to be able to manoeuver inside the bus (I told myself to breathe, it was only four nights), but both Bruno and I were pleasantly surprised that we were able to stack stuff away fairly well.  Boxes got stacked in the toilet, shower, and between dining room benches.  Cardboard sheets slid under the mattress.  Planks and wood were fixed onto the bedroom walls.  Bicycles were tied up to the kitchen cabinets, and the RV door was placed inside the bus entrance door.  We only had about 20cm with which to slide in and out of the bus, but that was a small price to pay for finding an actual spot for that damn door!

Our bikes had to be inside the bus for the mini road trip.

And the RV door fixed on the inside of our bus entrance, leaving us only about 20cm of space to get in and out.

Well, I guess we won’t be using our toilet…

Building materials stashed wherever we could find space.

Getting the bed ready to sleep in!

Bruno and I stopped off in Phoenix to pick up some spare parts, replace a leaking O-ring on our new transmission, get an Ikea kitchen refund (for their annual kitchen sale), and buy a second solar battery before officially hitting the road.  Our first night in the bus, then, was at the local Walmart where we had spent countless nights in December and January!  For our second night, we returned to the Estrella Mountain Regional Park at the west end of the city.  It was there that we christened our shower (cold water, yes, but amazing to have a shower in our home!) and filled up our 200-liter water tank for the first time.  All went well!

The following night, we found ourselves near Yuma, just beyond the California border.  We parked at a casino and I once again noticed our bus’ qualities – we took another shower, I cooked inside, we washed dishes and didn’t have to worry about grey water disposal, and we burrowed ourselves inside once it got cool.  At one point, Bruno was sitting on his camping chair and I was in the kitchen and I realized that neither of us was in the other’s way!  It was amazing!

Our first never ever sleeping in Big Blue. Very romantic!

Bruno filling up our 200 liter water tank. Easy!

The following day we drove through the very southernmost part of California (sometimes you could actually see a wall that was the border with Mexico – the infamous “Mexico Wall”) and it was beautiful!  We passed the Imperial Sand Dunes and I felt like we were back in the Arabian Peninsula; then we drove past a sea of giant boulders that looked a lot like the Balancing Rocks of Zimbabwe; and lastly, we entered a terrain of rolling hills, grey rock, and arid plants that were uncannily like the Mediterranean that we could have been in Turkey or the Southwest of France.

In this moment, it felt so good to be on the road again that Bruno and I had half a mind to keep driving, never stop, and simply never finish our conversion at all!  This feeling was only reinforced when we arrived early at our stop for the night (a run-down campsite just before the Mexican border town of Tecate) and we actually sat outside under the shade of a tree and read our books.  People, we read books in the middle of the afternoon!  Nothing has ever seemed so luxurious.

Driving past the Imperial Sand Dunes of Southern California.

This landscape reminded me a lot of Zimbabwe (though not so much this particular photo).

The Mexico Wall, and a Mediterranean-like landscape.

The last morning of our road trip, Bruno and I crossed from the U.S. into Baja California, Mexico.  We chose the small border of Tecate (we always choose small borders for their ease and relative friendliness) and had a hilarious experience trying to get our passports stamped!  We actually crossed into Mexico and had to drive around, park, and walk back to the border to get our immigration stamps!  People, if you’re an illegal alien (or overstaying your visa) wanting to cross into the other country, there is no better way than to walk across this border.  F.Y.I.

Our drive from Tecate to Ensenada was pleasant.  My senses were alive in a way they only ever are when I’m in a so-called “developing” country.  There’s just so much to look at.  And I think I’d been on withdrawal – we hadn’t been to one in over a year (since Morocco), the longest period of time I’ve ever gone without visiting the “developing world” since I started traveling twelve years ago!  We took the Rota del Vino, the Wine Route, which meanders through hills of vineyards.  Who knew Mexico made so much wine?  Apparently about 80% of Mexican wine comes from this small area.  We know what we’ll be taste-testing in the coming weeks!

The US/Mexican border. Hilarious experience trying to cross it!

Rota del Vino, or the Wine Route, from Tecate to Ensenada. Lovely!

A view coming into Ensenada.  Fun to be back in a chaotic city!

We got an unpleasant surprise, however, when we arrived in Ensenada.  We’d booked another Air BnB for a month so that the bus would be free to keep working on (it would be much more difficult to progress quickly on the conversion while living in it at a campsite).  But the Air BnB was horrible!  It was in a small, run-down two-storey apartment complex with smoking, music-playing, seedy neighbours.  The “private parking” for the bus would be in the communal parking lot for the apartment with only a tiny gate to keep it [not] secure.  And the apartment itself was dirty and depressing.  The pots and pans were completely rusted, as were the bathroom handles (which also didn’t work).  There were no bedroom doors (and we’re expected another HelpX volunteer).  There were dirty towels, spilled food in the cupboards, hairy soap on the shower floor, and empty pill packages on the bedside table.  The fridge hummed as loudly as old neon hospital lights.  Electric cables ran along the ground in the middle of the floor.

There was no way I was staying there.  I may have been able to manage a night or two.  But a month or more?  No.  No way.  We took photos of what we could, contacted the host, kick-started a refund request on Air BnB, and left.  At this moment, I was so grateful for Big Blue.  To have a home – finished or not – into which to retreat gave us the confidence to refuse this Air BnB.  I’m not sure what we would have done had we had no other accommodation option for the night.  It’s good to carry one’s home with oneself!

A few of the photos we took for our Air BnB refund request.

It’s kinda hard to take photos of the dirt and grime, but dust we can do.

For the past two nights, we’ve been at a nearby resort’s RV Park.  We’ve been scrambling to figure out a plan B for ourselves because, as much as we’d like to pretend the work is over and that we can just camp by the beach and enjoy the view and the hot tub forever – especially now that we’re in a new exotic country and there are markets to explore and a language to learn – there’s work to do!

Ahhh, this is MUCH better than the dodgy Air BnB apartment!

We could get used to this!

Bus conversion? What bus conversion?

We’re just one of the pack now.

Thoughts on Big Blue after our Road Trip

It was helpful to test out Big Blue midway through our conversion.  It gave us some insight on what worked and what didn’t – though some of the things that “didn’t work” are too late to change!

So what worked?

• The size of the shower (almost 80x80cm) is luxuriously large
• The layout of the space – the bedroom is cozy and the kitchen has plenty of counter- and storage-space
• The comfort of the driving seats up front and the massive view of the windows
• The water and grey water tanks. So much capacity!  So practical!  Two thumbs up!
• The bus is easy and comfortable to drive on highways, and its gas mileage on flat roads was better than expected

What didn’t work so well?

• The size of the vehicle when driving – we feel huge (and we are, compared to Totoyaya) so it’s difficult to park and manoeuver, especially in cities
• The size of the front windows (while lovely for sightseeing) make bug splatter a big problem. Oh, and we’re also an easy target for runaway stones.  We’ve already got a crack in one windshield…
• The stainless steel kitchen sink – who knew stainless steel was so high-maintenance? Not me.  And who ever invented flat rectangular sinks obviously didn’t have to clean his.
• City and hill driving killed our gas mileage. Yikes!
• Potholed and non-paved roads seem like insurmountable challenges now, and I’ve suddenly begun noticing bad roads everywhere that we can no longer choose with ease.

Going on a mini road trip, gonna test our bus!

OOOUUUHHHH! I love all the space in here!

I LOVE my new bedroom!

Depending on the moment, I alternated between loving our new big blue bus and painfully missing Totoyaya.  The biggest thing right now is that this bus doesn’t feel like “us”.  I expect that, as with all things, there is a period of adjustment with regards to some of Big Blue’s disadvantages, but that [hopefully] we’ll arrive at a happy homeostasis with our new home-on-wheels.

This Month’s Statistics

Kilometers Driven: 900km.  Our bus now reads 125,259.5 miles.

Nights on the Road: 4, officially, with an extra two sleeping in the bus because of the bad Air BnB experience.

Countries Visited: 2. United States and Mexico.

This month’s road trip.

Notable Roads: Maybe we’ve just been starved for a good road trip, but Hwy 94 (“Old Hwy 80”) in Southern California was beautiful!  And Hwy 3 from Tecate to Ensenada, which passes through Mexico’s wine country, was pretty nice, too!

This Month’s Notable Moments

It’s obviously rather notable that Bruno and I moved into our new big blue bus this month and that we’ve been testing it out on our mini road trip.  It’s been wonderful to be back on the road again, but also somewhat frustrating because both of us are so impatient to truly get back on the road!

The most notable moment this month, by far, was selling our beloved Totoyaya.  Though this moment has been on the horizon for a year, it didn’t make the goodbye any easier.  We’re grateful to have sold her before our departure to Mexico (it would have been pretty complicated to travel here with two vehicles) and we’re happy to have an influx of cash to continue our bus conversion, but seeing her drive out of sight with her new owner was a heartbreaking  moment neither Bruno nor I will ever forget.  This wasn’t just a notable March moment – this was a notable life moment.

On the Cards Next Month

We plan to be near Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, throughout April, continuing our bus conversion project.  We hope to find someone in town that can do a bit of welding work for us and to welcome another HelpX volunteer.  Maybe with all the extra hands, we’ll manage to make some major conversion progress this month!

Welcome to Ensenada!

This past month, it hasn’t been difficult to follow us.  We were in Phoenix, and now we’re in Tucson.

That’s it.

I don’t need a map to show our route.  There’s no real sense in mentioning Totoyaya’s mileage (I will, anyway, though: it’s 603,004km, meaning we drove only 451km this month– and most of those were driven by me!)

Indeed, our nomadic overlanding life has taken a backseat to one thing and one thing only – our bus conversion.

Our Big Blue Bus

In my last post, I introduced you to our new bus, which for now I am calling Big Blue.  Ever since we bought it (her? I haven’t decided yet) our life has revolved entirely around our conversion.  Two nights ago, when I finally went out for a social walk called Meet Me at Maynards in downtown Tucson, it was the first touristy thing I have done since January 19th (the day we placed a deposit on Big Blue).

Becoming Un-Nomadic

On January 20^th, we moved into a condo in Gilbert, a suburb of Phoenix.  We totally lucked out with this accommodation – one moment, we were aimlessly wandering the streets of Phoenix wondering where to sleep and searching Air BnB for a home rental; and the next, a friend of mine was offering us her relatives’ condo.  The individuals involved have asked to remain anonymous, but if you’re reading this, we would once again like to thank you from the bottoms of our hearts for the opportunity to begin our bus conversion from the comfort of your home.

It was key for us to be able to move into a larger space at this exact moment, because we spent most of our time in Phoenix buying the [bulky] materials we would need for our conversion.  We knew we would be moving to Tucson on February 10th (we had to move out of the condo and found accommodation more affordable in Tucson) so we wanted to maximize our time in Arizona’s largest city by buying furniture at IKEA and finding salvaged RV items at Arizona RV Salvage.

We also emptied Totoyaya of all our belongings so she would be ready to be sold.

Everything we own in the garage of the condo.

We could see Totoyaya from the window of our condo. We’re very grateful to have found such a comfortable space to begin our conversion project!

Picking through the salvaged RVs for usable parts.

Disassembling hardware and cupboards inside a salvaged RV. A very surreal experience to step inside these RVs becuase, in most instances, the owners’ personal effects were still strewn about inside the vehicle. We saw tons of food, clothing, and even children’s homework! Makes you wonder what the families were up to before their personal tragedy…

Insuring and Registering our Bus

While we waited for our bus to get its new transmission, we dealt with insurance and registration.  These things proved to be much more challenging than expected.  Most companies didn’t want to insure a commercial vehicle or a bus being converted into, but not yet, an RV.  AAA spent a lot of time searching for us, without success.  I tried Progressive, National General, and Goodsam on my own (Goodsam will be able to cover us once the bus conversion is finished).

In the end, it was AIS that came to the rescue.  They called Progressive (again) and were able to insure me under their Commercial Bus Insurance.  For $685 per year (refundable if we don’t use the whole year – which we won’t), we have decent third party insurance.  Phew!

Registration was no less of a headache.  My research over previous months had shown that, if I registered the vehicle outside of Phoenix or Tucson, I could avoid yearly smog tests (which would be a big hassle from, say, Nicaragua!)  It just so happens that my friend, Erin, has parents who live in the Prescott area of Arizona.  We’d hit it off at Erin’s wedding back in 2013, and they accepted that we use their address for registration.  This meant that a) we would have an Arizona address (sort of important when registering a vehicle!), and b) we wouldn’t have to do smog tests!  Glenn and Sharon, you guys are total lifesavers!  Gems!!

The complicated part came here: we knew we could get a temporary 30-day registration for the bus, allowing us to drive on the roads (to buy parts, visit the mechanic, move to Tucson), but we also knew that 30 days wouldn’t be enough for us to finish the conversion and register the vehicle as an RV.  I learned about a temporary 90-day registration, and called twice to confirm that we would qualify.  We were told we would.  Double phew!  This meant we would have 90 days to finish the conversion and officially register the vehicle.

Only, when we got to the DMV office, this turned out not to be the case.  We didn’t qualify for the 90-day registration.  We could get 30 days and that was it.

I admit that, by this point in life, I was a big ball of stress and anxiety.  A lot of that had to do with the challenges I recently talked about regarding living in Totoyaya, and part of it was the frustration of the vehicle search itself.  I started to get angry and cry a little bit.  I must have freaked out the lady at the DMV office, because she agreed to allow us to register the bus as a commercial vehicle (its current form of registration), give us the rest of the year to convert the bus and come back when it was finished to register the bus as an RV.  Commercial registration would cost us more, she said, but when she quoted $112, we jumped on the opportunity!

Sticking the registration onto our new Arizona license plate!

Woo woo, we’re registered in Arizona!

Prepping the Bus for Conversion

While the bus was still at American Truck Salvage, we popped over one day to remove all its seats.  It was surprisingly easy, and I’m proud to say I did most of it myself (while Bruno familiarized himself with the electronics of the vehicle).  That same day at the dealership, we found a used truck seat and paid an employee cash to install it up front as a passenger seat.  And we had the guys take out the Air Conditioning system, which was bulky and ugly and we already knew we wouldn’t use.  We gave them the seats and AC system, so everyone was happy.

The day we officially purchased the bus, we brought it to a mechanic friend we had made months early during our vehicle search.  He did a full inspection and changed all the filters and oils.  We wanted to start our journey with Big Blue fresh.

Picking out the best used seat to install for a passenger (me).

Getting my new (used) passenger seat installed.

Before.

During. Taking the seats out of the bus all by myself!

After. Wow, right?

There, THAT’S better! (Notice the AC is gone, too.)

A Few Snags

We brought our bus back to the condo facility and parked it along a long dirt parking lot we’d been pretty stoked to see when we’d moved it.  It wasn’t even a day before we learned we had to move the bus or it would be towed.  Apparently it lowered the visual appeal of the condo facility.  We had to quickly think of a backup plan.  We checked out a few storage facilities but they were all expensive and had strict rules about not being able to work on the bus there.

At the last moment, we found a gravel storage facility owned by a couple that were much more chilled out about things.  We gave them $50 cash and they gave us permission to do some work inside the bus.  We really lucked out again, because over the next two weeks, Bruno and I put in the flooring, he opened up the ceiling, took out a bunch of useless wiring, took out the giant AC condenser unit and all its cables, repaired the front bumper, and continued trying to make sense of the electronics and wiring in the vehicle (without the aid of any technical manual!).

On our final day in Phoenix, as we were filling the bus with all our belongings (everything we had emptied from Totoyaya and all the things we’d purchased in Phoenix), Bruno discovered two problems: the new transmission we’d just had installed was leaking, and the “Check Engine Light” was going on and off.  As we scrambled back to the mechanics’ and the dealership where we’d purchased the vehicle, Bruno cursed his new bus.

The storage space where we parked Big Blue. Bruno would drive Totoyaya there in the mornings to do some work on the bus.

Moving all our stuff (including new purchases) from Phoenix to Tucson!

Moving to Tucson

Since we moved into our Air BnB house here in Tucson, we’ve settled into a sort of rhythm.  Bruno is putting in 10-hour days inside the bus, and I’m acting as a sort of project manager.  I make aesthetic decisions, run errands, pick up hardware and building materials, do research and purchase parts like insulation, grey water tank, fridge, water pump and heater, lighting, toilet, fans, etc.  I also maintain the house by cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking the most energizing and uplifting meals I can to keep us on track.

We have also enlisted a bit of help from some volunteers through an organization called HelpX.  For the past two weeks we have had someone living with us in our rental house and helping Bruno in the bus.  I’m super excited to share more about this experience, but will leave that for a future post.

I am personally feeling more balanced this month than back in January.  We finally have our vehicle and are taking daily concrete steps toward our dream.  We’re in a comfortable home with enough space to move around, a kitchen, hot water, and shelter from the winter.  And, despite the intense work schedule, I’m making time to occasionally get to the yoga studio and a Traditional Chinese Medicine School clinic.

The night we arrived at our Air BnB in Tucson. Nice kitchen, right?  I’m going to save the rest of my Tucson photos for later posts!

All in all, February has been challenging – and unlike any month we’ve ever experienced – but we are both feeling the concrete progress of our work.  In my next post, I’ll show you pictures of our conversion work so far!

On the Cards Next Month

Bruno and I have extended our stay in Tucson until March 26th, both because we are so comfortable and because our conversion work is advancing so slowly!  When we leave Tucson, we will be forced to head straight to Baja California, Mexico, because our US visas are almost up.  We will continue our work down there, but we are hoping to be able to do it from a campsite rather than a house.  Our finances are running really low so we would like to start living in the bus as soon as possible.  This means we have a lot of work to do in the next 3.5 weeks!

Our entire minds and spirits have been revolved around the project of searching for and converting a vehicle into our new home-on-wheels.  As reported earlier, most of our days have been spent researching vehicles, visiting them, checking out salvage stores and furniture stores, and making (and re-making) interior designs.  Our route, which has taken us from Phoenix to Los Angeles and San Diego, then up to Las Vegas and back to Phoenix, has been entirely driven by our vehicle search.

Our route since the beginning of December – all related to the search for our future home-on-wheels.

In December, we managed a quick visit to Hollywood, because, well, when you’re in L.A., it’s a spot you can’t miss.  This past month, we managed an equally quick one to the equally infamous Las Vegas Strip and the nearby Hoover Dam.  It’s the only real “tourism” we’ve done since our visits to my first two US National Parks back in November.

Bruno had visited the Las Vegas Strip as a backpacker many years ago, and had fond memories of all the freebies he had been able to take advantage of as a young traveler.  He was excited to show me the gladiators and knights and circus shows within the casinos, but to his dismay the costumed casino employees and free entertainment and food were no more.  Instead were a series of rather generic casinos strung together by overhead walkways so that you felt you’d entered a labyrinth.  We heard the occasional hoots and hollers, and saw what looked like a few high-stakes games, but it was mostly people sitting at video game screens pushing buttons and feeding coins into slots like zombies.

Since we’re not gamblers, the most interesting aspects of Vegas happen outside on the Strip.  We walked past hotels that were decked out as Egyptian pyramids, fairy tale castles, volcanoes, dancing water fountains, and pirate ships!  We passed by Venice’s gondolas, Paris’ Eifel Tower, and the New York City skyline!  The scale of the Strip is massive (my feet hurt by the end of the day, as we walked from one end to the other), and it was impressive to see how each of these hotels had tried to differentiate themselves from the pack.

Don’t know which Vegas hotel this is because they all look more or less the same now.

Treasure Island Hotel, Las Vegas Strip.  The pirate ship is in water right on the side of the road!

Venice and its gondolas outside the Venetian Hotel.

There’s even a half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower!

It was definitely very stereotypically “American.”  There was a “Heart Attack Restaurant”, with single, double, triple and quadruple bypass burgers that you order from nurses taking your prescription.  Customers weighing over 350lbs eat free.  We caught the end of “Fat Elvis’” show – the most famous Elvis impersonator in the US, with almost as many drooling fans as the real Elvis himself.  We walked past almost as many shopping malls as casinos (so that any money you win goes right back into where it came from).  We accidentally stumbled into one while lost in the mazelike Caesar’s Palace.  As you can see from the photo, its design was rather impressive.

Enter at your own risk. It will be hard to find the exit…

Can you believe this mall that we stumbled upon?

To me, Las Vegas seemed like the best and worst of humanity all scrunched up into a single 4 mile street – the betting, the booze, the strippers, the gaudiness, the consumerism; but also amazing architectural feats and some of the world’s best musical and artistic performances.

We got to see one of them – Cirque du Soleil’s Ka.  Neither Bruno nor I had ever seen a Cirque du Soleil performance before and Vegas seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it.  My parents gifted us two tickets (thanks mom and dad!), so after a quick dinner we headed to the MGM Grand for the performance.  It was every bit as dazzling and mesmerizing as I’d hoped for, and more so than any hotel I saw outside.

When we emerged from the theater, the neon lights of the Strip sparkled in the dark desert sky.  I couldn’t help but think about how unlikely it was for this city to exist at all in this desolate desert.  Alas, Vegas’ neon lights (and its charming welcome sign) shone flagrantly on.

Ssshhhh!  We snuck a photo of the Cirque du Soleil performance, Ka.

The Strip at night. This is the NYC skyline. Please feel free to compare to the real thing in my November post on our trip to NYC.

The knight- and castle-themed Excalibur hotel. Reminds me of something from Mario Brothers.

I have grown to love neon signs since our road trip down Route 66! This one is one of the world’s most famous.

Apart from this tourist day trip, Bruno and I mostly tried to find the occasional sweet moment while driving from one vehicle to another.  After driving through the high Mojave Desert and its rock formations and sand dunes, we celebrated Bruno’s birthday at a Thai restaurant.  While driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, we stopped for lunch at a state park and dipped our toes in the cold Pacific Ocean for the first time in years.  While driving from Vegas to Phoenix, we stopped at the Hoover Dam for a photo op.  And when there were no vehicles to see and no shops open to visit, we spent a couple of weekends at the gorgeous Lost Dutchman State Park east of Phoenix gazing up at the Superstition Mountains and examining the dull-coloured but fascinating desert birdlife.

Happy Birthday, Bruno!

Dipping our toes in the Pacific Ocean. It had been 8 years!

The amazing birds of the Sonoran Desert. Bruno hadn’t photographed animals in a looooooong time!

Stopping at the Hoover Dam while driving between Vegas and Phoenix. Bruno had never heard of this place, can you believe it?!?

Unfortunately, we missed two opportunities to visit two of America’s best national parks – Joshua Tree and Death Valley.  In both instances, we passed within 20 miles of the parks – and we really, really wanted to go! – but we knew we needed to be responsible and stay connected to our phone and internet so that we could find our future home-on-wheels.

Instead of soaking up America’s natural beauty, we visited a ton of vehicles.  I wish I had taken photos of all the vehicles we’ve seen in the past two months.  Here are a few of them, a mere fraction of what we actually visited (and the best of the bunch).

This is the type of bus we looked at most frequently – the Ford E450 with 7.3L turbo diesel engine.

We actually visited a couple yellow school buses when we found some short enough. In the end, we found them noisy, with lower ceilings, and with giant engines that probably guzzle gas.

We randomly came across this bus, and liked it. But it was really too big for us – 28.5 feet long!

This vehicle was, out of the whole lot, by absolute favorite. Probably because it was similar to Totoyaya, just bigger. We almost bought it. I thought we would. But one of the cylinders failed the engine test, and that’s a huge repair. That, on top of the high cost of the vehicle, and the questionable maintenance elsewhere made us back out. Snif.

At long last, after several frustrating months of searching for vehicles, we found a bus that finally seemed to have more going for it than against it.  I’m happy to report that Bruno and I have finally bought our bus!  And we have even begun the process of converting it into our future home-on-wheels!  I’m going to write a post about our new bus soon, so for now I’ll just leave you with a photo of it.  Details to follow soon, so stay tuned!

We FINALLY bought a bus! I can’t wait to tell you more about it, but that’ll be for my next post!

Statistics for December 2016 and January 2017:

Kilometers Driven: 4,106.  Totoyaya is now at 602,553km, which means she has officially reached 600,000km!  Unfortunately, now that we have our new bus, we’re not going to be logging too many more Totoyaya kilometers…

Nights in Campsites: 15.  We found a few decent and affordable campsites in the region – the Estrella Mountain Regional Park Campsite, west of Phoenix ($20; toilets, no showers or electricity); Desert Garden Campsite in Quartzsite, AZ ($10 off-season price; toilets and showers); Lake Cahuilla County Park near Palm Springs, CA ($20/$30); San Elijo State Park along the Pacific Coast between Los Angeles and San Diego ($30/50), and Pahrump RV Park 60 miles west of Las Vegas ($20/30).

The most notable campsites we’ve found in the region is the Flying Dutchman State Park Campground.  It has serviced/non-service sites ($30/20) and access to toilets and hot showers.  Each campsite has a picnic table and barbecue pit and is large enough to offer space and privacy between neighbours.  Most of all, the campsite is peacefully situated in the Sonoran Desert and each campsite offers a crazy incredible view of this mountain:

Lost Dutchman State Park Campsite, with the amazing Superstition Mountains in the backdrop.

The second time that we came here, the storm made the mountain look even MORE amazing!

We also spent 4 nights at Lake Cahuilla County Park, though it was because Bruno was sick. Not a bad place to get through a cold, though, right?

Air BnBs: Having never stayed at an Air BnB ever before, Bruno and I have definitely changed that these past two months!  We’ve spent a total of 7 nights in two different Air BnBs – one in Los Angeles that I wrote so gushingly about, and one in Las Vegas.  I think Bruno was feeling badly for my struggle to continue living in Totoyata (for all the reasons I shared very, very honestly in my last post) so he encouraged us to spend a few nights every once in a while in a “proper” home.

I totally dug the kitchen at our Vegas Air BnB!

We’re actually staying in a condo right now, too, in Phoenix.  Once we bought our bus it was time to start our conversion project, and for that we needed a proper home base to park our two vehicles, unload the Toyota, buy the necessary materials, and begin the conversion.  I’m happily and comfortably settled in a warm home with a shower, toilet, and kitchen, so I feel a lot less grumpy now!

Highlights of the Month

December Highlight: Saving Christmas by breaking down and renting the cutest Air BnB cottage ever to be found in Los Angeles!  (I probably don’t need to link to this story again, but I will!)

January Highlight: Easily and by far, buying our new bus!  We’ve been waiting for this for months, and we’re happy with what we’ve found.  Most of all, we’re just relieved that we can finally begin the actual conversion project!

Bonus Highlight: Our Christmas gift from my parents to see the Cirque du Soleil performance, Ka, in Las Vegas.  Though I didn’t care for Vegas itself, I am grateful I got to have a quintessential Vegas experience that was right up my alley!

Getting to see Cirque du Soleil was the perfect way for Bruno and I to have our own quintessential Vegas experience! Thank you, mom and dad, for the memorable Christmas gift!

Challenges of the Month

I generally try not to dwell on challenges in these monthly wrap-ups, but in the past two months, we’ve experienced some noteworthy trials that I feel compelled to share.

December Challenge: I actually already shared this one in my last post.  The bad weather, illnesses, and overuse of Walmart parking lots caused me to feel pretty bummed for most of December.

January Challenge: I haven’t shared this one at all on my blog, mostly because I hadn’t wanted to jinx it.  Our beloved Totoyaya got sold back in August, minutes after Bruno posted an ad on a Land Cruiser forum.  A guy from Boston came to visit our vehicle while we were in Montreal and gave us a small deposit on the vehicle.  When we didn’t find a new vehicle in Canada and Bruno had US visa issues, our buyer agreed that we would keep Totoyaya until we found a new vehicle here in the Southwest USA.

When we finally found a new vehicle almost two weeks ago, we contacted our buyer.  After many emails and much waiting, he finally decided to back out of the deal, citing bad timing, distance, and confusion over customs and importation.  It’s extremely frustrating for us because we had given him several opportunities to back out over the months but he’d continued to express absolute interest.  Now, we find ourselves with two vehicles, no extra cash to convert our bus, and no time to sell Totoyaya to anyone else!

We hope we can find someone to care for and travel with our Totoyaya soon.  I really want to see her have a new home, and it would be heartbreaking for her journey to end here when she still has so much life to live.  Please share our For-Sale Ad and spread the word! (Desperate cry for help #1!)

This picture has nothing to do with the body of my post… I just thought it was too cute to leave out!

On the Cards Next Month

Conversion, conversion, conversion!

We’re staying in Phoenix until February 10^th, at which point we have an Air BnB (what else? we’re experts now!) booked in Tucson.  It’s a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom home with a big parking spot in front so we can park the bus and do as much work as possible over the course of a month.  If anyone wants to come help us, we can offer you a private room and bathroom and free delicious vegan meals!  Let us know!  We’re totally serious! (Desperate cry for help #2!)

You can expect the next few blog posts to mostly revolve around this huge project, so do stay tuned.  It’s been more difficult to post regularly, but I’ll do my best to keep Wandering Footsteps alive over the coming weeks!

We crossed the US border in Detroit and made our way toward Chicago along the interstate highways (something we rarely do) to make good time.  Then, we opted to take a bit of a touristy road trip south, following Route 66 from Joliet, Illinois (almost the starting point) all the way to Arizona.  I’m looking forward to sharing our experiences along this infamous all-American Route very soon on the blog so do look out for that in the next week or so.

Goodbye Canada and the cold – we’re heading south for the winter!

About to cross the bridge into the US at the Windsor/Detroit border.

After parking at this truck stop/travel center for the night , we’ll start our Route 66 road trip the next morning!

We opted not to take Route 66 to its final point in Los Angeles because we got side-tracked by the Petrified Forest National Park and the beckoning warm weather of Arizona’s southern cities.  We spent a bit of time in Tucson, visiting the nearby Saguaro National Park, and ended our month in Phoenix.  These two national parks were my first two in the United States, so I am looking forward to sharing my impressions and photos of these visits later in the month.

As for our time in Tucson and Phoenix, we’re here beginning our U.S. search for a new camper van.  I expect that much of December will be taken up with this task.

This Month’s Statistics

Flights Taken: 3 (Montpellier to Paris; Paris to New York; and Newark to Toronto – it was a very long day!)

Countries Visited: Also 3 (France, Canada, and the US).  As far as the U.S. goes, we stepped foot in 9 states (4 of which were new to me), thanks to our Route 66 road trip!

Kilometers Driven: A whopping 4,822!  WOW, this is by far the most kilometers Bruno and I have ever driven in a month, and probably the most kilometers Bruno has ever done in a single month in all his 18 years of overland travel.  Interestingly, all but 600 of these kilometers took place during the 15-day period between our departure from Toronto and our decision to leave Route 66 at Petrified Forest National Park.

Our three weeks of overland travel started in Toronto and ended in Phoenix. That’s A LOT of kilometers!

Nights in Campsites: 10

Overnights in Parking Lots: 13.  Read below for the details.

This Month’s Camping Situation

Finding overnight accommodation this month was a fairly big challenge.  Campsites were even more expensive than in Canada, which I’d already complained was the most expensive country for camping I’d ever visited.  In the U.S, most campsites (also called RV Parks) are between $30-50USD per night!!  Not only that, but these parks are composed almost entirely of retirees in gigantic RVs and motorhomes, which isn’t our personal camping style.  This is especially true in Arizona, where at least half the RV Parks are for 55+ only.

A few times we found cheaper campsites – like the run-down trailer park in Oklahoma, the communal campsite a couple nights later, and the state park campsite in Arizona – but a few times we paid $30 to camp for a night because we desperately needed a shower!

The other thirteen nights (though, somehow, it feels like more), Bruno and I sampled the gamut of spots that offer free overnight RV parking in the U.S.  We tried rest stops along the interstate, Walmart parking lots, gas station truck stops (now called “travel centers”), and casinos.  Of all these places, I preferred the Walmarts.  We had access to 24-hour toilets, Wi-Fi, and a grocery store if we needed anything.  It was also the quietest option because we were always able to find a back corner in the parking lot. More than all that, though, is that it was the most wholesome-feeling option.  The rest stops and gas stations are full of male truck drivers, so I’m not very comfortable there, and at the two casinos we tried, we had to go through a large smoky room full of gamblers to reach the toilets.

Parked for the night at a casino that offers free parking to RVs, with hookups!

With each of the free overnight parking options, though, I was pushed to levels of discomfort I have not yet known in my overlander life.  You can’t bring out your camping chairs or tables, so we were limited to very small living quarters for 15-hour periods (which, to be fair, was also true at many of the campsites because of the freezing weather at times); you can’t cook outside, so we ate a lot of ready-made meals this month (which is not my cup of tea); and most importantly, there were no showers.  I often went several days without showering, and once I didn’t take a proper shower for six entire days – a lifetime first!

If I wasn’t totally convinced that Bruno and I need a larger camper van with a toilet, shower, a larger water capacity, and a grey water tank, I sure am now!

Notable Camping Spots

We didn’t do any bush camping this month, mostly because we didn’t really have time to get off the beaten path.  We did, however, find one superb campsite and another pretty decent one that I can recommend.

1) Gilbert Ray Campsite in Tucson Mountain Park.  GPS 32.223229, -111.144689.  This place is in a breathtaking setting, surrounded by the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert.  It’s just outside the entrance to Saguara National Park West and there are several hiking trails within walking distance of the campsite.  It’s also very affordable – $10/night for a tent (we put a tent down even though we slept in the car), and $20/night for an RV (with electricity).  There are restrooms and running water, but no showers (the only real downfall).

2) Communal RV Park on Lake Reno, Oklahoma.  GPS 35.518753153948, -97.986223697662.  We found this place by accident, and happily spent a day by the lake surrounded by Canada geese.  The site is $5 for a tent and $15 for RVs (with full hook-ups), and there is a shower/toilet block.  Besides the noise of the nearby highway, this was a pretty darn good spot.

Lake Reno, OK, with the Canada geese making me feel at home.

The best campsite of the month – Gilbert Ray campsite in the Tucson Mountain Park in the Sonoran Desert.

Also, a note for RV people (and those that don’t need toilets or showers) – all through Oklahoma and Texas we came upon free RV Parks along the side of the main road in little towns.  They are totally free and they usually come with full hook-ups, too.  They are generally right along the road, there isn’t security, they don’t have toilets, and they are occasionally squatted by long-term trailers, but they are still a great option.  We only stayed at one of them, though, because it was right beside a gas station for our toilet needs.

High and Low Points This Month

The low point this month was definitely the results of the U.S. election, especially because it occurred on the first day of our long-term travels within the U.S.  The election briefly caused me to reconsider our travel plans, and it has triggered many difficult emotional and intellectual moments as I navigate the people and places I encounter.  I guess that’s part of travel and personal growth.

The highlight this month was getting to visit my first American National Parks.  My brother and sister-in-law gifted Bruno and me a one-year America the Beautiful National Parks pass, and we are so stoked to spend as much time in as many national parks as possible during our U.S. travels.

Another highlight was getting to celebrate my 3rd wedding anniversary with Bruno a few days ago.  Since we were in Tucson, we opted for a totally American celebration – going to the movies and then out to dinner at a local  Sonoran/Mexican restaurant!

Petrified Forest National Forest – my first U.S. National Park!

Celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary in style at a local Sonoran/Mexican restaurant in Tucson.

What December Will Hold

Our sole goal in December is to find a new vehicle and begin converting it into a new camper van.  I’m not sure whether we will find the vehicle in Arizona or California, but I expect we will spend Christmas and the New Year in the Pacific Southwest of the country.  Stay tuned on the blog to see what vehicle we purchase and to watch the conversion process!

But first, Bruno and I took a mini-vacation in Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula.  We had spent the last two weeks in the Toronto home of our good family friends, the Sharples, and Bruno desperately wanted to get a break from the city.

We headed to the little village of Jordan and parked ourselves at the Shangri-La Resort, a campsite that cost us $38 per night without services!  The campsite was full of Airstream campers, the weather was chilly and rainy, and the surrounding area offered little to do but wine-tastings at the region’s many vineyards.  The trip gave me a taste of what fall/winter camping in Canada would be like for us if we were to keep Totoyaya, giving me renewed conviction that selling her is the right move.

Shangri-La Resort, surrounded by Airstreams.

The Niagara Peninsula, the land of vineyards.

A charming old village home in the tourist hamlet of Jordan.

When the rain and cold finally lifted, Bruno and I took a little exploratory walk, when most of the photos I just showed were taken. The visit didn’t last terribly long, as there wasn’t a ton to see.

The reason we were only taking a mini-vacation rather than hitting the road (since we now knew we didn’t want to buy a new vehicle in Canada) was because we hit a minor snag in our travel plans.  Since we were headed to New York City to visit my aunt Louise mid-month, Bruno decided it was time to apply online for his US entry code via the VWP.  The Visa Waiver Program was created for tourists from a handful of eligible countries (including France) to enter the US for up to 90 days without going through the rigorous B1/B2 US visa application process.

When Bruno began to fill out the short online questionnaire, he saw that, because he’d been to Sudan and Iran, he wouldn’t be eligible for the VWP.  He would have to apply for the B1/B2 visa.  The application itself takes about three hours and can be filled out online.  You pay a hefty $160USD fee.  Those things aren’t problems – the problem is that there is a required face-to-face interview at a US embassy or consulate, and ours was scheduled in Toronto for October 17^th, the day after we were due to fly to France from NYC!

I tried calling the US consulate in Toronto and the embassy in Ottawa.  After several hours and much panic, I finally got through in Montreal, and Bruno was able to change his interview to for the 5^th.  It would still be a close call (the visa processing generally takes at least one business week after the interview) and there was, of course, the risk his visa would be denied (we had heard of many such instances in traveler circles).

Bruno mounted as best of a dossier as he could to prove that he was just a tourist and had no intention of immigrating or working.  Thankfully, the interview went very well, lasting only ten minutes.  Bruno was even able to expedite the visa, citing that he wanted to fly to the US the following week.  By the 7^th we had a 10-year multiple entry B1/B2 visa in Bruno’s passport, meaning that for the next decade he can spend as much as 6 months of the year in the US!  A close call, but a great victory!  (As an added bonus, the need to be in and around Toronto allowed us to visit the city as tourists on interview and visa pickup day!)

Yay, Bruno got his B1/B2 US visa!

We also took the opportunity to wander around Toronto in between jaunts to the US consulate.

The only thing Bruno asked to do was visit the Hard Rock Café.

I wanted to eat Ethiopian food. Yum!

We used the tram system to get around. It was slow going, that’s for sure!

By this point, it was Thanksgiving weekend in Canada and, since we were still around, my parents decided to drive to Toronto and spend the weekend with us all.  I hadn’t celebrated Thanksgiving in exactly a decade, so I was thrilled to get to spend it with my family and our wonderful friends.  It was the first Thanksgiving for both Bruno and Ara so it was extra fun to share our traditions.  I haven’t laughed that hard or been that silly in a long time, and it felt so festive and heart-warming to share this celebration of food and family with those I love the most.

We also took advantage of Thanksgiving Day itself to bring Ara to the countryside outside Toronto to visit the changing colours of the leaves, something she doesn’t see in her home country of Ecuador.  It was a beautiful fall day out, so we walked the family dogs, had a picnic next to an apple orchard, and revisiting the old neighbourhood where our family had lived almost a decade prior.  I, too, hadn’t experienced fall in a long time so it filled me with nostalgia (the good kind) to partake in these fall activities.

Enjoying appies, games, and the ball game before Thanksgiving Dinner.

Thankful for food and family.

Enjoying the leaves and a brisk fall walk with the family.

Visiting Nate’s old high school, and posing for a photo.

Our foreigners are freezing their buns off and, behind, there is someone swimming in Lake Ontario!!

On October 12^th, Bruno and I brought Totoyaya to Skypark, a long-term parking near Toronto Pearson International Airport, where we paid $85CAD to keep our car there for 26 days.  An incredible deal if you ask me – we’ll see if Totoyaya is there and in one piece when we return!

Then, Bruno and I boarded a flight to New York City and spent four nights with my aunt Louise in Manhattan.  My next blog post will be devoted to that incredible trip, so I’m going to refrain from writing about it here.

Just before midnight on October 16^th, we boarded another flight from JFK Airport to Paris, spent five hours in the Charles de Gaulle Airport, then boarded another quick flight to Montpellier, in France’s south.  We are still here as I post this blog, and will be for a few more days yet.  Watch this space for a post about our three weeks in France soon.

We’re in NYC!!

In NYC with my aunt Louise, on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the “Psycho” house behind us.

And now we’re in the south of France!

After the month we’ve had, I’m exhausted!!

This Month’s Statistics

Kilometers Driven: I actually forgot to check the odometer before we parked our vehicle at the long term parking in Toronto, so I’m going to have to estimate here.  We couldn’t have done more than 500km, since we only drove within Toronto and to the Niagara Peninsula.  Not much overland tourism in October!

Flights taken: Three (Toronto to NYC; NYC to Paris; and Paris to Montpellier).  The same will be true in November.

Days in campsites: A measly two… Most of the month was spent either staying with friends, family, or in our own home in France.

Highlights of the Month

The drama surrounding Bruno’s US visa was a major stress for about a week, but in the end we ended up with the gift of a wonderful 10-year multiple entry visa.  We are completely conscious of Bruno’s privileged position as a Frenchman.  I’m sure the process wouldn’t have been as easy if he’d come from a country in the global south.  We are so grateful that Bruno will be able to enter and re-enter the US with minimal hassle over the next few years – the unforeseen highlight of the month.

I’d originally planned to spend Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago, as my 10-year university reunion happened that weekend.  I was disappointed not to be able to go, as it was something I’d had on my radar the past year.  But I couldn’t have asked for a better alternative to those plans – spending Thanksgiving with family and friends!  Highlight #2!

Lastly, getting to spend four days in NYC with Bruno was highlight #3.  Louise was a phenomenal and generous host, and being able to use her gorgeous home as a staging area for our daily jaunts around Manhattan was an experience that most will only dream of.  Once again, we are extremely aware of our privilege and are eternally grateful to Louise for creating such wonderful lifelong memories for us.  I can’t wait to blog about this trip!

Plans for Next Month

On November 6^th we fly from France back to Canada, and we’ll immediately head south for the winter.  Our plan is to cross into the US and do a quick Route 66 road trip toward New Mexico and Arizona.  Winter is coming in Canada, and our experience on the Niagara Peninsula showed us that now is not the time to linger.  We’ve been social since August (proof here and here) – now it’s time for Bruno and me to find ourselves again in travel.  Things won’t be quite the same as they usually are – we plan to drive the 3000km to Sante Fe with only limited tourism, and once we get there we’ll be devoting our energy to finding a new vehicle – but at least we’ll be overlanding again.  We’re both really looking forward to it, and I expect the frequency of blog posts will reflect that excitement!

And so, I conceived of the Wrap-Up Series to give people a more concrete, non-poetic description of what the previous month has been like, and therefore a better grasp of what the nomad overlander life is like! 

Here are some of the things you can expect to read about in my new Wrap-Up series:

• The number of kilometers we’ve driven
• What we’ve been up to, with links to previous posts that describe our activities this month
• A description and map of our exact route
• Any noteworthy camping spots
• A few highlights (or lowlights)
• What we expect the next month to hold for us (keeping in mind that future plans are always very changeable!)

So, without further ado, here’s our September 2016 Wrap-Up!

On September 2^nd, after being on an overlanding hiatus for five months (with the exception of Bruno’s travels from the south of France to Belgium in July) Bruno and I finally hit the road again!

For days leading up to our departure, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off gathering my belongings scattered around my parents’ home, choosing the few essential items that would fit in Totoyaya and packing away those that hadn’t made the cut into my parents’ storage area.  One of these days I’m going to have to get rid of those belongings that are unnecessary in my nomadic lifestyle, but I never seem to have the time to sell things off online!  Thanks again, mom and dad, for storing my things another year…

New Brunswick sent Bruno and I off with a bang… of cold, rainy, windy weather!  It felt like winter in northern Spain, and I briefly wondered what two crazy people take off on a road trip through Canada in September.  Thankfully, by the time we hit the St-Lawrence River, the weather shifted back into late summer warmth.

Departure morning… with a storm!

No matter – our passengers are ready to hit the road!

Our Route

This month, Bruno and I drove from Grand-Barachois, New Brunswick to Toronto, Ontario.  We traveled through northern New Brunswick then along Quebec’s St-Lawrence River, visiting Quebec City and Montreal (the details of our experience from Grand-Barachois to Quebec City are in my previous post).  By the middle of the month we were in Ontario, where we continued along the St-Lawrence, spending a couple nights near the Thousand Islands National Park before reaching Toronto (more on that in my next post).

Our total number of kilometers this month was 2,264.

Notable Camping Spots

We boondocked (my new, North American term for bush camping) five times this month.  We would have done more – as I mentioned in my last post, camping in campsites has proven to be very expensive in Canada – but we spent 18 nights staying with family and friends.  Visiting loved-ones in Quebec and Ontario are actually what we did the most in September, and my next blog post will be devoted to this topic.

Out of all our boondocks, I really enjoyed two and will describe them briefly (according to our own experience), with GPS coordinates:

1. Halte Municipale, Riviere-Bleue Quebec. GPS N47 26.891 W69 02.035.  A municipal park on the side of the road with a few potential parking spots hidden by trees from the road.  Two toilets open 24/7 and one cold running water tap.  Camping either officially allowed or tolerated – the signs were a bit confusing.
2. Public beach along St-Lawrence 4km east of Kamouraska. GPS N47 35.610 W69 49.061.  Favorite beach of locals, busy on holidays and weekends in season.  Small parking lot 200m from national road directly along beach.  Camping tolerated and very popular when we were there.  No toilet or water facilities so come prepared.

The beach campsite outside Kamouraska.

The Halte Municipale just after the Quebec border.

Highlights of the Month

The highlight of September was definitely getting back on the road with Bruno.  Getting to drive through beautiful countryside, explore new places, and live simply and freely again was just amazing after so many months living in homes.  There was a moment, watching the sunset our first night along the St-Laurent, that the beauty of being on the road again truly set in.  I felt calm and at peace as I sat there with my beloved with the impressions of our day in a new place playing around in my mind and no responsibilities to cloud my thoughts.  Being on the road – and all that comes with it – was bar none the highlight of the month!

The simple aspects of being back on the road, like a surprise wild blueberry patch on the side of the highway!

Bruno enjoying the relaxation and peace that comes with our nomadic life.

Getting my first glimpse of the St-Lawrence river.

Visiting the marche du Vieux-Port de Quebec.

A close second, though, has definitely been getting to reconnect with various friends and family members around the central part of Canada and having them finally meet Bruno (but more on that in my next post!)

On the Cards Next Month

For maybe the first time in my life, I actually have no clue what the next two weeks hold for us.  I don’t want to give too much away just yet (there will definitely be a blog post devoted to this soon), but our lack of certainty about the coming weeks has to do with our efforts to find a replacement for Totoyaya.

However, I can say with more sureness than usual (we actually have flights and theater tickets booked!) what the second half of October will hold for us.  Our plans will, once again, involve a hiatus from our overlanding life… poor Bruno!

First, we will spend a few nights with my aunt Louise in New York City, as she is the only member of my immediate family who has not yet met Bruno.  She will show us “her New York,” as she likes to put it, and Bruno will revisit a city he hasn’t explored since he was a twenty-something backpacker!  I’m looking forward to seeing Louise, and revisiting New York City for the second time in three months.

Then, on October 16^th, we fly out of NYC to France to spend three weeks with Bruno’s family.  It seems as though we’ve just left France, but we don’t foresee another time until next fall that we could go, since we hope to be heading toward Alaska and the Yukon next spring and summer, so it’s now or never.

October will hold a mixture of unknown, big city exploration, family visits, and an overseas flight.  Stay tuned on the blog for stories and photos of these adventures!

I hope you enjoyed this new blog series, and that it helped give a concrete wrap-up of our current state of affairs.  If there’s any information you wish were included in this series, please do post your suggestions in the comments section below so that I can target this series to exactly what my audience is looking for.  Thanks a bunch and see you next month with another update!