May 2017 Wrap-Up: Our All-American Road-Trip

Boy, has this month been different from the last!  Bruno and I have finally left behind our bus conversion duties and officially hit the road – and many a roads have we seen in the last few weeks!

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!

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).

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!

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.

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?

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!