Category: Ohio

  • Southern US Trip Summary

    This morning at home we feel as though we are living between two worlds. Before we enter back into our everyday life with all its responsibilities we look back on six and a half weeks of excitement and adventure. We’re happy we did write the blog so that we don’t forget all the things we saw and experienced. It definitely is a trip to remember and does rival our Route 66 trip from two years ago.

    What worked well:

    WIND Mobile’s Unlimited US Roaming. We’ve been WIND Mobile customers for a number of years now and their price just can’t be beat. For $15 a month we had unlimited voice calling, texting and 1GB of data while in the US. This allowed us to keep in touch and look up things on the road.

    Good Sam Membership: This RV club membership cost $25 a year and give you 10% discount at member campsites.  It definitely paid for itself.

    America the Beautiful Pass: This $80/year pass gives you free entrance to US Parks and other recreation sites. It paid for itself as well.

    Garmin GPS: We love our Garmin GPS system. At the start of the trip we had the RV/Trucking dezl 760 model but it was stolen in Albuquerque so we bought a nuvi 2689LMT to replace it. These GPS units have campground locations pre-installed and provide lots of information on arrival times, traffic conditions, etc.

    Allstays Camp and RV App: We use this app on our iPads all the time to look for campgrounds. It shows the location of campgrounds and gives information about their rating, facilities and distance from your current location.

    NOAA Weather Pro App: This app for the iPad and iPhone shows a map with weather conditions. It also has the ability to send alerts to your phone when severe weather is nearby.

    Visitor Centres, Park Rangers and Bureau of Land Management offices: These are always a source of great information and have invaluable knowledge of local conditions and opportunities.

    Frugal RV Travel Guides: These guides have great route information as well as tips on inexpensive places to stay overnight.

    Here’s a map of the entire trip. This is an image grab from Google Maps as it wasn’t possible to use the entire GPS track on a live map, probably because of its size.

    SouthernUS

  • Cloverdale, Indiana to Dundas, Ontario

    This morning we were all excited to go to Indianapolis to see Kevin Raber again and visit his new gallery. We’ve known Kevin since our 2009 Antarctica trip and our PODAS trips to Death Valley and Iceland. Kevin used to be the Vice President of Phase One USA and is now the CEO of Luminous Landscape, a great online resource for photographers.

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    Kevin has a lovely gallery/workspace in the Stutz building in downtown Indianapolis. Stutz was a car manufacturer and some of the historic cars are on display in the building today.

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    Ruth loved the old freight elevators and we all enjoyed a nice lunch in the building’s restaurant. Thanks for lunch Kevin.

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    After a great visit we decided to drive the remaining 700 or so kms home rather than spending another night so close to our final destination.

    It was an amazing trip and rivals our Route 66 trip.