Oh, Canada!

Posted on 2 July, 2016 by Landon Kimbrough

Happy Canada Day! The Canadian border guard was actually pleasant and smiling as we headed north on US/BC 97. He was very impressed with our Newfoundland destination, but advised us that we were going the wrong way and that we needed to make a right turn as soon as possible. The Okanogan Valley in British Columbia is gorgeous and well populated by a zillion fruit stands. We stopped at one and selected some great fruit and vegetables, including blueberries that were affordable. My only complaint is it’s a very slow drive due to the need to drive through all the towns.

Our mission today included buying a Canadian mobile phone, so we stopped at the Cherry Mall in Pendicton where Sam at Virgin Mobile fixed us up after we explored options with the folks at Rogers and at Bell. Now we can call in Canada to make reservations and send/receive text message back to the US. With the exchange rate of $1.30 to the US dollar, it was a good deal.

We’ve stayed at the KOA in Sicamous before as the sites are roomy, level and wooded. It was Canada Day, so I finally got to display the large Maple Leaf flag that Mike Cullen helped us find several years ago. Oh, and did I mention the KOA also has a pancake and sausage breakfast? The cook was new and still trying to get the right temperature for the grill, but she nailed it for my short stack.

We spent Saturday rearranging gear as we often throw stuff on the beds and stow it away later. Some rain on Friday, but mostly sunny and pleasant today. Allie and Kinnon are remarkably quiet companions so far.

2016 Maritime Walkabout – Storage

Posted on 29 May, 2016 by Landon Kimbrough

One of challenging yet fun things about a motor home is deciding where to put all the Stuff. Our Navion is smaller than a “small house” and we lived in our former View for six months, so arranging things is an important task in order to maintain space and sanity.

We try to follow some guidelines when arranging things. It might appear that these are self-evident, but some gear is too fragile or too large, so creativity is a must.

Items we use frequently should be close at hand. Everything coffee and tea is kept together by the kitchen sink, for example.
Items used together should be stored together. We keep all the canine items in the storage areas over the driver.
Things should be organized to minimize set-up and take-down routines. We no longer carry with us the bed extension cushion as it’s been used so little and is unstable when in place.
Items that are used outside should be stored outside. An exception is the slow cooker (above), which has its own box in the rear external storage area. After many trips we found an outside place for the X-pen, which is heavy and had been riding between the twin beds. A hitch mounted cargo carrier has its advantages!

2016 Maritime Walkabout – Planning

Posted on 24 May, 2016 by Landon Kimbrough

It’s about 37 days until we take the ferry from Port Townsend, headed for Newfoundland and Labrador and we’re busy planning the trip. This will be our fourth long trip in our motor home and each journey impresses upon us the need for planning. Not that we aren’t spontaneous on the road, but this time we want to be more careful about each day.

We began planning this trip with the goal of seeing more of the Maritime Provinces of Canada than we did in 2012. Our first consideration was to not repeat the mistake we made last year by showing up before any campgrounds were open for the season!

This trip we’re going to try a daily planning form so that we can pay attention to the day and have a record for reviewing campgrounds and future trips.

Often we’ll start the day’s drive with only a hazy idea of where lunch will be or where we’ll fill up the tank. Hopefully this will help us organize our thoughts more clearly. The form is in Word and we’ll print it two to a page on both sides of the paper and place them in a binder.

Next: Organizing outside storage.

Organizing

Posted on 7 March, 2016 by Landon Kimbrough

One of the major insights gained during our most recent trip is that we have stored gear, from sewer hoses to coffee makers, like we did in our 2006 View J. For those familiar with these Winnebago floor plans, our 1015 Navion V is laid out completely different.

Our first task was to develop a set of criteria to help us arrange things in a more efficient way. Our previous storage criteria was to 1) match the storage space with the shape of the gear and ignore convenience and 2) keep the weight down. We now have a lot more cargo carrying capacity (CCC) and more space. Now we have more gear and less patience with getting on our knees to retrieve that gear.

We first measured various openings and then set out to The Container Store at Southcenter. The staff was incredibly helpful and their Clear Weathertight Totes are exactly what we needed. They come in different sizes, we bought eight that will fit through the openings of all the exterior doors.

The Navion has an exterior compartment on the rear right side that has a seal and is apparently for wet items. I had stored the sewer hose and connections in here in a treated canvas bag, but the zipper broke and things were just not “tidy” enough.

The new arrangement has all the sewer items in one box, along with the hose support, knee pad, and two 25′ water hoses water hoses. The water hoses are connected end to end, so no contamination. Everything gets rinsed when used and the seal on the container keeps any smell inside. I broke the hose support into two sections so it would fit. This also helps with the issue of the sewer outlet not being very high off the ground.

The exterior compartment under the slide requires extreme yoga to access when the slide is out, so here is where we store little-used gear.

These boxes contain an extra sewer kit (we’ve been camping where twenty feet was not long enough), emergency triangle and cone, and a heavy gauge 110V extension cord.

A coffee aficionados, we needed a taller and convenient place for the coffee makers. Under the kitchen sink is ideal for us. The Black & Decker machine is used in the mornings when we leave as we can make a pot of half-caf in the thermal carafe that lasts until lunch. On the left is our drip coffee maker for boondocking (using the stove) and the pod machine is used when we stay more than one night as we have slightly different tastes in the boldness of the roast. Mark us down as addicts.

More on the interior next time. Comments and pictures about what you’ve done are most welcome!

Walkabout 2015 Preparation

Posted on 5 March, 2015 by Landon Kimbrough

Proposed Route

With three days and some amount of hours left until we push-back I thought I’d better offer a preview of the preparation and trip, if nothing else than to review them myself.

Above left is the most current itinerary, a counter-clockwise trip around the US and Canada. Parameters for the dates are mid-June graduation of Grandson Mitchell and the mid May opening of the Canadian Rockies.

Each walkabout we’ve taken (this will be number three) we’ve made fewer reservations and been more open to “one day at a time.” We also try to drive less each day, with 300 miles as a guideline maximum. More state, provincial and national parks.

Outfitting the new Navion has been fun, and we’ll do more rearranging on the road. The four cylinder, twin turbo diesel and 7 speed transmission make the rig a dream to drive, with 18.5 mpg so far. The floor plan (we chose the L-shaped sectional) is much more livable than our 2006 View.

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Traveling Landon

Formerly "Enjoying the View"

Category Archives: Travel