Making the Christmas Desert Glow

There may not be snow in southern Arizona this time of year  but the Christmas spirit is still on display in the RV parks.

This homemade Christmas tree looks like something  Bill would make in his workshop at home.

This miniature village was on display in front of one of the park models.

 A night walk showed us some beautiful recreational vehicles all dressed up for this time of year.

Electric usage costs extra at the sites, but some people certainly did not seem to mind!

and...

this small cottage could almost be seen from space!

🎉

Happy New Year!

🎇

Another Bad Day for Michigan Football

We do not have access to TV cable at our site in the Fortuna De Oro RV park.  Therefore, we had to go up to one of the meeting rooms in the park to watch ESPN where the Peach Bowl was broadcast.

Unfortunately for us Michigan fans, Florida put a whipping on the Wolverines  41-15!

Ouch!

Notre Dame got walloped in the Cotton Bowl by Clemson 30-3. 

so....

On Sunday we will try to find a place to watch the Lions.

We would love to see a victory.

🏆

Football In The Desert

Here is a typical sunrise in Yuma.  We love the cloudless skies and sunshine even though the weather is cool.

Today at 10 AM (our new time) Michigan is playing Florida in the Peach Bowl.

GO BLUE!!!!!!

Now we have to find a TV with ESPN to watch it.

🏈

We Rescue Miss Kitty and Set Up Camp

On Thursday morning, December 27, we opened our storage unit in eastern Yuma to find our travel trailer in good shape and ready to see daylight again.  

Other than some dust and desert sand that had blown in, and some flat bicycle tires - everything seemed in good shape and enact.

Karen was happy to see that her traveling playhouse was safe and sound.

Our new truck hooked up nicely and pulled the trailer with little effort.   Above you see our site at Fortuna De Oro that we had reserved for the month of January.

The small house next to us is still for sale.  We have neighbors from Canada on only one side and a small canyon behind us.  Therefore, as RV parks go, we have quite a bit of privacy.

💫

We Make It To Yuma A Day After Christmas

There had been a light snow in Central Utah overnight, but we hit the road shortly after dawn on December 26.  Some of the hills were slippery but in general, the roads were not bad.  Driving south on Interstate 15 toward Las Vegas took us into a small piece of northwest Arizona, then into Nevada, then California and finally back into Arizona.  Therefore, we drove in four different states on Wednesday to reach our destination of Yuma, Arizona.

We stopped to get gas in Nevada and Karen disappeared.  Bill asked this fellow if he had seen her.  He said to see the fortune teller who knew everything.

So...

Bill found this old  guy who was happy to locate Karen for just a few dollars!

And.....

Sure enough, Bill found Karen inside a Nevada casino doing what she loves to do!  However, she did not leave Nevada any richer.

As the sun was setting, we arrived in Yuma after four days of driving, 2500 miles,  and some beautiful western sights.

🌄

A Rocky Mountain Christmas Ride

On Christmas morning we awoke in Golden, Colorado and started west into the Rocky Mountains.

Again, the weather was perfect, as we drove up Interstate 70 toward Utah.

However, we soon started seeing signs of the white stuff.

This mine shaft, above, showed us what was to come as we drove to the higher elevations.

These condos in the Vail area were beautiful to see tucked into the hillside.

We stopped to use a rest area above 10,000 ft.  That is Karen on the left walking up to the building,

Here is the sidewalk to the bathroom.  Now this felt like a true Christmas setting.

There was some snow on the roads but the skies were clear so travel was not difficult and the scenery was special.

As we drove down the western side of the mountains the snow was gone and the temperature again rose into the low 40's.  We hit great weather to cross the Great Divide this Holy Day.

Tuesday night we checked into a Comfort Inn in Richfield, Utah, after seeing, firsthand, what the late John Denver used to sing about.

⛄

Merry Christmas from Golden, Colorado

Christmas morning finds us in a motel in Golden, which is a suburb or Denver.   So far the weather has been excellent for travel into the West.  Yesterday we got off Interstate 80 for about sixty miles to travel Route 30 in Nebraska which closely follows the original Oregon Trail.

We were surprised to see this massive pile of shelled corn in Nebraska.  Perhaps it will be covered later to protect it from the weather?

We stopped along the Oregon Trail to see a small recreation of a pioneer settlement.

This log cabin once protected a proud family out here in the prairie.
Notice the Christmas Wreath.

This  schoolhouse and church were moved  together for visitors to explore,
We traveled the Oregon Trail from Kearney to North Platte and then jumped back on I-80 to make better time.

Merry Christmas from Bill and Karen!
🎄

A New Truck and A New Adventure to the Southwest US

On Friday December 21 Bill signed the papers to close the deal on his new GMC Truck in Grayling. The next day Karen and Bill packed up the same truck and headed for a Hollenbeck family Christmas party downstate in Vicksburg at sister, Kathy Hiemstra's house.  Because they had driven almost four hours in the right direction, after the party they continued on into Indiana to spend their first night at South Bend.

(Boo Irish  🏈 )

Here is Bill with his new baby.

⛟

On Sunday morning the weather ahead looked dry and sunny so they continued down the toll road past Chicago and on west instead of heading south toward St. Louis.  Sunday Evening found them in Lincoln, Nebraska stopping for the night.

⛯

Toronto Sightseeing and Home

On Wednesday, September 26 we had all day to tour Toronto so we checked out of our hotel and left our bags with the doorman to hold until we returned.

We boarded the nearest "hop on- hop off" tour bus and  rode the complete circuit to get our bearings.

We listened to the on-board narrator who spoke in Canadian English,  but everyone was given ear phones to listen to recordings in any of the nine other languages shown by their flags here.

We thought this dog fountain was rather unusual.  They are after the gold bone at the top.  There are 27 cast iron dogs and one scared cat!

We noticed this truck may have been driving a bit too fast in this upstairs parking lot!  Note the CN Tower on the left.

This street sweeper was one of the reasons that the city of Toronto is so clean.

There were numerous outside cafes like this around the city.

Like good tourists, we hopped off at the CN Tower for a tour.

The Tower is 1815 feet high.  The elevator only takes 48 seconds to get us up to the 360 degree viewing area.

For a few extra dollars a daring person can go up to the next level for special handling to engage in the "Edge Walk.

Here is a picture of what you get. They put you in a harness and let you go out on the ledge for excitement.  You can even lean over.

Bill decided that there was not enough money in the city to get him to do that!  Scaryyyyy!

The views from the CN Tower were excellent.  Here we are looking down at the sky scrappers.

This is looking to the southwest over Lake Ontario.

Wednesday evening we retrieved our bags and got on a "Niagara Airbus" transport limo for a two-hour ride to Buffalo New York.  We were the only ones in the car so the driver took us to Niagara Falls to see it at night from the Canadian side.  He drove us through U.S. customs and dropped us off in Buffalo.

The Buffalo train station was much smaller than what we had been seeing in Chicago, Vancouver, and Toronto.  We boarded the Amtrak "Lake Shore Limited" after midnight for our sleeper birth on a ride back to Chicago where we arrived around noon on Thursday.  Finally, we got on our last train, the "Wolverine", for our final leg to Kalamazoo.

We arrived back in Frederic around 11 PM after retrieving our old bird in Lansing.  We had an excellent vacation by rail.  If you can see the orange line on the map above it is a rough path of the train routes we took.  We traveled almost 7000 miles by rail and got pretty good at sleeping on a moving train.  If you ever need any advice on North American train travel don't hesitate to ask, because we just might have the answer.

It was fun!

🚂

A Few Days (and miles) Later and We are back on the Grid

It is now Tuesday and we are in our hotel in Toronto.

Our Via Rail train did not have wi-fi and the few larger cities we rode through gave us only short bursts of cell tower usage in Western Canada.  Therefore, we could not blog as we like to do when we travel.  So,  we will go back a few days and try to catch up....

The Rocky Mountains gave way to the open plains of Alberta and Manitoba after we stopped at Edmonton.

We got spoiled with our three meals a day in the dining car.  We both loved the white tablecloths as well as the cloth napkins.  The food was delicious.  We ate with a different couple each meal.  Most of the train passengers were from England, Canada, Australia, Germany and China.  We met only one other couple from the USA (California) and one lady from Michigan.

Our train had 30 cars that included three engines, two dining cars and three dome viewing cars.

We saw this herd of buffalo outside of Winnipeg.  The fact that they were surrounded by a wire fence made us think that it was not a wild migrating herd!  We were surprised to see snow on the ground from Jasper clear past Winnipeg. 

We saw many dwarf trees like these above that reminded us of the Tundra in Alaska.  All the PA announcements on the train were in English then repeated in French.  My mother would have enjoyed hearing that.

On Tuesday around noon we disembarked the Canadian train and checked into the Hilton Toronto.  With our change of schedule we were moved here from our previous hotel.  The white car on the right is a Maserati which are rare in Frederic where we live.

This is the view from our 28th floor room.  The hotel has 32 floors.

We plan to do some sightseeing tomorrow, so today we explored some shops that Karen had to check out here in Toronto.  She finally decided that she really did not have room to pack a new winter coat.

The public transportation in Toronto is modern and efficient.  Here is one of their trolleys.

We found this Broadway theater but do not have the time to catch a show.

We plan to see the CN Tower tomorrow with a much closer look than this.

It is great to be back on line.

☎