Roaming About

A Life Less Ordinary

Tag: sights

Van Life on Van Island – Part II: The Sunny Spell

October 30, 2018 / / 55 Comments

Mark and I have been exploring and living in our camper van Zesty full-time since the end of July 2018. Last week, I wrote a blog (with tons of photos) about arriving in Canada, early September, and our first ten or so days on Vancouver Island. The rain was omnipresent, but we managed to have a wonderful time. When the sky cleared, Mark and I left Campbell River (see my Bears vs. Salmon post for one of our highlights in Canada) to explore a more remote and cooler part of the island – the north – before tracing the East Coast all the way to its southern point.

To read the photo captions, hover your mouse over the images, tap them once, or click to make them larger.

Sayward

Few travelers venture north of Campbell River, where island communities are smaller and hardier. It’s colder and wetter up there, so we tried to take advantage of the few sunny days in the forecast. We stopped at the town of Sayward, anticipating to spend the night there at a free campground. Upon discovering that our resource, iOverlander, was wrong – there is a fee to dry camp in town – we checked out the inviting waterfront and moved on to spend the night elsewhere.

City Park in Sayward
Sayward Harbor
Beautiful view across the Discovery Channel
Logging is big business on the island
The logs are sorted and organized with this tiny boat

The logging industry is huge on Vancouver Island. Continue reading

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA

September 26, 2018 / / 46 Comments

Not yet

The draw of Yellowstone – so close now – was strong and yet, hesitation arose, because we knew it would be busy, tourist-wise and sightsee-wise, after an already active period in Grand Teton National Park. There is a spot of “no-man’s land” between the two parks. It’s called John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway and we found a beautiful free campsite there. The reported mosquitoes in the reviews of this place were absent, the surroundings peaceful, and our site even had a picnic table, vault toilet, fire ring and multiple trees to hang a clothesline for laundry. We stayed two nights.

Zesty at his free campsite
Cloud reflection at sunset
“Our” river at dusk
Doing laundry in the icy river
A day to catch up on chores

Why Yellowstone?

Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the US and is one of the most popular.  If there are two US parks people in Belgium have heard about, it’s this one and the Grand Canyon. I don’t know any visitor who hasn’t raved about the place. Images of geysers, colorful pools, bison, and bears urged me to put this destination on my “list for the future” over a decade ago, when the park didn’t make it on my RV itinerary on the way to Alaska.

In front of one of the beautiful pools

First impressions

Continue reading

Completed House Sits – Albuquerque, NM (February 18th, 2018 to March 28th, 2018)

April 11, 2018 / / 52 Comments

Every house sit is different – the house, the owners, the area, the pets, the tasks, the climate – and provides us with new experiences and routines. I always enjoy arriving at the next place and settling in.

Cuddles with Beck and Gunner

As mentioned in an earlier post, our most recent house sit was a last-minute decision. Mark and I had nothing lined up after our 3.5-month house sit in San Diego, CA (with a three-week visit back East), because we wanted to be flexible. We faced six weeks in Zesty, until our current 2-month house sit in Santa Fe started. Without jobs, the prospect of exploring the American West in our camper van and soaking up the sun in Arizona (with the idea of meeting up with my brother on a business trip in Phoenix, and RV blogging friends in that area) sounds perfect. But, since we need decent internet and two offices, our preference goes out to more comfortable and reliable quarters. So, when this house sit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, appeared, we jumped on it.

Our home for six weeks
Gunner and Beck hanging out with us in the kitchen
Snuggling with Mark
Gunner hoarding a toy
The pups after their bath. Yes, they have their own spa towels. 🙂
Resting with a new toy

Continue reading

Completed House Sits – San Diego, CA (October 31st, 2017 to February 11th, 2018)

February 28, 2018 / / 53 Comments

After every house sit, I post an overview of it on my blog. Here’s the one about our time in San Diego.

When Mark and I were selected for this recent fall/winter house and pet sit in San Diego (this was the ad), we were very excited. We love San Diego – the climate, the sights, the activities, the friends we have there – and looked forward to a healthy balance of restful, exciting, social and productive times. For three full months (later extended by two weeks)! It seemed like a nice, long time to settle in and get things done. Suddenly, it was all over. 3.5 months… gone in a jiffy.

Christmas with Alex and Dave
Visit from Johnny Coconut and his brother
Unexpected visit from our cruising friend Patti and her rescued Mexican puppy
With Kathy and Thom on New Year’s Day
Visit from Amy and Skylos

This house sit was unusual in many ways. We arrived four days earlier, as Mark was scheduled to fly back east for health check-ups the end of October. I became a roommate of Diana, the owner, for a few days before she left. It was a perfect transition for both of us, and for the two sweet Italian Greyhounds, Frida (12) and Elvis (10). The following ten days, I took care of them, the house, the yard and the mail by myself, while working on my book and exploring the area by bike on weekends.

San Diego skyline from Harbor Island

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Three Day Vacation in Budapest, Hungary

June 28, 2017 / / 43 Comments

Every couple of years, our business partner for The Wirie goes on a vacation with his family. Since he is responsible for the assembly and distribution of our product, we usually put a notice on the website that new orders will not get shipped until a certain date, when he is back a week or two later. Mark, who is responsible (among many other things) for customer support, continues work, wherever we are. That’s what happens when the product is your “baby”, you are extremely responsible, you want customers to be happy and you hate catching up on all the piled-up emails and phone calls afterwards. That’s why Mark and I never go on a holiday. Luckily, our lifestyle as house and pet sitters is diverse and exciting enough as we move locations a lot and enjoy the weekends as mini-vacations.

My favorite view of the new-to-us city

This spring, however, we had the greatest of ideas! We did not take a full vacation as Tim set out with his family to Italy, but we added a few lines to the notice on the website, the automatic email response and our Wirie answering machine. It said: “The Wirie crew is on vacation from May 18th through June 4th, 2017. No orders will be shipped during this period and customer support might be delayed. Requests by email have a quicker response rate than by phone. Back orders will start to go out on June 5th and customer support returns to normal then as well. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”

Chain Bridge seen from above

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A Week of Sightseeing with Visitors – Sonoma, Marin and San Francisco Counties

April 12, 2017 / / 50 Comments

On March 24th, Mark, Lola and I picked up my cousin Griet and her husband at SFO, the airport of San Francisco. While visiting us many times on Irie, in the Caribbean and the South Pacific (they also helped us transit the Panama Canal in January 2013), it was the first time they came to the United States. Customs and Immigration procedures took a while, as expected, but once we found each other, their 10-day vacation could start…

The heavy rains paused for about an hour and a half, in which we brought them to a viewpoint over San Francisco and to Fort Funston, an awesome off-leash dog park. Lola had been very patient in the car during the two-hour drive in rain and traffic and the one hour wait at the airport. She loved her reward in nature, our guests enjoyed their first impressions of the city and Mark and I appreciated stretching our legs during a break in the rain.

Rainy day to pick up our guests in the city – wet drive over the Golden Gate Bridge
First stop
The view over the city was better than we expected
San Francisco
Fort Funston
Funny sign at the viewpoint

On Saturday, we revisited Armstrong Redwoods, still as impressive as the first time we came with Lola. Continue reading

Truro (Cape Cod), MA: September 24th – September 30th, 2016

October 28, 2016 / / 14 Comments

“I’ve always wanted to visit Cape Cod,” I say to Mark, “I can’t believe I have never been there in all these years of our residence being in Massachusetts!”

“You are not missing much,” Mark replies, “It is busy, built-up, touristy and the beaches are fair compared to what we have been used to all these years.” He doesn’t mention that he has only been partway up the Cape.

“Well, I’d like to see it for myself one day and I think, with our plans of going to California in a month, we have to go soon, because who knows when we will be back on the East Coast,” I add.

“You can’t be serious,” Mark continues, clearly thinking I am losing my mind with all the plans we have coming up already, “We seriously do not have time for another excursion this month and we couldn’t afford a weekend on the Cape anyway.”

And that is the end of the discussion. He is right. It is the beginning of September and we have just wrapped up our four-and-a-half-month house sit in Heath. All our stuff is spread out in the room of our home base in Newburyport, where Mark’s parents are happy to have us around for a bit. We have doctor visits scheduled, errands to run, friends and family to catch up with and a five-day vacation to look forward to…

Every day, I get house sitting notifications in my inbox from the sites we have signed up and paid for. None of them look very interesting or promising, so I delete them. One day, when sitting in the waiting room of the oncology department at Dana Farber, a particular listing grabs my attention: a one-week house sit in Truro, Cape Cod, with one dog, the last week in September. Perfect! “Listen to this…” I read the description to Mark, “And, it is the last part of the month. We don’t have much planned then.”

“Sure,” he gives in, “Write them an email and we will see what comes of it. They will probably get a lot of applications, because it is on Cape Cod.”

Within 24 hours, I have written the owner, she replied, we had a conversation over Skype and Mark and I are “hired”! We were going to Cape Cod and hoped the weather would be as pleasant as it usually is that time of the year.

Continue reading

Rockport, Massachusetts

December 11, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Posing on T-Wharf

I am catching up on a few places that we have visited while house sitting. I guess you can call these posts “photo blogs”, since I am mainly wanting to share some sites we enjoyed on our days off. Rockport is a cute town, very close to Gloucester. It was the first time for Mark and I (so was Gloucester) to explore this little gem on the water; the day coincided with their “Harvest Fest”. Many buildings are historical, the store, cafe and restaurant fronts are attractive and the harbor area is a pleasant place to be. Continue reading

Gloucester, Massachusetts

December 8, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Fisherman's memorial

A big advantage of house sitting is that you can move around the state, the country and even the world to check out new areas while performing house and pet sitting duties. The thought of immersing ourselves in these new places by staying for prolonged periods of time is one of the main reasons for Mark and me to commit to this exciting lifestyle. Continue reading

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