The old saying “time flies when your having fun” certainly has been a truism this month. Recently my 93 year old mother traveled to Alaska to visit her children. This visit was probably her 35th trip since my brother Sam and I first migrated to this state in the early 70’s. Mom’s love of the north […]
Read more "Friends, Family And Feast"Above Is The Fabulous Quilt Depicting Mt. McKinley Designed and Constructed by Denali Artist Ree Nancarrow. It Is On Permanent Display In The Eielson Visitor Center Within Denali National Park Taylor Basecamp is situated at about 1700 ft. elevation and located in the middle of the Alaska Range about 80 air miles from the summit of Mt. McKinley. […]
Read more "Mid Summer Delights"June has come and gone and we had a blast. This post is late due to the fact that we have been very busy having way to much fun. Below are just some of the highlights of this months activities. June means the vegetation has now greened up and the wild flowers are beautiful. The […]
Read more "Summer In Denali"WOW! We can’t believe we have been stationary at Taylor Base Camp for about a month now! Its has been great to be home but we also really miss being on the road. The dogs were confused for first couple of weeks and would run to get into the ZEFYR everytime we went somewhere. April’s […]
Read more "April In Denali"On Our Way Home part 2 Since our last post we departed the Sierra Nevada’s and headed back to the coast. After making a brief stop in Sacramento to replace the bug’s distributor which failed while driving in Yosemite valley, we spent the night at Standish Hicky State Park situated along Hwy. 101. This beautifully lush campground along the South Fork of […]
Read more "On Our Way Home 2"On Our Way Home part 1 The time has come…….we must slowly head north to be home in time for our favorite time of year in Alaska… SPRING!! After leaving family and friends in Thousand Oaks we headed straight for our favorite beach campsite along the Rincon Parkway just 20 miles away. As […]
Read more "On Our Way Home"After wandering the deserts of Calif and Arizona for almost 2 months we have just spent 2 weeks in Thousand Oaks California visiting family. Below is a short video of my mom’s home during a family get together this last weekend. A lot has happened since we left the southland, it has rained several inches! As we descended from the […]
Read more "California Green"There are places in this world that have that certain charm or ambiance, they are different for a reason. Ajo Arizona is one of those places. Ajo meaning garlic in Spanish or red paint in the native language, is situated about 40 miles north of the Mexico border and about 115 south of Phoenix in the Northern […]
Read more "It Was Always Ajo"Recently we have come to the conclusion that living in the open desert is something that makes us very happy. In our younger years we traveled extensively on the Baja Peninsula and have camped the full length of Mexico and deep into Central America passing through some rather intense desert environments. On those trips our goals, […]
Read more "Alaskan Desert Nomads"Living in remote Alaska for the last 40 years did not help when it came time to camp surrounded by the largest RV show on earth. After attending the “Buses by the Bridge” VW event at Lake Havasu we drove due south to Quartzsite Arizona to experience this event first hand. Miles before we reached […]
Read more "Lost in a Sea Of Saguaros"After spending the holidays with family and friends on the west coast we have once again moved east into the desert. Recently we attended the 19th annual “Buses at the Bridge” event held in Lake Havasu City Arizona. This event originally began with owners of old VW camper vans getting together to camp and hang […]
Read more "Old Buses and Big Balloons"Today we are in Ventura California to celebrate Lois Taylor’s (Mom) life of 99 years. Lois led an exceptional life full of travel and adventure, witnessed and experienced unimaginable change in this world during her life. She was a California girl that traveled through Europe, driven the Alaska Hwy 3 times and visited that state more than 30 […]
Read more "99 Years Of Fun And Adventure"If you happen to live anywhere near Los Angeles you are very fortunate to have the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area at your doorstep. Its 153,000 acres offer access to some very wild mountain and canyon areas, beautiful beaches, historic film locations, extensive trail system and great wildlife viewing. Having been raised in SoCal in the 60’s […]
Read more "The Worlds Largest Urban National Park"This will be the first Christmas away from our home in Denali since the late 90’s. For many years we have hosted Christmas dinner at our house and today we are missing our friends. Christmas time in Alaska means very short daylight hours, temperatures that range around 0 degrees and snow on the ground. A […]
Read more "A Southern California Christmas"Its Dec 21, 2014. This date is very important to us for many reasons. We are about half way through our 6 month winter sojourn, we have successfully missed the darkest day of the year in Alaska and 41 years ago we were married in Anchorage! Its hard to believe all the things we have […]
Read more "Winter Solstice in The Desert"After waiting out 2″ of heavy rain on the west coast we took the opportunity to escape to the low desert as soon as it let up. The trip from Ventura County into the desert involved traveling on some of the busiest interstates in the country. But we missed most of the typical stop and […]
Read more "Finally… The Desert"After enjoying a great Thanksgiving with our family I now wait in a dark corner of Southern California for the black friday shopping blitz to end. So to pass the time I have decided to write a short post about our current home on wheels, the Zefyr (short for Zephyr) First lets start off with […]
Read more "The ZEFYR"There is a very small campground located at the remote tip of Point Conception along California’s southern coast where life happens at a different pace. Santa Barbara County’s Jalama beach is set apart by its remoteness, its steep windy and narrow access road, lack of cell coverage and a very relaxed atmosphere, its like camping […]
Read more "Jalama"We are very lucky people indeed…. During our trip south from Alaska in the last 8 weeks we have been tracking and continually moving towards warmer weather and have generally been very successful. Some of the highlights of our quest have been Canada’s Liard River Provincial Park, the Okanagan wine country, the Swiss like Kettle Valley, central Washington’s wonderful wooded […]
Read more "From The Mountains To The Sea"We have been living in and around the Bishop CA area for the last 10 days or so and I believe we have finally found what every Alaskan snow bird is looking for. The Buttermilk Hills are just a few miles west of Bishop in Inyo National Forest and provide the perfect blend of weather […]
Read more "The Best of the Buttermilks"The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada’s has always held a strong magical power over me. In the late 60’s while on climbing trips with the Sierra Club, meeting Norman Clyde in 1969 in Independence and reading John Muir’s “The Mountains of California” has helped form my respect and appreciation for this wonderful range of […]
Read more "Return To The Range of Light"Nestled into the foot hills of the gorgeous Powell Butte area of central Oregon is the beautiful home of Phyllis and Mark Motsko otherwise know as “Fort Motsko” They have done a fantastic job of landscaping and maintaining the property. The views of the Cascades from their dinning room windows are spectacular. We spent hours […]
Read more "A Visit to the Fabulous Fort Motsko"Over the last 40 years most of our travels between Alaska and Southern Calif have generally been centered along the fastest route, the I-5 corridor. When there were schedules to meet and family to visit it was the shortest distance between two points. Now that most of our timelines and deadlines are gone our new […]
Read more "Central Washington Surprises"After cruising the back roads of BC for almost three weeks the weather is beginning to cool and so to stay true to our mantra we must turn south and cross the border into the lower 48 ……as we Alaskans call it. Driving east from Osoyoos just north along the US border on Hwy 3 […]
Read more "Goodbye Beautiful British Columbia Hello Washington State"Our family has had a longstanding love affair with VW cars for the last 45 years. When we decided to take a tow vehicle with us on our current adventure it was an easy decision on what vehicle type to drag behind us….. an air cooled VW bug. Recently we found a vintage 1969 bug […]
Read more "Meet the CABOSE"After a beautiful drive south from Kamloops through farming country to the Okanagan Region we are now camped in Bear Creek Provincial Park. It’s situated on the shore of Okanagan Lake directly across from the city of Kelowna on its east shore. To be honest we were a little disappointed regarding the size of Kelowna […]
Read more "The Okanagan Valley"As we travel south we are slowly shedding our clothing. We lost our long johns at Liard River Hot Springs, we stopped wearing socks yesterday and it starting to look like t-shirt and shorts weather tomorrow. It actually hit +65 at mid day today as we passed through Cashe Creek. We are currently camped along […]
Read more "On Our Way to the Okanagan Valley"Denise and I have driven the Alaskan highway many times in our lives. But today while driving southbound through Whitehorse we realized it was Denise’s 50th anniversary of her fist time driving up with her family. In 1964 she was 11 and sat in the backseat of their 1964 Plymouth Belvedere station wagon behind her […]
Read more "Driving The Alaskan Hwy ……..Now and Then"