Finally feel like we are getting into the travel mode. No matter how much you pack away in storage and tips you read, it’s just so draining physically and emotionally leaving a house and settling into a RV. I still am trying to organize cabinets, clothes and food! Figure I’ll have that mastered after about a month. I do love our 5th wheel, it is so comfortable.

We spent two days at the State Park in Fruita near Grand Junction,

 stocking up on Colorado wine and organizing ourselves.

A couple of days of skiing in Durango before heading to Arizona.

 We were hoping for warmth in Arizona but it hasn’t happened yet. Spent a windy day walking around the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. Pretty amazing seeing logs turned to stone that are over 200 million years old. Saw what looked like a piece of off white wood and picked it up, it was so heavy, completely turned into stone – so cool!

Mostly staying in RV parks so that we can have electricity with the cooler nights, lows have been in the teens and 20’s. Yesterday we stayed in a State Park with a nice lake, so windy that thuge ponderosa pines tree trunks were swaying in the wind… but much nicer to have the wilderness around us as opposed to an RV park.

On our way to Phoenix!

Snowy Sunday here, enjoying our house not thinking of all the work that needs to be done before we move. Gary and I spent the last week going crazy getting the house ready to put on the market; so many trips to Goodwill and the storage unit plus numerous contributions to our local landfill. The house was staged beautifully and we left one minute before the first showing. Saturday at 1:00  we get an offer from a buyer who viewed the house on Friday. All the extra attention to details made a difference. Thank goodness I don’t have to keep my house so clean, neat and overly organized for people to view any longer, now I can just enjoy for the next 32 days!

A kitchen that makes you love cooking

Cozy, inviting fireplace

Soaking tub in personal spa

Breathtaking view of the Rocky Mountains

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, hopefully this will be the first of many ongoing posts of our upcoming adventures. We are getting the house ready to put on the market in about a month. Within the next two weeks the whole house will have been updated and all we need to do is declutter and  pack our belongings. Updating the master bathroom is the final project and, of course, it is beautiful and so hard to leave. Going to move out of our 3000 sq. ft (pictured above) house to a 260 sq. ft 5th wheel(pictured below)! The house should sell quickly,  we will have about 30 days to get out of the house. Not sure if we will begin our adventure by staying in the mountains skiing for a while or just head south. So many possibilities …..

Had a great time with my family in Seattle, my brother Charles and his wife, Linda and my sister, Pamela!

We made our way on a rainy afternoon to Canada.

A lot of catching up since Vancouver – the distances up here are huge and the roads are good but certainly not interstates, with the frost heaves and the road work we average about 40 mph. I don’t think I’m going to catch up so I’ll be continuing and adding as I travel.

I was really hoping I could add more pictures of the trip as we travel but it is much harder to find wifi with the band width to upload and download the pictures. Right now we are sitting on the coast of Valdez, Alaska, a beautiful ‘city’ with a population of 4,000 and I think that is in the summertime! It is the Northeast section of Prince William Sound, surrounded by the Chugach Mountains, the tallest coastal mountains in North America, rising from sea level to 7,000feet. Also the most heavily glaciated mountains in the Northwest.

Great fun to stroll along the docks and check out all the boats, smell the fishiness and feel the sea spray! Fishing is great here – a halibut derby takes place the month of June and so far the champion is a 259 pound halibut. A bit pricy to fish for halibut, a day trip would end up costing us about $1,000. We are going to wait to do a combination halibut, salmon day when the kids come to join us in Homer.

Today the plan is to kayak the Valdez Glacier, its a bit overcast but the locals say it only gets windy when it is cloudy. We are still getting used to the long days, the sunsets around midnight and rises around 3:30. Nothing really happens until late morning around here and to sleep we have to cover all our windows with foil. It is an adventure, strolling the docks at 11:00pm – loving life!

We are going to be in Seattle enjoying my sister and brothers family and heading to British Columbia on Wednesday. We have a great signal here but not sure what it will be in the next couple of weeks. It is so hot here in Seattle, I brought clothes for Alaska and cool weather not the heat experiencing here…but it is still so much fun. The wine tasting was spectacular – crazy, I can drink so much wine and still feel so “chipper” the next day! I definitely feel like I am on vacation…

We decided to work on the house for the first couple of weeks of summer! We (Gary) applied another coat a stain to the outside of the house and I painted the trim work…..got the garden all planted, flower beds filled and finally hit the road yesterday.

On our property in Fairplay relaxing and planning!

Forgot to add much to the last group of Photos….will add notes and have to include pictures of our last 3 days in Colorado and the spectacular wildflowers. It has been a great trip, hope you enjoyed the pictures!