Maroon Summers Travels

08/04/2022

04/03/2022

04/03/2022

Made it to our camp host position in bodega dunes campground. Slightly different circumstances than we had planned: Brent will be splitting his time between here and Sacramento to help his mom. Had a beautiful walk on the beach and a workout through the dunes on the way back. Hope all is well with everyone!

10/20/2021

Looking at the end of this adventure after Five months! It’s a big hard to fathom being in a building or in one place for more than a few days! On the other hand, we are looking forward to being home and catching up with NH friends. Since I last wrote, we traveled to Philly to spend time with my brothers’ families and then to my sisters’ families in Niagara Falls. We had such lovely visits and even spent time with some family from Lebanon (almost exactly 2 years from when we were in Lebanon visiting). We have been taking our time getting back avoiding highways, hiking and enjoying the country roads. It’s a pretty easy thing when you have your house with you! monadnock hike today then home.
15,800 plus miles
159 days
Most expensive gas: CA at 4.19. Cheapest gas: NH 2.70 in May; Kansas 2.79 in October
23 National parks
10 backpacking trips
Countless hikes in 15 states
No campfires after early July until a few days ago.

10/03/2021

Currently heading back east at the end of our adventure in the west. We Spent a few days in Mesa Verde National Park in CO where we even scored a cliff dwelling tour at the last minute! Well worth
it. We did the mug house which is not even advertised on a map. We learned a great deal from our ranger who was also an archeologist!
Once we dropped off the mountains, we hit the plains of Kansarado and are now just past Kansas City. The plains combined with rain the last few days have translated to Lots of driving miles and no hiking miles. Also with us just amazed at the flatness! We have stuck on the lesser roads mostly doing route 50 which is a nice change and mostly parallels route 70. We will be stopping in Philly and Niagara Falls before we make the final ride back home around the 20th. We look forward to being back home and after all our travels, New Hampshire Is still a pretty perfect place for us.

09/28/2021

Post 2 of 2: from Bryce, We headed east and did a few hikes and nights in Utah BLM land that we heard about: one was a slot canyon and the other a dry waterfall with some interesting modern sand sculptures. We continued east and stopped in natural bridges monument thinking we would do the drive and move on but decided hiking in the canyon itself was worth an overnight. We learned about some documented but not signed ruins. We found one of them on a hike between the bridges. From there we drove down the cedar mesa via the moki Dugway (Brent drove, I held my breath!). It is 3 miles of graded road at 11 % grade. Honestly not as bad as some other roads we have been on. Brent and the Roadtrek are amazing at these roads! We spent the night at gooseneck state park overlooking the San Juan river where it becomes North America’s longest entrenched river as it meanders 6 miles of twists and turns to advance 2 miles. Very cool to be on top of that and a wonderful sunset. We then did the drive around Navajo monument valley and then to hovenwoop National monument for the night and some unusual early ancestral Pueblo ruins.

09/28/2021

We have been busy since we posted last and without much signal. So busy I am doing two posts
Post 1 of 2. We stayed on the loneliest highway in Nevada to Great Basin monument. Truly unappreciated mountain island as it goes from desert scrub to alpine. At Great Basin, we had a lovely day hike through aspen to Nevada’s only glacier. We also did an backpack there spending a cold and windy night at lake Johnson followed by an even windier hike over the pass to Baker lake. We then headed toward Bryce . We stayed in red canyon campground outside the park and did a wonderful hike there. Our day in Bryce itself was beautiful but honestly so many people! The kicker was the family who insisted on cutting the trail switchbacks. So annoying we decided to skip Zion as we heard it was even more like Disney.

09/15/2021

We finally named our Roadtrek.
Jupiter 3
After the spaceship “Jupiter 2” from the TV show “Lost in Space”.
Three windows on both!
We love these windows.
Jupiter 3 has held up very well. Over 10,000 miles on this trip. We replaced the cab AC and had some break work done when we had the tires rotated. Not bad for 23 years old!