Good Hours Cottage
East Burke, Vermont
Saturday, September 13, 2008, 10:00 am

Sun finally breaking through an early morning fog and mist; temperature, 63F and rising quickly.
Altitude: 1485 feet

Home, sweet home. We arrived about 2 pm yesterday afternoon in a light sprinkle and quickly put the camper in its spot (picture). And look how those black-eyed Susans have grown!

In 7 weeks and one day, we traveled 9,288 miles (14,861 kilometers) through 12 U.S. states, 5 Canadian provinces, and one Canadian territory. We visited seven U.S. national parks or monuments, five Canadian national parks, several national forests, one state park, two Canadian provincial parks and two Canadian territorial parks.

We stayed in campgrounds ranging from KOA RV Resorts (complete with phone service, high speed wireless internet, heated pools, restaurant, store, gift shop, and golf course--for $52 a night); to U.S. Forest Service campsites with no utility connections ($6.50, Senior rate); to a roadside wilderness clearing with nothing but a place to park ($9.50); to a municipal park campground where we camped for free because we couldn't find anyone to pay! We haven't totaled the amount of gasoline we burned, but we do know prices were all over the place. In the U.S., we paid as low as $3.59 in Albert Lea, Minnesota on July 31st and a high of $4.69 in St. Mary, Montana, on August 13th. In Canada, we paid an eye-popping high of $5.83 (at 3.78 liters to the U.S. gallon and Cdn$1.00=US$.95) at Saskatchewan River Crossing in Banff National Park, Alberta, and a surprisingly low (for Canada) of $4.23 in Antrim, Ontario. As a rule, most gasoline in the States was around or just below $4.00 per gallon, while most in Canada was between $4.75 to $5.20 U.S. when all the conversions are done.

And we had a variety of weather--pleasantly warm summer evenings in western New York, Ohio, and Michigan; then brief, torrential rain and thunderstorms in southern Minnesota; dry blast furnace heat (over 100F) in South Dakota; with valley heat and mountain coolness in Wyoming; high winds and normal summer warmth in Montana; surprisingly warm in Kootenay, B.C.; mostly cool and damp in Banff and Yoho (with a touch of snow in the mountains above us), but turning warm and sunny in Jasper; a bone-chilling, wind-driven rain and 35F in Yellowknife, NWT; and seasonably warm days and cool nights driving back across the prairies and around the north shore of the Great Lakes. A little bit of everything.

We were very fortunate throughout--no break-downs, only one equipment failure (our camera died, forcing us to buy a new one), no sickness (except a mild, one day upset for Charley), and no lost items. We did have one near-miss traffic incident that could have been quite serious. An elderly man pulled out in front of us on a divided 4-lane highway in Saskatchewan, then turned into the passing lane next to us going the wrong way. He quickly realized his mistake and drove into the grass median to avoid getting creamed by a large truck preparing to pass us. The trucker had laid on his airhorn loud enough to wake the dead (or the old man), but if he had hit the old man, it would have been head-on and it would have probably pushed his car or at least pieces of it into our trailer. All this happened in a split second at about 90 km/h (56 mph).

The biggest bargain we found was our National Park Service Senior Pass, which we bought a couple of years ago at the Outer Banks National Seashore in North Carolina for $20 (for the two of us). With it we got free admission to all federal fee areas, half-price camping, and saved quite a bit. The equivalent pass in Canada is Cdn$67.50 (for one!), but then they have a major rebuilding and renovation effort under way and have earmarked the fees for that. We might consider raising our fees a bit and doing some renovation on our sometimes shabby park facilities.

And we had a terrific time!