2020, '21, ’22
A Return to North America in our Tiger
Coming Back to Our Home Continent
After a long run of overseas travel, in January 2020 we brought our Tiger back home to North America; perhaps to stay or perhaps to rest up before shipping out again. For now, we plan to resume our exploration of our home continent, looking forward to enjoying all the beauty and variety that it offers. Our Tiger turned thirteen years old in March, 2020, and had spent more than ten of those years overseas. In it we have toured sixty-five countries on six continents, driving more than 240,000 miles along the way. The Tiger has gone around the world during seven sea voyages in order to meet up with us on distant shores. As you might expect, it has all been a wonderful, life changing experience for us.
But, times change and plans must change to meet them. When we made arrangements to ship the Tiger back to the US from South Africa in November, 2019, we had no way of knowing that the coronavirus pandemic was about to arrive and alter travel possibilities for everyone.
We were very fortunate in our timing and it turned out that we came home at exactly the right time. Obviously this is not because we think that here in the US we are safer than we might have been in other parts of the world. Our own country has not handled the virus well at all and we are constantly aware of this. Still, by getting the Tiger and ourselves back to our own country at this time we have positioned ourselves to be able to continue traveling without having to find ways to work around the newly challenging difficulties of international air travel, visa limitations, inter-province and inter-country travel bans and so many other issues that have come into effect around the world.
We know several other traveling couples who were not as fortunate as we who have been separated from their travel vehicle or stranded with it in other countries; in either case unable to continue their travels as a result of of these unforeseen changes. Given our good fortune to be united with our Tiger, which is our only home, here in North America at this time, we hope to be able to resume our exploration of our own wonderful continent. We look forward to returning to favorite places from Alaska to Newfoundland to Colonial Mexico while finding new favorites and creating new memories along the way. As always, we’ll have to see what happens as time goes on.
In 2020, our travels were limited to the United States due to closed borders with both Canada and Mexico in response to the coronavirus. We spent the summer months primarily in Wyoming and returned to our home base in Alabama for the winter. What matters most, in addition to our continuing good health, is that we have our home and are able to continue to travel in it.
In 2021, we thankfully were now fully vaccinated, and thus able to move about more freely. We were able to do a lot more visiting with friends and family than we did last year, however, borders with Canada and Mexico were still closed so we continued to once again limit our travel to the US.
In 2022, the border with Canada was open and we returned to the far north of Eastern Canada, giving our Tiger a fond farewell tour of Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before returning to Alabama for the winter. In the Fall of 2022 we sold our beloved Tiger and moved into an older but larger Class A motorhome named ‘Slim Charles’. We will be continuing our travels in this unit for the forseeable future.
Our stories below will fill you in on where we are and how we are doing as we continue our wandering life on wheels.
Journal Entries & Photo Pages
2020:
1. The Color Green Arrival in Florida, then to South Carolina, Alabama, and then north
Photo Page
2. Mountain Time South Dakota and Wyoming
Photo Page
3. La Tortuga Goes Boomerang Wyoming to Montana and back again
Photo Page
4. Changing Seasons Early snow to late hurricane across the midwest
Photo Page
5. The Great Spyder Caper More snow and other adventures
6. Camping in Wyoming’s Bighorn Wilderness A practical guide to exploring this beautiful area (updated August ’21)
2021:
1. Will We Ever Learn? Apparently not - we get cold again in Texas
2. The Jam Guy Died in Fredericksburg Spring comes to Texas
Photo Page
3. A Much More Pleasant Spring The West Coast to Colorado
4. Farenheit 105 The search for cooler weather in the Rockies
Photo Page
5. The B-B-B B Town Tour Crossing the plains from Wyoming to North Dakota
6. Dancing Across the Divides Time Zones and water drainage seek to define our fall travels
Motor-Museums.com This year we were able to visit several great auto and aviation museums
2022:
1. On the Road Again… Again From Alabama to Arizona and all points between
2. Desert Dust A bit of a wander around Arizona, California, and Nevada
3. A Veritable Fit of Whimsy Flitting, flying and zigzagging through eleven states on the way to Canada
4. On the Road to Chisasibi Wandering in northern Quebec province
Photo Page
5. Long Way Round to Labrador We come in the back door and drive all the way across
Photo Page
6. The Colors of Newfoundland Wandering from West to East and back again across this wonderful land
Photo Page