Despite our rather rough beginning to 2017, it turned out to be a wonderful year, filled with new experiences and revisiting some favorites. We checked a bunch of stuff off of our bucket list: the Oregon and Washington coasts, Vancouver Island, and Big Bend National Park were some of the big ones.
The only problem is that those places were all so awesome that they went right back onto our list. It’s a good problem to have.
Here’s how 2017 turned out:
January to mid-May: Ashland, Oregon (our hometown, a lengthy stay for Eric’s unexpected surgery and recovery)
Mid-May to July: Traveling up the Oregon and Washington coasts, including Olympic National Park
July and August: Lopez Island, Washington (our seventh year as interpretive hosts at Spencer Spit State Park)
September to mid-October: Vancouver Island, BC
Mid-October to mid-November: Ashland, Oregon
Mid-November through December: traveling down the California coast, through southern Arizona and New Mexico to West Texas.
We spent New Year’s in Big Bend National Park—more specifically, at the Starlight Café in Terlingua, Texas.
Totally funky, and totally awesome. The sign you can’t see says “No dogs on porch.” Haha.
It’s a tiny town on the far side of nowhere. The Starlight Theatre is the place to be.
A few statistics, for those of you who like numbers:
Total mileage for the year: 4670 (towing)
Number of places stayed: 43
Travel distances: Between 8 and 270 miles; with most travel days under 150 miles. Our average travel distance was 108 miles.
We stayed most places 3-5 nights, with the occasional one-night stand or weeklong stay thrown in here and there. And of course, we stayed for two months on Lopez Island for our hosting gig, and a total of 5.5 months in Ashland in 2017(!!!).
Favorite place: That’s the question everyone asks us. We still can’t answer. :-)
We hope 2018 brings you joy and peace in equal measure, along with the opportunity to realize your dreams. Thank you for continuing to join us in our journey—it makes our travels infinitely richer to have you with us! We love hearing from you.
Next Up: Victoria, BC and Vancouver Island Wrap-Up
The Starlight Theater sounds like “THE” place to spend your New Year’s Eve. Did you make it to midnight?
We get that – where’s your favorite place – question all the time and we, too, have no answer. It’s all good!
Hope to see you in the wonderful New Year ahead!
Sue, we almost made it to midnight!! The Starlight Theatre is quite an experience. We hope to see you guys in this brand new year, too!
What a year you two have had…so glad Erics recovery went so well and the second half of 2017 was spent traveling!
I look forward to hearing about Big Bend as that and the ICW area are still on on bucket list for Texas.
Happy New Year!!!
Brenda, we can’t believe we waited so long to visit Big Bend. It’s so worth that big detour out into the wilds of West Texas! Happy New Year!
The favorite question, always! We answer with, “where we are right now”
Happy and healthy new year!
I like your answer to the #1 question we get, Leah. Wishing you a happy and healthy new year, too!
Fantastic! I love maps. They make it much easier for me to figure out where you guys went and just steal your ideas. Wonderful! Thank you very much! 😜
Steal away, Laura! Makes me happy if you get some useful ideas from our maps/travels. I’m going to be stealing from your excellent ideas, too. :-)
What a year! Have so enjoyed reading and following your adventures! And the map is great. You guys sure get around. Happy adventurous and healthy 2018!!!
Peta
Peta, it has been quite a year. We get around, but our travels are tame compared to your exotic adventures! Wishing you and Ben a wonderful 2018, too!
One fantastic, adventurous, scenic trip with wonderful comments and photos. Now take the same trip but be about 300 miles on the east side. HWYS: m395, 139, 97, etc….
Did you guys ever want one of my movies?
California Beaches: Malibu to Glass beaches
Highway 395: Owens Lake to Upper Twin Lakes
near Bridgeport, CA
Needles & Around: Hwy 40 to Mitchell
Caverns,Needles, CA then up
and down the Colorado
RiverRiver 250 miles
and then east,
Valley Of Fire: NE of Las Vegas 50 minutes
Just email me your mailing address during Feb & Mar. I up date them every year….
Your adventures sound wonderful, Bob. We’ll be in touch to get some of your movies. Would be fun to see what you’ve been up to! We love Hwy 395 — it’s one of our all-time favorite routes.
Happy New Year to you both. Can hardly wait for your 2018 adventures! We’ll be heading to Calgary for the Stampede in July. There will be some adventure getting there and leaving there. Some other trips are in the planning stages. Perhaps we’ll meet up someday.
Happy New Year to you and Morey, Brenda! That sounds like an exciting trip you have planned. Maybe you should stop by Lopez on your way home?? We would love to see you two!
Simply amazing how much you did and heart surgery too. Really envious of your visits to places I long to see. And that map….how in the world??
Wishing you a magnificent 2018. Glad to know we’ll see you at least once during it.
Sherry, we feel incredibly fortunate that we were able to get back on the road with Eric all fixed up as good as new. It was a very good year of travel, too. :-) We’re so happy we’ll be seeing you and David in Florida!
Seven years hosting. It is amazing how the time passes so quickly in such a great place. What a great place for New Years.
Debbie, it is amazing (and more than a little shocking) to realize how quickly time passes. Makes me think we better get busy on our bucket list! Terlingua was an absolute blast for New Year’s!
Such fun! Glad to see the year turned out so well for you guys. We hope to join you on Lopez Island in the next year or two.
— jc&bev
Thanks so much, JC! We had a great year, despite the rocky beginning. We would love for you and Bev to come to Lopez. Please let us know if you’re coming and we can plan some adventures together! (Our contact info is on our contact page.)
Wonderful to see Eric so healthy and both of you so happy, ready for the next adventure. Here’s to a joyful year for all of us, making beautiful memories. Love you guys!
Thank you, dear LuAnn! We are so grateful that everything turned out so well and that we have the opportunity to continue pursuing our travel dreams. We’re hoping that we’ll be meeting up with you two this year. oxoxo
Oh, Laurel, I had to laugh with this post. Yes, you did get distracted:) You need to get on to the Big Bend post. I am anxious to read details of the stay. No looking backwards…forward!! But don’t move too quickly since it is winter in the panhandle!! Brrrr! Hope it warms as you move east:) I do understand that picking a favorite place isn’t possible since each place is so very different. Happy New Year to you both. Hope we meet up as you are returning west and we are heading east:)
Pam, yes, I’m going to get us to Big Bend soon!! Well, maybe not really soon…but maybe by the end of this month? I’m only about 10 posts away, haha! I promise to not get distracted by anything else. But you don’t want me to skip over the good stuff in between…I have otter photos coming up, just for you. :-)) We definitely want to meet up with you and John in the spring!
I just had to give you a hard time:) Don’t skip the otter photos!!! They are worth waiting for!
I know how you love otters! :-)
Thank you for all your blogs and sharing your adventures with us. My husband and I live in Rogue River, OR. We have always camped and RV’d but now that I retired we just purchased a class B van with plans for many long trips exploring the USA and Canada. I love your blogs and take notes that we will refer to on our travels. Maybe we may cross paths some day. We are Kelkywood’s Kabin.
Greetings, fellow southern Oregonians! Congratulations on your retirement and your upcoming travel plans. I’m so glad our blog is helpful for you, and I appreciate your kind comment. Wishing you many wonderful adventures this year (and yes, it would be fun to cross paths!).
I just love reading your summary just to bring us to the present. You just know how to kick it up a notch even if you are ony 10 post behind. But no please dont skip, I love to hear your adventures and photos of the in between adventures.
Wishing you and Eric continued good health and lots of fun adventures ahead.
Thanks for the good wishes, ML. We wish the same for you and Steve! I’m glad you don’t mind if I’m tardy with our posts. :-) It was great seeing you in San Diego — hope we see you again sometime soon!
Wonderful recap. I’ve been sharing your posts about Vancouver Island with hubby. Our interests are both piqued. Wishing you many more new discoveries in the coming year – stay warm!
Ingrid, I’ll bet you and Al would enjoy Vancouver Island. It’s a wonderful trip with an RV! Wishing you many delightful adventures in this new year.
Despite your long stay in Ashland and 2 months of hosting, you managed to cover a lot of ground last year. I’ve really enjoyed your Vancouver Island posts. Really makes me want to go there one of these days.
Hope that 2018 is the year we finally get to meet you two!
Gayle and Jim, I hope this is the year that we finally meet, too! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed our Vancouver Island posts — we highly recommend an extended RV trip there. We’ll return, for sure!
I loved the recap, and most especially your map. I am assuming the only way I can access the map is to save this particular post, right? Lots of information in there that I want to be able to refer to as we travel. Great year, Laurel!
Thanks, Sue — it was a great year, despite our slow beginning! You can access our travel maps from the sidebar drop-down menu under “maps.” I hope they’ll be helpful for you in your travels. Enjoy your beautiful new home!
That little cafe looks perfect!! Love all the “no” dogs on the porch, very cute :-))) Another wonderful year in the books – and now on the map!! So glad we got to meet up a couple times and looking forward to seeing you again in 2018.
Jodee, you and Bill would enjoy Terlingua. And Tessa could hang out on the porch of the Starlight with the “locals.” We’re looking forward to meeting up with you two this year, too!