RVers in England

Notice I did not say RVing in England! We wouldn’t want to drive a car on the narrow roads here, let alone an RV. So, how did we get around? The best way possible. We visited friends who live in England, and they drove!
Some of you know our friends – Phil and Tracey May. They were fulltime RVers in the US for many years. Their business was TechnoRV and they did the rally circuit just like we do with Geeks on Tour. Now they are in England and said, “Come visit us.” It took us all of 30 seconds to say, “OK!”

Tracey is a master at trip-planning, and Phil is an all-around fun guy with a passion for beer. We packed more fun, food, and learning into two weeks than we thought possible. Phil attended Cambridge University many years ago and gave us an insider’s view by taking us “Punting” on the river Cam. That’s where you move a boat by pushing a pole along the bottom.
Then we spent a few days with Tracey’s family on a rented boat, kind of like an RV! We motored around the waterways in eastern England called the Norfolk Broads.

We went on to visit Sandringham: the country home of Her Majesty, the Queen, Chartwell: the home of Winston Churchill, Bodiam: a 13^th century castle complete with moat, and the white cliffs of Birling Gap.

If you are a beer drinker, a trip to Belgium is a must. We went by car, putting it on a train to get thru the Eurotunnel, then a half hour thru a corner of France and an hour on Belgian roads to get to Bruges. We had the tastiest beers and the most beautiful sights you can imagine. Continuing our pattern of boating, we took delightful boat rides in both Bruges and Ghent.

As I write this, we are on a very comfortable and quiet train on our way to London. We’ll see some sights, drink some more beer, and be on our way back to Florida tomorrow. Thank you Phil and Tracey for a most memorable, educational, and very tasty, holiday!
Chris and Jim Guld, the Geeks on Tour
See lots more pictures on our web album: 2015 England Trip (https://goo.gl/yzdFcJ)
p.s. We took most of our photos with our smart phones and made extensive use of the new Google Photos App to edit and manage the thousands of pictures we took. To learn more, see http://goo.gl/Jiqrzw We also used a smartphone with T-Mobile service for our Internet connection throughout England, France, and Belgium. At no extra charge, we were quite impressed.

Faywood Hot Springs

Having Facebook friends who travel is great for getting ideas. Sometime last year I noticed a post from friends about Faywood Hot Springs in New Mexico and they liked it. We love hot springs and I knew that Faywood would be somewhere near our route headed from the west coast back to Florida so I put it on our list.
We made it!

Faywood Hot Springs in New Mexico

They had a full service RV park right there at the hot springs. All we had to do was wrap a towel around us and walk past a couple of sites to these pools. You could also call them the Goldilocks tubs: the one on the left is too HOT, the one in the middle is too cold, and the last one is just right! Actually we spent most of our time in the HOT one!

We figured on one night here because Sunday was the next day and we needed to be in a good Internet area to do our webcast show. Lo and behold, there was a Verizon tower within line of sight of the hot springs! We stayed 3 nights!  Here's the show we did that week - it was an especially good one I think! We demonstrated Google Now.


Then, since we had time to spare, we visited a local winery and a State Park called City of Rocks.

There is an RV park here also, but it's too far from the Verizon tower. If we had decided to stay here, we would have had to move on.

Fantastic day! It was a snapshot of what this lifestyle is all about. Work all morning, present our webinar on smartphones and tablets, then soak in hot spring pool in campground where we're staying. Icing on the cake, take a drive to attraction City of Rocks, then a nearby winery (Esperanzas) then dinner at a wonderful cafe Diane's in a historic town (Silver City, NM), back home, one more soak before bed.

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Tombstone

After leaving Malibu, we retraced our steps back - something I hate to do! We stayed at Thousand Trails in Palm Springs, then Leaf Verde in Buckeye. Then, we were hoping to take a different route east from Phoenix since we've traveled I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson so many times this season!

But ... as it turns out, we just hired a company to help us renovate our website and the consultant assigned to us lives in Tucson! I love that so much can get done with a team online, but I'll never pass up an opportunity to meet face to face. So, we traveled I-10 to Tucson ... again ... and had a nice meeting with Leigh while staying at Catalina State park.

Our destination was Faywood Hot Springs in New Mexico (because we saw it on a friend's Facebook posts!) so, after leaving Tucson we stayed on I-10 east. When Jim saw a sign saying "Tombstone Next Exit" he said, I want to go there. I said, "OK." That's all there was to it!

I checked my Allstays Camp and RV app on my phone to see what campgrounds were available and found one right in the middle of historic Tombstone called Wells Fargo. Cool. We checked in about 2pm, figured we could do a little sightseeing, have dinner, and leave in the morning. But Jim had to call Dr. Jay first. Dr. Jay is someone Jim met at the FMCA rally in Redmond, Oregon last summer. He held on to Dr. Jay's card with a note that said, if you're ever in Tombstone, look him up and take a tour. Jim called and got such a warm welcome from Dr. Jay that we just had to stay another day in order to take his tour in the morning. I sooo love having the flexibility to do this kind of thing.

Although Tombstone is known as the place where Wyatt Earp had the shootout at the OK Corral, that was just a tiny blip in it's history as a mining town. So, we took the mine tour as well as the re-enactment of the shootout. And, at home during the evening, we rented the movie Tombstone with Kurt Russell. GREAT movie, and what a treat to get the live tour of the place the next day! We love watching movies filmed in the places we're visiting.

Great fun. We really enjoyed stopping in Tombstone.

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From Sea to Shining Sea

We started our trek east on April 2. Since we started from Malibu beach, overlooking the Pacific ocean, and we'll be ending when we reach Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I can't resist calling it "From Sea to Shining Sea!"

And, I recorded the GPS turning directions for posterity!

If I remember, I'll come back to this post and complete it when we've reached the other ocean!

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OK ... here's a video made after we got to Florida:

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Malibu Beach

After the FMCA rally in Pomona, we wanted to take Lynne to some nice campground before she had to fly back to Oregon. We picked Malibu Beach RV park. The short drive turned out to be pretty long thru all that traffic and I was wondering if this had been a bad idea after all. 
Then we got there!

What a view! Looking out our back window over the Pacific Ocean.

A very nice last night together.


We could just walk down the hill to a fresh seafood restaurant. And, just across the street to take a walk on the beach.

Jim even took this quadcopter video (https://youtu.be/f9vFo6-V5-w) at sunset one evening. Pretty, pretty spot. Not cheap though. I don’t think we’ve ever paid $60 before for a campsite! But, it was worth it. This was our reward for all the work of the last few months.