Live. Travel. Play.

It’s cold in North Sydney. We crawled out of the van this morning in 10-degree weather and walked to the campground toilets in bone-chilling drizzle and high winds. Gregor wasn’t particularly impressed. He gets a bit grumpy when the weather is like this. We really didn’t anticipate this kind of cold. Henry, our disheviled succulent plant, is probably cursing us right now.

After our morning showers, we bundled up and worked in the van for a few hours before the noon check-out time.  Then we headed to town so that Gregor could get his hair trimmed for the big ferry trip to Newfoundland – don’t want to land on “The Rock” un-groomed. At 2 pm we waited in line at the ferry terminal to catch the 5 pm boat to Argentia. (more…)

…and we’re still living and working and travelling together without too much drama. However, I think we may be experiencing a bit of “van fever”. Today, Gregor decided he would speak to me in the third person.

For example:
“I’m going to speak about Janice like she’s not here.”
“I’ll make Janice some coffee, and she can make breakfast.”
“Janice seems annoyed. What’s bothering her?”
“If Janice just agreed with me, we wouldn’t be arguing right now.”

We’re in Nova Scotia! Can’t believe how the time is flying. I’ll rewind a bit… (more…)

On Monday we left Aspen, Colorado, and headed northeast towards Nebraska, in hopes to make it to Chicago for the long weekend. The narrow, windy road from Aspen climbed steeply up the forested mountainside to Independence Pass, located along the Continental Divide.

I’m so glad Gregor was driving. I just about soiled my pants each time I looked out the passenger window, past the 6-inch paved shoulder that separated the van’s wheels from the valley below – very few guardrails! As we gained elevation we passed snow drifts and, eventually, tree line. (more…)

We are not desert people. We are mountain people (and occasionally beach people), but definitely not desert people. We just spent a week driving through four National Parks in southern Utah, where we saw some of the most spectacular scenery we have ever seen in our lives. But it was so ridiculously hot and dry!

We started off in Zion National Park, where we were wowed by steep river-cut canyons and beautiful sandstone formations. We hiked up the side of Zion canyon in extreme heat and dryness, but were rewarded with awesome views of slot canyons and sheer cliffs. No rock climbing for us here – the walls were just too big for our amateur skills. (more…)

The last two weeks have been a zoo. It turns out that working and vacationing at the same time is rather time-consuming. And scavenging time for blogging is a bit of a challenge. Last week, Gregor attended the annual Apple World-Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, where he overloaded his brain with binary banter. His mind was so active that he kept having really vivid dreams, and he would sometimes speak to me like we were on Starship Enterprise because I couldn’t understand him half the time. He said that the conference was “crawling with geeks”. Indeed, our downtown hotel was full of them. They kept hogging up the hotel’s Internet bandwidth in the evenings, so surfing the net was slit-your-wrists slow. (more…)