My Favorite Things: 2016

As another year draws to a close, it’s fun reflecting back on all my favorite things from 2016. Selling our floating home (sailboat) after a month in Cuba and transitioning to our first Snowbird winter chasing the sun means a drastically different lifestyle. As much as I miss our sailboat and the cruising lifestyle, we’re enjoying the lower stress but arguably less spectacular lifestyle exploring national parks in our travel trailer.

Sailing to Cuba. We sailed to Havana from Key West, spent a month – coinciding with President OBama’s visit. Cuban culture could not have been more interesting and we loved our time there. Having said that, it was the first visit we’d had in a communist country and we’re happy to be back in the good ole USA, as flawed as it might be. Click here for more … Viva Cuba!

Selling Winterlude, our Floating Home & Sailboat … 15 years spending all winters aboard pretty much guaranteed David wearing shorts every day, but all good things eventually come to a transitional phase (not an end, that would be far too final). Click here for more … “Waking Up From A Dream”

All is not silent night with our Grandkids!

More Trips with Grandkids! Less time aboard the sailboat means more time for family and grandkids which we’re planning to enjoy even more in 2017 with son Billy marrying his long time sweetheart, Laura and vacation trips planned with Aly & family and Andy & family. Click here for our Chasing Waterfalls adventures with the kiddos (and their parents)…

New Tundra and the Grand Tetons, Sept 2016

Upgrading our Tow Vehicle from our favorite Toyota 4 Runner to our new favorite Toyota Tundra. Why? Click here for more…

Wildlife encounters. One of the best things about cruising was the wildlife beneath the water – dolphins frolicking, manatees with babies, brightly colored neon reef fish — you never knew what you might see in the clear waters beneath the boat. Luckily that part of our adventure continues with our travel trailer explorations – like when the wild horse ran through our campsite in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, bald eagles soar and fish, owls swoop through our site at Custer State Park, more buffalo than I could ever count, countless pronghorn (variety of antelope), entertaining prairie dogs and much much more. I’m looking forward to more wildlife encounters in the months to come. Click here for more…

The Cassidy Arch – an unplanned hike in Capitol Reef National Park … come to think of it, even Capitol Reef was NOT on our original agenda on our trip to Utah .

FREEDOM! Did I mention how much I love living in our traveling home on wheels. When we get tired of exploring one location, we can move to another. If the weather is too cold for David to wear shorts, we can MOVE! Unfortunately sometimes it’s a LONG way to get to somewhere warmer, but it’s possible and wonderful! We try to loosely plan what we want to enjoy in our upcoming months, but if we stumble onto something else along the way, we can about face and stay or go somewhere unplanned or whatever we want. This is a sometimes under the radar “Favorite Thing” that I need to make sure not take for granted!

Custer State Park, SD. We camped in a variety of state parks, national parks and even a few commercial RV parks during 2016. But by far my favorite, not including our friends’ in Whitefish, MT (Glacier National Park) driveway, was Custer State Park in South Dakota. It was a complete surprise – we looked online for a good base to explore the area – including the Mount Rushmore area and found Custer State Park. By the time we booked reservations, most of the best campgrounds were gone, but we were happy and centrally located where we ended up. Click here for my campground review … the only campground we had a buffalo in our front yard!

Experiencing 9 National Parks – Everglades, Badlands, Wind Cave, Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt, Glacier, Yellowstone & Grand Tetons National Park; 3 State Parks and a couple commerical campgrounds – including West Yellowstone & Jackson Hole since they were last minute additions. Oh wait, I almost forgot, we also explored a cave with an underground river in a National Park in Cuba — Vinales National Park! 🙂

Unparalleled Opportunity to Improve my Photography. Visiting 9 National Parks, with all the countless wildlife is a perfect opportunity to learn more about my photography hobby. I want to take the photo below at Big Bend National Park!

Thanks to the National Park Service for the photo. Big Bend National Park

No I didn’t take this photo … yet. Thanks to the National Parks Service for the photo.

Where Do We Go Now??? Winter 2017 is not yet totally planned, but it starts with January in South Padre Island, TX and February in Los Cruces, TX. March features Texas Hill Country and ends up in Big Bend National Park. April we’ll explore New Mexico and maybe more. Maybe I’ll even get caught up on my September, November & December 2016 campground reviews and other fun from the recent past.

What did you enjoy most in 2016? Best campsite? Best National or State Park? Please leave a comment and share – we need more information to add ideas to our future explorations! Hoping for warm sunny weather! Cheers! Jan