admin – The Blue Van – Overland Travels

Bakeries Around the World

admin — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 06:18:29 +0000

I have been to many bakeries around the world. I have been to bakeries in London, Dublin, Lima, Cartagena,and Wales and in a lot of small towns but I think of all the bakeries I have been to, Mexico City is the best. British bakeries tasted better than they looked. They had eclairs in every single bakery in the UK. In Melrose, Scotland, I got an eclair and so did my sister Annabelle. Everyone in my family loves eclairs. They are so good! We went home to the camper that day in Melrose and my mom twisted her ankle on a cobblestone and it hurt for months. In Scotland, most of the bakery things we bought were pies. You might be thinking of the kind of pies that have strawberries and cherries in them but no, these pies have mashed potatoes, minced meat, macaroni, and cheese, they were delicious!. My sister Annabelle loved them the most. In Wales, we went to a bakery in Conwy and I asked my mom if I could get a piece of gingerbread, gingerbread is one of my favorite cookies. It was soft, not too hard, I loved it, it was delicious! In Beaumaris, I saw happy meals at a bakery that had cookies, crisps, a sausage pie and a juice box. I wanted one so bad. We were about to leave and I asked my mom if we could get one before we left and she said yes! We ran down and I got one and it was scrumptious. I was happy for the rest of the day. Although I did not eat my gingerbread. In Peru, all the cakes looked awesome, cakes with beautiful round toppings with little points on top and strawberries but when you bite into them, they tasted bad. We ordered one slice and all of us could not finish it. Every single thing was bad. In Colombia, it was boiling hot and we had to drink water out of bags but it was fun in the end. The first night in Cartagena there was a bakery right down the street and the food was great! They had cheese bread and jelly filled bread but afterawhile, I ate there every night, I got sick of them and I ate more street food – my favorite was kabobs but everyone else liked these pastries filled with burger meat but they had onion in them. Nothing compares to the Mexico City bakery, Pasteleria Ideal. The bakery had a window full and stacked high with every kind of cookie you could imagine, chocolate chip, jelly filled, tarts, every single kind. It was amazing. There was a donut section filled with donuts and cupcakes, stacked high, it was beautiful. There were sections and sections and sections for sandwiches and empanadas, bread, jello cakes, it was amazing, amazing, amazing!

I know for sure that the Mexico City Bakery is the best one I have ever gone to in my travels.

Ireland Part One

admin — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 12:31:03 +0000

Howth by our camper

We went to Ireland on a ferry and it was very nice. It had games but they cost a euro each and a free movie, Ant Man. We landed in Northern Ireland which is still part of England. When Ireland rebelled, they took over every single part except this part, which is still part of England to this day and they called it the Easter uprising. It was filled with bombs and death. Everyone was afraid they would strike again on Easter,because was that was the 100 year anniversary. We were on our way to Dublin and we stopped in a little town called Annalong and we camped right in front of a playground and we met two friends there, Alex and Kora. We had fun there playing. We were trying to watch a movie that night and some people threw rocks at us, drunken teenagers. One rock hit right in the window, luckily it did not break. Then we left Annalong and drove to Dublin. We stayed in a little town called Howth on the outskirts of Dublin. We went for a carriage ride from the Guinness storehouse to Templebar. I really wan

I was happy

ted to go in a carriage, ever since South America, I wanted to ride in a horse drawn carriage! I got to drive the horse. It was great. When St Patricks day came, it was crazy and bustling. We each got a green hat and a green hoody to go to the parade. It was really crowded but we got there early and we got a great seat right in front of the bandstand where they filmed all the things and stuff. The parade was great, I loved it. Our friends were coming that day from Alaska. When we got to the bus station where we were meeting them, I started to throw up. I was sick, very sick. We started to walk to there hotel. I vomited a ton and the train station. We got to their hotel and I laid there in their bed, sick as ever. I threw up a lot. Then we had to go home to Howth. My brother and sister were staying the night. I did not throw up on the train. I laid down and went to bed. The next morning, we were going to go on rides for the Prawn Festival. We went on the

Driving through Guinness on the carriage

rides it was fun, I was still sick. The next day everyone came over and we got fish and chips. Dublin was kind of meh. There were parts of it with broken down windows and graffiti but parts were really nice, too. After Dublin, we drove around. There were thousands and trillions and billions of lambs , they were so adorable, I loved them and wanted to get them, Once I got stung by a stinging nettle while we were in Ireland and it hurt for days. We went to a little town where we hiked up to a cathedral and we got lunch there in a pub. I had chicken and chips, it was the town where my mom

Going past Saint Patrick’s. We went to Evensong there the night before Saint Patrick’s Day

and dad’s families were from

Temple bar was really crowded every night

Shetland – Sylvia

admin — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 14:05:49 +0000

We went on a ferry to the Shetland Islands, it’s a part of Scotland. It’s famous for the sheep that make beautiful yarn. These are special sheep they are not like any other sheep because this is such a tiny island that all the same here but different from every where else. It’s famous for these ponies that are very small and they have been here for thousands of years. They are very tiny and they have lots of hair. To get here, we had to take 2 ferries. One to the Orkney Islands that took 90 minutes and one to Lerwick that took 12 hours. It had a theater, gaming area, bar lounge, restaurants and a store. There was no people von the ferry at all. We slept in the theater, me and my mom but everyone else slept in this place called the Pod Lounge. The Pod Lounge cost £10 more to sleep in one but we didn’t have to pay because there was no one there. A pod was a chair that was comfortable and you can lean back. I didn’t sleep in there because I didn’t want to be quiet. The next morning we went to breakfast. It was all you could eat so I was excited. The food wasn’t v that good. I don’t eat eggs so I don’t know how good the eggs were. The bacon was Scottish and not like American bacon. American is fried in a pan and is crispy but Scottish bacon is more like ham and it’s called rashers. I didn’t like the bacon. I had cereal. When we got off the ferry we drove to a cliff over the ocean with no fences. My brother Jack got very close and I got freaked out. We found two fairy rocks! The rocks had deep puddles around them.

A Comprehensive Update Part 1: Florida to Liverpool

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:15:50 +0000

Celebration Station!

We left Florida later than we intended. The camper needed to be customized for Team DeCorso – new sofa, new table, 5 bunks with an optional 6th bunk, bunk lights and chargers, a new oven/stove, upgrades to the running lights, a new stereo and speakers, new countertop in the kitchen, 14 hooks for coats and an overall upgrading of the camper (like scraping off the pink & blue gnocchi-like wallpaper border that was added to the bathroom and kitchen). During this time, we had a great stay in Florida! Swimming, bike riding, Snapple-drinking good time with grandpa & grandma!.

We left Florida on October 10, so very late as we needed to be in Halifax to catch our flight to Glasgow on October 20th.

Steak & Shake!

Bay of Fundy

The USA & Canada

We raced up the eastern seaboard. In Asheville, we visited Aunt Alice and cousin Mary. In Cleveland, we visited Grandma Dorothy and Aunt Pat & Uncle Smitty. Jack visited Carnegie Mellon and spent an evening with their pipe band. In New York, Mark realized he did not have the title to the camper and we had to send power of attorney to Ryan at a FedEx. In New Hampshire, someone hit our mirror while we were parked and broke it off. In Maine, we went out for lobster with the legendary Joni McNutt. In Calais, we fetched the camper title from FedEx. We drove around the Bay of Fundy, watched the tidal bore and arrived in Halifax on 10/18. We woke up early on 10/19 to discover that the transmission had completely failed. A panicked call to Mr Transmission, and $3000 (thankfully Canadian) later our camper was on the road again. Mr Transmission lent us a pick up truck so we could run our final errands and do our final paperwork for shipping the camper over. On the morning of October 20th, the camper had to be at the quay before 11am but our flight did not leave until 10pm. We spent the day sightseeing in Halifax , learning about the great Halifax Explosion and the Titanic Exhibit. Two things we learned: the explosion released the equivalent energy of 2.9 kilotons of TNT and Halifax was the staging ground for rescuing people from the sinking Titanic, although all they recovered were dead people and a sad collection of items like dolls and baby shoes.

Edinburgh

Our plane landed in Glasgow and we caught a Citylink bus to Edinburgh and were at our lovely home by 11am. Ourhouse was literally 41 steps off the Royal Mile, on Bell’s Wynd. Later, in a bookstore in Leith, we would read in Haunted Edinburgh that our house was haunted. The house was perfect for us, the location was fabulous.

The camper departed Halifax on 10/24 and was supposed to take 7 days to get to Liverpool but a storm in the north Atlantic delayed the ship and we were happy to extend our stay in our little house on the Royal Mile to 3 weeks. We had a really great, super fun, amazing time in Edinburgh. We went to Tesco and bought a ton of weird British food (vegetarian haggis, clotted cream, crumpets, bangors, swedes, neeps, bramble jelly, turkish delight and several chutneys). We went to the Scottish National Gallery. We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We visited the castle. We went to almost every pub, or so it seemed. One night, Mark and Jack and I went to a small pub

Royal Mile looking towards Holyrood

with traditional music and had a great night of drinking, singing and dancing. We went on the Harry Potter Tour, in the poring rain, and saw where JK Rowling wrote the books, the inspiration (and grave) of Tom Riddle, Diagon Alley and much more.

We spent Halloween here. Sylvia and Annabelle went trick or treating in neighborhood of old gothic mansions. They had to do a trick at every house to get candy. Max supplied one excellent joke that no one had yet heard here: Why does Peter Pan fly? Because he can Never Land. We found the neighborhood from someone we met at the Unitarian Church in Edinburgh. We also went to the Royal Botanical Gardens on Halloween and did the Witch Hunt Trail, where you had to collect information on magical plants for a surprise. That night, was the Samhain Festival at the Grassmarket, a torch procession and very well attended.

Sylvia’s favorite painting at the National Gallery

Halloween Vampire Princess

Halloween at the Botanical Gardens

Bell’s Wynd

Samhain at Grassmarket

Bridge to island uncovered at low tide

Liverpool

Catching the early train

Finally the camper arrived in Liverpool. Team DeCorso got up way too early and took a train to Liverpool. While Mark fetched the camper, Jack & Jennah went on a quest to find the house where John Lennon was born and Annabelle, Sylvia, Max and I went to the Albert Docks, World Herit age Site (not exciting at all).

Mark appeared with the camper and we piled inside and began the long task of preparing it for travel. We had screwed all the doors shut and put paneling over all compartments and screwed that shut, a basic RORO safety measure. Turns out, someone did steal stuff from our camper, it seems they always do. They took our Tide-scented Febreeze, a string of solar LED lights and, sadly, Mark’s drill so unscrewing became much more work. Next we had to find water, gas and propane (which required a fitting which had to be shipped from Oxford). While we unscrewed cabinets and waited for the fitting for the propane, we camped north of Liverpool at Crosby Beach, site of the 99 Iron Men statues. We also rode out the first storm

Rain gear!

with a name in UK history, which battered the camper with 75mph winds. We had to move in the middle of the night to find more shelter. We also went to a store called Go Outdoors! and bought all of Team DeCorso suitable rain gear, jackets, boots, umbrellas and hats.

Then, with fuel and water and propane, we started on our left-driving journey.

Traditional pub vegetarian breakfast

Pub breakfast – rashers and bangors

London

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 18:06:12 +0000

London is the best city I’ve been to so far. I like the architecture and the food. It is fun to walk around and has lots to do. We recently went to see the play Wicked at a theater, which was very good. We went out to eat at an Indian cuisine place, which was very good, I also learned not to choose very spicy on my food there. Ryan was also with us in London, he had been with us since Christmas, which we spent in an RV park outside of Edinburgh. The tube here is also very nice, but also kind of expensive so we had to get this card that makes it cheaper to travel. There is also a cable car which you can take a across the Thames and very high up so you can see a lot of Canary Wharf. We walked ten miles every day so far in London. We went to the British Museum and Buckingham Palace. Tomorrow we are going to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. We saw the Rosetta Stone and part of the Sphinx’s beard at the museum. We took pictures of the Tower Bridge. While we were walking around there was a bus accident that had three buses involved. There were tons of police cars and ambulances at the scene. We left after we saw some S.W.A.T like cars pull up. Also while we were there, Jack and Jennah went to see a concert. The band that was going to play was called Panic At The Disco, which Jennah loves. Jack and Jennah went there while we went to see Wicked. Someone gave them tickets so they could go. We also went to the Tower of London, which i thought was very cool. In the Tower of London, they had a giant museum with tons of suits of armor made for the kings of Britain. There is crows at the Tower of London which have been there for hundreds of years. They say that is all the crows leave the Tower of London, the monarchy would fall. So now there is a law saying that at least six crows most remain in the tower. They also clip the wings of the crows. We also went to Evensong at Westminster Abby, which was awesome. I’ve had a very good time in London and thought it was very nice.

Christmas Fairs in General

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:28:20 +0000

Christmas Markets are tiny shops that have tarps over them or some are board booths made out of wood and some are inside these tents that have a ton of tiny shops built inside. In Welshpool we got there the night they turned on the Christmas lights. They turned them on in the town center. We walked there and there was music and Santa was there! We got to see him. He was in the town hall under the stairs in a broom closet but they called it Santa’s Grotto. I think a grotto is a tiny house. While we were in line to see him, there was a dancing reindeer. Me and my sister danced with the reindeer. There was a candy store where we got a big cup of candy. We went to one that had only 10 booths and it was pouring rain, freezing cold and hailing and everywhere there were broken and ripped umbrellas, garbage cans of umbrellas, a shopping cart of broken umbrellas, broken because the wind was so strong it just tore them apart. It was windy and cold and hailing, that was the worst ever. We found a mall and went into it. It was kind of fun. It was warm for one thing. And it smelled like food. We went to Disney Store but it just had Disney stuff. We went to another toy store and it had a person who gave glitter tattoos. I got one, it was a penguin. We went to a Christmas Fair that was kind of fun. We all had some money to spend. It was in Nottingham. Nottingham is famous for Robin Hood, Robin of Locksely. I know he was pretty famous. It was back in the time of King Richard. We went to the forest he lived in, Sherwood Forest. We got to walk around and saw the great oak, it was an oak that had been alive for many, many years. It was kind of ugly. It had metal poles to hold it up because it was so old it was falling down. At the Christmas Fair in Nottingham, there was a giant slide that looked like a lighthouse. I got to go down the slide twice. It was pretty fun. Max got a sausage. My sister got hot chocolate, it had one of her favorite candies in it, a Flake Bar. It was all flaky and ground up and put into a bar. We stopped at a bookstore and there was a parade we heard but it came by and we missed it. We went to one Christmas Fair with my aunt Sara. She plays a violin in an orchestra. That was fun. We got to see her. It was cool and fun. We were in York. York looked old aged, like the middle ages. Stone walls, houses that were stone and brick and wood and painted white. While we were there, a flood happened on the River Ouze. The Christmas Fair was pretty fun. Aunt Sara bought us roasted chestnuts. I didn’t really like them. They tasted like potatoes to me. But sweeter. They had a slide there. My sister bought my mom a scarf there for Christmas. One of my mom’s friends told us to go to a pie shop there and it was actually pretty bad. It was not a sit down place and there were only three kinds of pie and they tasted bad, all of them had meat. I think meat pies are bad. The biggest Christmas Fair of all was Edinburgh! It had rides and tons of shops. There was one shop that sold really pretty cards, the cards were paper but it was like folded together so it popped up. When you opened them, there was flower bush or a reindeer or a heart or a ship or a ferris wheel. I went ice skating there with my brother Jack. I was really looking forward to ice skating. It was a big circle circling a building where you could go get hot chocolate or this stuff called mulled wine that is just like wine heated up. I got hot chocolate but my brother got wine. You only have to be 18 to have alcohol here. We got to keep the cup. My sister Annabelle, my dad and my brother Max rode some swings that were really high. I didn’t ride. I didn’t want to go. We went to see the light show, it was songs and music and a ton of lights, the lights were red, white and blue. All these Christmas Fairs were a little bit magical.

Kabobs, Pizza and Burgers

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:14:24 +0000

We have been driving around Wales for about three weeks. In those 21 days, I think maybe four of them have been sunny. The rest have been filled with a clothes drenching drizzle – mist, or pounding rain. If we’re lucky, there’s also 60mph winds to accompany the rain. This point is most accurately described by the time we visited Harlech Castle, one of the four castles built by King Edward I in Wales, hundreds of years ago. Along with Harlech, there is Conwy, Caernarfon and Beaumaris. The best castle out of all of them was probably Conwy or Beaumaris. The day we visited Harlech, it was blowing so hard that when Jack and I walked up onto the castle walls,we almost fell off and were saved by a handsome stranger. If you leaned into the wind, you wouldn’t fall forward. The castles are fun for pretending to be country men, which Jack and I pretend to be when we’re exploring the castle. This usually means standing on the tallest tower, pretending to smoke pipe weed (what they smoke in the Lord of the Rings), calling each other “my good fellow” and talking about the peskiness of wives. Something that I have noticed about Wales, or the UK in general, is that almost everywhere there are restaurants that sell “Kebabs Pizza Burgers” in that combination. They are more common than fish and chip places, and show up even in the most remote of villages. The restaurants are also almost aways accompanied by pictures of chicken nuggets and pizza dancing around. In Chester,there was a weird café modeled after the one in the TV show Friends. Inside there were big TVs playing the show and sketches of the characters and their houses all over the wall. A couple of days ago we were in Cardiff, and went to the Doctor Who Experience, where we went on a simulation of the TARDIS and had to go through fields of various Doctor Who criminals. It was pretty cool, and Sylvia got picked to talk to the Doctor, who called her an android. After Cardiff, we went to Pembrokeshire, wher e it was again, rainy. We walked around but there wasn’t much there, so we drove to another spot on the beach. There were huge waves and at night Jack and I explored a near by field. It was full of sinister looking mounds of dirt (ant hills? land mines?) so we quickly left, making sure not to step on any of them. The next morning we drove for a while until we got to where we are tonight, Aberystwyth, one of the biggest towns in Wales. -Jennah

Castles, Christmas Fairs, Rain and Dr Who

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 23:26:25 +0000

Castles here are very interesting. They are quite fun and I had quite a fun time in them. But some parts are quite sad like war fields and battles and towers where people died. In one castle there was a display made completely out of thin wood and it looked like a merry-go-round and it told the story of a little Spanish Princess who married at age 11 to a 13 year old prince to soon become the Queen of Wales. At 13 she had a baby and at 15 she had another child that died at birth. She had 16 babies but only 6 lived. She came from Spain, a sunny place, to Wales, a dark stormy rainy every day place where the sun only comes out for 30 minutes a day and mostly it is just dark and if you were on the top of a castle, you would be blown away by the wind. She had a baby when she was age 20 and she was under house arrest when she was pregnant with her child and she had her child in prison and the baby died at 8 months old. That is pretty sad. At two of the castles, there was this game where you had to try to find stuff and you got a pin or stickers at the end, that was fun. In Wales, it was dark and windy almost all the time, There was only a few minutes of sunlight. The weather was rainy and dreary. It was mostly cloudy and rainy and if it was not cloudy, it was drenching rain like buckets being dumped on your head. We stopped at the store a long time ago and got nice rain jackets and a few days ago I got there really nice shoes that are like tennis shoes but waterproof and they match my rain jacket exactly. The wind is really windy here. We went to one castle when it was really windy. It was Harlech Castle. There was this one spot that if you went there you nearly got forced back. My dad took a video and it looks like my sister got blown away. My two brothers unzipped their jackets and the wind was blowing and it looked like a big giant marshmallow. We went into a hole that was sort of sealed off and it was dark. Every castle we went to had ancient toilets. They were big pits that leaded out into the moat. You sat on it.

We went to these Christmas Fairs that were really cool, they have ton of lights at them. We went to one that was where the book Alice in Wonderland was created. I bought a bag of chocolate there that was really good. It had a few long tents that were filled with tiny shops and there was a lot of cheese tasting. I liked that. Outside this church there was this guy who owned five or six owls. One was tiny and cute, I think it was an elf owl – could not have been one from the desert because it would be freezing cold. It’s freezing cold here. It’s warmer than Alaska but it is not warm.

We went to a Christmas fair in Cardiff and it was so windy that there were garbage cans of broken umbrellas and broken umbrellas on the ground everywhere. They were broken because it was so windy there. It was pouring rain. And then we went into a store and got an Advent calendar.

My mom & dad said they were going to give us a big surprise. They took me to a museum of my favorite tv show, DR WHO!
There was a museum and first you got to walk through an experience that made it felt like you were on the TV show itself. At the end, we got to go to a museum that had the real clothes from the show like the Doctor’s clothes, he was the main character in the show and he regenerated, and his companions, I remember everyone of them. The first one was named Rose. The very best thing was that we got to go there. It was really cool.

The Beginning

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 22:38:44 +0000

I was hoping to be posting continuously when I left Fairbanks. Time did not permit that. I’m finding I have a lack of time pretty regularly these days. There is a lot to talk about.

I went down to Tampa in late July. Goal one was to help Ryan get a new vehicle to drive around the Lower 48 with. I spent three days with Ryan finding cars online, looking at them, buying one and getting it registered. We got him a pretty cool Toyata Camry and is was really great spending time with Ryan. We had a lot of fun.

Ryan's awesome ride

Goal two was to check out the new expedition vehicle, a 1992 29 foot Class C motorhome we purchased off of Craigslist a few months earlier. So far, only my Dad had seen it. We had photos, but that was it.

The motorhome had been placed in a storage lot near my parents house in Dundedin. Ryan and I found a car for him so he dropped me off at the yard and I drove the motorhome to my parents house to look it over. There reportedly was a small leak in the rook from the air conditioner, but otherwise, everything was supposed to be good. Shortly after I got the vehicle to my parents house, Ryan left on his big adventure.

The new rig at my parents

While I was at my folks house and right after Ryan left, the Tampa area received record rainfall, 10 inches in 24 hours. Roads were flooding, snakes and kids swimming in the streets, pools were popping out of the ground from over saturation beneath them, catfish were turning up on decks and lawns. It was crazy. I would say it was raining buckets, except it was more than that. Really. So this made it really hard to get any work done. It also showed that there were more leaks than previously advertised.

The inside of the motorhome took a beating. The roof leaked in several places. The inside smelled awful. Musty, wet, awful. I was becoming very concerned that the thing was a total loss. The kitchen counter top was formica covered particle board and much of it had swollen from ¾” to 2”. The dining room table had suffered the same fate.

Swollen kitchen counter

Swollen dining room table with bucket to catch water

The jackknife couch/bed was soaked, smelly and molding. The back bedroom was leaking as well and much of the cabinetry was some compressed paper product that took water worse than the particle board. The camper was a wreck, it was pouring rain and there was nothing I could do. Well, there was one thing I could do.

I knew I was going to have to find leaks on the roof, and to do that the roof was going to have to be cleaned. It was covered with black moldy stuff, and I knew the roof underneath was supposed to be white. I decided to use the endless buckets of rain to my advantage. I found a deck brush my Dad had laying around for his sailboat, grabbed some dish soap and climbed up on the roof. I spent a good three hours in the never ending rain scrubbing the roof on my hands and knees. This allowed me to thoroughly inspect the roof while scrubbing all the junk off. I found a couple of suspect areas that looked like they needed a ttention.

After three days of ridiculous rain, the sun started to show. I had my parents car available to me so I started trying to deal with the leaking roof. There is a motorhome supply store nearby my folks house, Harberson’s RV, so I headed over there to see what I could find. I found a rubber roofing product that applied like paint for $90 a gallon. One gallon gave me one and a half coats of the roof. I took all the stuff off the roof, vent covers, the air conditioner, other various covers. It was 90 degrees, the sun was shining and it was about 90 percent humidity. I slapped the coating down as fast as I could. It took about four hours, including a short window of drying in between coats. It was brutal.

The next day I put all the vent covers back on. It turned out whoever had installed them had done so incorrectly by fastening them directly to the roof. This put four holes in the roof for each of the four covers. I was pretty sure every one of these things was leaking. In addition to the holes in the roof, they way the vents had been mounted had them elevated slightly off the roof. This allowed water to go under the covers and get right to the screws in the roof. When I picked up the roof paint I also got some tubes of rubberized RV roof caulk. When I put the covers on I liberally applied caulk to the screws in the roof. Then I sealed the covers to the roof as well. Hopefully we would be leak free from here on out.

Another issue with the camper was the cooking situation. It came with a three burner propane stove top and a combination microwave/convection oven, which was quite small. This cooking situation was not going to be effective for Team DeCorso, so I needed to find an alternative. I found an RV stovetop/oven on Craigslist that was about 20 miles away and gave them a call. It seemed the dimensions of the oven would allow it to fit where the current stovetop was if I removed the drawer underneath it. So off I went to fetch the stove. I got back late and put it in the next day. With just a little trimming of the space, the oven slid right in. Thankfully the camper came with a full tank of propane so I was able to be sure it worked properly.

By now I had been gone from Fairbanks for too long. It was time to head home. The fair was coming up, and I had a lot of work I needed to get done to the house and cars before I could head back to Florida and off to Europe.

Canada by Sylvia

admin — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 00:13:56 +0000

The trip from Florida was fun. We got to camp on the roadside and we had a fun time driving and we finally reached our destination which was Canada! We went to the Bay of Fundy which has the highest tidal bores in the world. We got to climb around on caves and rocks and stuff. That night we reached Halifax. The next morning, the car broke down. We had to take it to the shop and it cost like $5000 (it’s like Canadian money is waaay cheaper). It took a day. We camped at a KOA. Once we camped at a KOA and Annabelle said they had a bouncy pillow and I do not remember the bouncy pillow because I was 3 years old. It would have been really great. I was probably not scared. I was hoping this KOA had a bouncy pillow. BUT it turns out it was DEFLATED for the winter. I felt sad. The next morning, we woke up and it was a really big rush because we had to go to the airport. Dad and Max dropped us off and we stayed there about 2 hours. We went downtown on a bus. When we got downtown we had to walk quite awhile to get the the beach where we met up with my dad and brother. We went to the Titanic museum. It had parts of the Titanic. It had stories about the Titanic sinking. The museum also had something about the Halifax Explosion where a ship blew up and it killed thousands and thousands of people. All in all, the museum was kind of depressing. Then we got pizza and we had a really big rush because we were going to miss the bus. We got to the airport and the plane started boarding. It was a 5 hour flight with TVs on it. We got to Glasgow and we had to take a bus here. It was cool. It had a bathroom. And first class seats. When we finally got to our flat, we settled down, watched tv and made dinner and walked around and went to bed.