Anyone who said we would be bored retiring early couldn’t be more wrong. I am once again late writing the weekly blog as we have just been so busy and it is about to get even more hectic as we prepare to fly out to Colorado. The past 2 weeks see us take our final summer weekend away in the van, meet with various structural engineers (a long story which I will come to later), have a couple of road trip planning days with mum and catch up with some filming and editing for our YouTube channel.
Last few days on Arran
Our last few nights on Arran were spent back on the west coast in what has quickly become one of our happy places. There are so many little parking spots along the beaches that you can pull onto and it is so far from any built up areas and houses that the night skies are truly dark and filled with millions of glittering stars.
We had a bit of a trip down memory lane, stopping off at a couple of places that were significant in our development of the early retirement wanderlust logo. First stop was the Lagg distillery. On our first trip to Arran 18 months ago, we loved the simplicity of their logo in black and white and I was so inspired by it that I played around with some design ideas on the beach that afternoon. When we got home, we sent the photo’s of my design to my niece Ellie, who is a graphic designer and she came up with the logo that we now use on our Blog and YouTube.
The other stop off was at a forest car park where we spent s couple of fab nights with beautiful sunsets. We too some incredible photo's of the golden sunset lighting up Nelson through the shadowed forest trees that we have used on our YouTube home page. THE TREES WERE NOT THERE!
The weather for our last few days was outrageously good and we spent the days lazing around on the beach reading and sunbathing. Quite unbelievable for September on a Scottish Island.
We had a bit of a panic the night before we were due to travel home as the Calmac ferries that evening were cancelled due to the ferry being unable to dock during high winds! We got this update whilst lying on a calm, still beach in 25 degrees sunshine, sunbathing! Luckily, our ferry was on time, with a sunny calm crossing.
We have just released our final Arran Vlog with a link here if you are interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k_tVsuk5zs
A weekend escape to Stainforth!
We were only home for one night before we were packing the van up and heading off again. We were staying at the Knight Stainforth Hall campsite with some friends from work who had recently bought a motorhome. It took us all of 15 minutes to get there, which included a quick dive into Booths to get some milk! We had a fab weekend, it was probably the last time we will have the chairs, bbq and awning out for this season and again the weather was with us, it was beautiful.
On the boiling hot Friday afternoon, we went down to the river for a swim, with seemingly most of the campsite and locals had the same idea as it was heaving! There were literally dozens of people by the waterfalls, having fun and jumping into the deep plunge pools. We beat a hasty retreat and decided to head further up the hill, to the other side of Stainforth, to the Catrigg Force waterfalls. With a steep 1 mile hike to get there it was much quieter and we spent a pleasant hour swimming with only a couple of other people.
Reliance on technology
I had a bit of a disaster last week as my laptop died on me, I didn’t realise how much I used it until it wasn’t there! Replacing it was an unexpected expense that we could have done without. I would like to say that this is why the weekly blog is a week late, but it’s not! We have simply been busy too busy travelling and having fun with maybe a little bit of ‘adulting’ thrown in as we are sorting out Richards mums house.
Living in the Dales it took a few days to get a new laptop sorted, but I am up and running again. Luckily it happened now rather than when we were in America as I would have been truly lost without it when on the road.
Planning for our US Rocky Mountain RV road trip
It is not long until we embark on our next US road trip and we are beyond excited! Mum has hired an RV and invited us to travel with her as she carries on in her mission to visit all 50 States of America. We are flying into Denver where we will pick up the motorhome before heading into the Rocky Mountains.
Mum has targeted 4 States, starting in Wyoming where we will have our eyes peeled for bears, moose, wolves and bison in the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. We have spent hours reading different guide books and watching YouTube videos to help us plan our routes. Wyoming is such a vast wilderness of stunning scenery, and excitingly, as long it doesn’t snow on us, everything we have read says that the fall is the most beautiful time to visit as we will have the added bonus of the autumn colours.
With so much to see and do, we have only booked the first week of campsites as we want to remain flexible. Our biggest issue is that it is the end of the season and many places are shutting down, especially in the higher altitude national parks.
Yellowstone was particularly tricky to get bookings and we were lucky that a couple of cancellations came up. I am not sure if I am excited or nervous about the fact that bison were wandering freely around the Fishing Bridge campsite in Yellowstone last week and that you are not allowed to camp in tents or in RV’s that have pop out sides due to the high activity of bears in the area!!
Mums main criteria after we leave Wyoming is to visit Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. We have a rough idea of a route and what we would like to see and as luck would have it, the Sunday Times travel supplement has given us plenty of ideas as they did a feature on the Dakota’s a couple of weeks ago. The highlight being that we must stay at ‘The Rough Riders motel’ in Medora which we have duly booked. We have started binge watching Yellowstone as part of our research which is supposedly based in Montana, I am not sure we are getting a true reflection of what it will be like!
We are really looking forward to being able to get out into small town, back country America. Mum is leaving us in South Dakota after visiting Mount Rushmore, as she is targeting 2 more states around the great lakes before heading for a rest on her favourite beaches in Florida with my sister. We will then have nearly 2 weeks to head down through Nebraska and explore the Colorado Rockies.
You can catch up on some of our plans in our latest YouTube Vlog here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZm8uvnItUU
What to pack for 5 weeks in the Rockies in the Autumn?
So our conundrum over the next few days is what to pack for a 5 week RV road trip in autumn in the Rocky Mountains, where the temperatures range from 27 degrees in Denver and Bozeman to 0 degrees at night in Yellowstone! Lots of layers it seems are in order, especially as we are planning on hiking, as the weather can be quite temperamental. We are trying to learn from our serious overpacking when we went to Arizona in the winter but at least we do not have to trek across Londonon the tube on a Friday afternoon this time with all our luggage. I figure as long as we have our passports, visa and credit card, what could possibly go wrong?
A cosy family evening in
We had a really lovely evening with mum and the kids last Monday. Georgia and Luke live opposite each other which was handy for us all to stay over and have a quiet evening in with a take away and good company.
Subsidence complications
It has been over 6 months since Richards mum was admitted to hospital and she moved into a care home. She is really settled and the home is just fantastic. She has gained weight, made new friends and generally looks so much healthier and happier than we have seen her for a few years.
With a huge amount of reluctance, we have had to make the decision to put Richards family home up for sale, however we noticed some cracks (some rather large) were appearing in a few rooms. After paying for a structural engineer to investigate and do a report for prospective house buyers, we were advised that the probable cause was subsidence and that we should get it fixed through the house insurance as the house would be unmortgageable for a sale.
After a few wrangles with the insurance company proving that we had Power of Attorney for Margaret’s finances, they have been pretty good so far. We have met with several engineers and drain investigators and hopefully are at a stage to move forward and get it fixed. We have been advised that it is a slow process including months at a time monitoring if the building is still moving both before and after any repair works. Fortunately we are not relying on a quick sale to pay for Margaret’s care home fees!
All of this process is pretty time consuming for us as it is a 2 hr round trip to Bingley plus the hours of waiting around.
That’s all for this update, hope you all have a great week
Jackie and Richard
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