Detour: Peru and Machu Picchu

peru-passport-stampsMonths before we embarked on our travel trailer adventure I booked a trip to Peru.  I try to take one solo trip per year, usually to somewhere on my bucket list.  Machu Picchu was calling my name!  That made for a conundrum. Where will I be in August and what city should I fly out of?  I knew we’d be headed south on our RV adventure, so I looked at ticket prices at every major airport from Virginia to Florida.  Not surprisingly, the cheapest flights were out of Miami.  I booked through Miami which meant we had 70 days to get from Northern Virginia to the bottom of Florida.  Well, we made it and I left Florida for Peru on Aug 1, 2015.

The trip was organized by a Virginia/Maryland/DC Meetup.com travel group.  I went to Costa Rica last year with the group’s organizer, but the other travelers were strangers.  It turned out to be a great group of 6 guys and 25 gals. Continue reading

“You’re Living the Dream!” Yeah, Right!

Yeah, right!  That’s what I’ve felt like saying this week to that statement.  After camping locally at home for 2 weeks prior to this, all was going well.  Then, we got on the road for the first long term trip.  We had 2 days of travel lined up to Smith Mountain Lake and Pigeon Forge, TN.  Should have been about 8 hours over both days.  Instead we ended up being on the road, most of it stranded, for 22 hours total.  That was because of these 3 tire blowouts. Continue reading