Category Archives: Travels with Maria

Blogging from the road.

Snowbirding 2022: Malaga WA to Glenns Ferry ID

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My first day of travel — in vlog format.

Well, I’m off on this year’s snowbirding trip to points south. I came very close to not going. It was last week’s cold weather snap and the fact that my house-sitters had no where to live if I didn’t leave that finally got me packed and out the door.

I’m trying something new this year: video logging or vlogging of my travels. This video is my first stab at the format. It’s not perfect but as I edit and compile the video, I get more ideas on how to make it better so I expect my entries to improve as time goes on.

Why am I doing this? Well, I want to be able to vlog my future boat journeys. Let’s face it: most people these days would rather watch a video than read a blog — even if they both contain the same content. And I really do get a kick out of showing off some of the stuff I see and do along the way. So these videos are my way of learning how to and practicing vlogging.

I’m using three cameras to make these videos, but I’ll likely streamline it down to just two. A GoPro Hero 8 produces time-lapse videos of my drive. I think folks might get a kick out of seeing some of the terrain I drive through. There’s a whole lot of nothing out west and the folks who live in big cities often have no clue. (Yes, I did pass a “Next Gas 111 Miles” sign yesterday; if the camera caught it, I’ll share it.) It’s also interesting to see how the geology changes. And the weather.

The other two cameras are actually iPhones. One is the iPhone 8 Plus I got for free about 3 years ago when I bought my iPhone XS. It’s not connected to a cell plan but it still works great as a camera and on an Internet connection for creating and sharing content. I had it set up mounted to make selfies while I drove. I later realized that I didn’t like the way I had to do a freeze frame of the video to insert my commentary so I’m likely to discontinue it. The other is my new iPhone 13 Pro, which I use for handheld selfie videos while out of the truck. I’ll likely set this up to record occasional selfies behind the wheel. Two cameras is enough. It’s not like I’m flying a helicopter or anything. ;-)

I compile the video content on my MacBook Air — the same one I was “forced” to buy back in August or September while I was cruising on the Great Lakes. It’s a better machine than the 2yo MacBook Pro I’d been using so I got that machine all clean up and sent it back to Apple for a $380 gift card and set this one up as my main laptop. I use an app called Screenflow, which seems to work fine and gives me picture-in-picture capabilities. It also does a great job optimizing the rendered files so they’re remarkably small, even at 4K resolutions.

The main hurdle I’ve got is to get the video uploaded. My laptop uses my iPhone or iPad as a hotspot and Verizon has managed to degrade hotspot upload/download speeds to the point where it’s nearly impossible to share video. So I fooled it today by using AirDrop to send the finished file from my laptop to my iPhone and then upload it to YouTube from there. (It’s still taking quite a while, though, so maybe Verizon fooled me into thinking that would work?) I may have to upload these in batches in the future, possibly when taking up table space at a Starbucks or other WiFi hotspot with decent bandwidth. But since I don’t expect to see those more than once a week or so, don’t you expect to see these posts much more often than that.

That said, here’s the video:

I also want to say again that I’m just a few (11 as of this morning) YouTube Channel subscribers short of being able to do livestream videos from a mobile device. If you’re not a subscriber, why not?

Stats Don’t Lie

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I slept like crap on that boat trip.

Regular readers might recall that I spent 5 weeks as one of two crew members on a 27 foot Ranger Tug in August and early September of this year. I left 3 weeks earlier than I’d planned because of a personality conflict with the other crew member, who was also a high-volume snorer.


I’m sleeping a lot better now that I’m off that boat. The gap in readings is a result of my watch not picking up sleep data for a few weeks.

Well, I’ve been looking at the sleep stats on my phone — my Apple Watch tracks my sleep and reports results in the Health app — and the results are pretty conclusive: I’m getting, on average, about 90 minutes more sleep per night now that I’m back at home than what I was getting while on the boat (and during my high-stress cherry drying season before that).

My poor sleep on the boat was a result of several factors, listed here in no particular order:

  • The size of the “bed.” I put bed in quotes because even a twin mattress makes a larger bed than I was sleeping on. I’d estimate the width at under 3 feet and the length maybe 6 feet. I’m not a small (or short) person so this was a very small space for me.
  • The shape of the “bed.” It was a v-berth so there was a slight curve to the bed. I don’t think this was a major factor, but it was part of the bed situation.
  • The temperature in the sleeping area. It was hot and humid for the first 3 weeks of the trip. I can take heat, but the humidity was killing me. That got worse at night in a space with very little ventilation. We each had our own little fans and they helped a lot, but most nights I woke multiple times sweating with no bedcovers over me. It got better when we left the Canal and entered the Great Lakes.
  • My roommate’s constant pushing of her sleeping bag over onto my side of the sleeping area. Shit. As if my bed wasn’t small enough, I had to wrestle with her extra bedding?
  • My roommate’s snoring. I think this was the primary reason I slept like shit every night and needed a nap almost every day. The other crew member snored like a buzzsaw. Seriously, she is a prime candidate for a CPAP machine. I can only imagine the brain cells she’s losing to oxygen deprivation every night while she’s sleeping. Ear plugs muffled the sound but did not remove it. It woke me numerous times every night and was the reason I was often out of bed before 5 AM.

True story: the first night I was on board and we all went to bed, my roommate immediately began her high decibel snoring. I had no earplugs; I naively didn’t expect to need them. I got out of bed and looked around the very small boat for somewhere else to sleep. There was no place else. I was stuck in that forward cabin with the noisemaker. I sat in one of the main cabin’s seats for about an hour trying to figure out how I’d live with this for the expected 8 weeks of my trip. I was nearly in tears when I finally crawled into bed.

I obtained earplugs — the best the pharmacy had to offer — the next day.

I eventually recorded the sound of her snoring on my phone. If I can find it, I’ll share it here.

The thing that didn’t bother me? The movement of the boat. That was very pleasant. Stress: I had none, except near the end when I wanted to leave the boat but worried that I was needed on board.

Naps during the day saved my ass (and sanity), but that nap time is included in the time that my watch calculated for total sleep. So I was living on an average of less than 6 hours of sleep per day for 5 weeks.

Anyway, my upcoming trip should not have this problem. I’ll have that front v-berth to myself and might even be able to sleep with my head in the bow. I’m looking forward to it!

Snowbirding 2022: Planning My Winter Travels

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I start planning for a few months on the road.

I travel south every winter and have been doing so since moving to Washington in 2013. I camp out in an RV — at first, my giant fifth wheel and later one of two different slide in truck campers. I still have that second truck camper and will be taking it south again this year.

Let the Past Guide My Future

Last winter, I spent 2 1/2 months camped out on BLM land along the Colorado River. I had a great campsite, a good friend for company about half of that time, and a comfortable, productive stay. But I’d also brought along a shit-ton of extra equipment — a 12-foot cargo trailer full of it. It made my campsite very comfortable, but it also made it very inconvenient to travel.

My friend Bill reminded me — in an offhand way — of a simple fact: I’d sold my ultra comfortable fifth wheel and bought a truck camper because I wanted the convenience of being able to go anywhere I wanted to go. By hooking up a trailer to it, I was losing the benefit of the truck camper’s small footprint, mobility, and (for lack of a better word) parkability. Why was I doing that?

The answer is, I don’t know.

I guess that if I wanted to go to a campsite and stay there for 2 1/2 months, it doesn’t really matter how big my rig is. That old fifth wheel would have been the ultimate in luxury parked near the river last year. (As a matter of fact, I did park it there for a few weeks a few years ago on my last trip south with it.) But what if I actually wanted to travel around and see stuff? Take a few tips from Bill’s travel routine?

And that is what I want. If all goes well over the next year or so, this will be my last year driving down to Arizona and California with a camper on my truck. I should make it count.

The Lure of Staying Home

My biggest problem this year is that I don’t really want to leave home.

I love my home. It’s comfortable and it has everything I want or need to stay busy and make the most of my time. And even though there’s a 6-week period where the sun does not actually shine on my property — it certainly shines out on the Wenatchee Valley, which I can see clearly from every window in my home.

Autumn View
If this isn’t something worth seeing out the window every day, I don’t know what is.

And no, I don’t really mind the cold or snow. I don’t particularly like it, but I don’t hate it.

What I do hate is the short winter days. The sun is currently setting here at around 4:20 PM and it’s dark by 5 PM. Since I don’t have a regular job, my body clock is my only real clock. And since I’m going to bed when it’s still light out in the summer when the sun sets at 9 PM, it’s hard to stay up for 5 hours after it gets dark in the winter. I feel ready for bed by 7 PM — and if I happen to fall asleep around then, I’m usually up by 2 AM. And that really sucks.

So it’s mostly the darkness that makes me want to leave town. There’s 90 minutes more of daylight in Arizona and the clocks seem to be more practically set; the sun is currently setting at 5:20 PM down in Phoenix. That extra hour really makes a difference to me.

And I won’t deny that warm weather is a plus. Last year, I wore a t-shirt outside from the day I arrived at my campsite on the Colorado River south of I-10 just before Thanksgiving until the day I left Death Valley in mid February. Yeah, it got chilly at night, but all day long, I was able to soak up the sun. I really do love the sun.

So at this point, as I sit in my camper at the Spokane Fairgrounds and Expo Center on a Sunday morning, waiting for the last day of an Arts and Crafts show to begin, I’m working hard to convince myself that I really do need to start my trip south right after Thanksgiving.

The Plan

The plan is that I have no plan. And that’s causing a problem, too.

Because I’m not going to go to a familiar spot and park for two months or more, part of that time with a friend, I really don’t know what I’m going to do. So I need to make a plan.

The beginning of the plan is pretty easy. I’ll take the fastest route south: I-84 southeast through Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to Twin Falls and then US-93 south to I-15 just outside of Las Vegas.

If I get an early enough start and the weather is good, I’ll spend the first night at Glenns Ferry in Idaho, where there’s a state park campground not far off I-84 where I can plug in. (I like to plug in in cold weather so I can run my quiet portable electric heater to save propane and battery power.) The next day, I’ll continue into Twin Falls and down US-93 into Nevada. I’ll have “arrived” in the south when I reach one of my favorite enroute camping destinations: Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge just south of Alamo. If it is as I remember it — totally under utilized, quiet, and free — we’ll spend two nights there and enjoy some hiking around the lakes.

Route South
My route south with stopping points. This is the same route I took annually when I came north for cherry season back when I lived in Arizona, so I know it very well.

The “we” includes my pups, Lily and Rosie, of course.

From there, I’m thinking of Valley of Fire State Park southeast of there. I doubt we’ll get a campsite in the park, but we’ll definitely do some hiking on the trails there. Again, my rig parks just like any other truck, so parking spaces aren’t an issue. We’ll likely camp on some BLM land east of there, which I’d camped at long ago with my big rig. This time, however, we might spend a few days and go exploring close to the shoreline of Lake Mead. There appears to be a ghost town down there and I can never resist a good ghost town hike.

From there — well, I have a loose plan.

I spent some time yesterday morning with Google Maps, trying to figure out where to go. I’d considered heading east through a few of the National Parks in southern Utah, but I suspect the elevations will make them cold. My camper is not a good winter rig; it has terrible insulation. I could imagine myself blasting the propane heater all night every night and waking to near dead batteries and tanks I’d have to fill every few days. I doubted commercial campgrounds would be open for a power connection. And then there were daytime activities — am I really going to want to hike or explore, possibly in snow, if the temperature is hovering around freezing? I’m not fooling myself: the answer is no.

So I thought I’d continue southwest along Lakeshore Road and over the Colorado River into Arizona, keeping just far enough from Las Vegas to avoid traffic. There are campsites along Lake Mead — both on the park’s paved roads and on unpaved roads that my 4WD truck shouldn’t have any trouble negotiating. I thought I’d try a few of those, depending on the weather. I expect it to be relatively warm during the day and cool (or maybe even cold) at night. The goal is to find campsites where I can relax, get out and hike, and not be bothered by other campers and their equipment. I considered a visit to Willow Beach campground with a boat rental and a trip back up to the Arizona hot springs, but I’m not sure if I want the expense. That campground is a great place to refresh my rig after dry camping for a while, but it’s crazy expensive and the boat rental isn’t cheap either. (As I near my early retirement, I’m starting to budget myself. Or at least try to.)

Lake Mead Area Explorations
Here’s a map of the Lake Mead area, marked up with the places I’m thinking of exploring. There are several places where I can access the lake where dry camping should be easy.

From there, south to I-40 at Kingman, perhaps with a quick stop at Kingman mine to replenish my supply of turquoise beads. I was thinking of driving along Route 66 eastbound — I’ve never done the long Arizona stretch. It would be great to find a campsite somewhere out there.

Then on to Flagstaff, where I’d likely have to park at a commercial campground, if any are open, just to keep my rig warm at night. I’d like to go back to Lowell Observatory and walk around town a bit. Flag is at 7000 feet and cold in the winter, so how long I stay depends on what the weather is like.

I did think of visiting the Grand Canyon along the way, but that’s really weather dependent. If there’s snow on the ground, I won’t. If not and if it’s been dry, I might go up there and spend a night in the National Forest just south of the park. I’ve always wanted to do that but I know that the roads can get pretty muddy. And then there’s the cold.

After Flag — well, I don’t know.

I wanted to go into New Mexico — it’s been ages since I was there — and hoped to visit Albuquerque and Santa Fe and maybe even Taos. But a quick look at elevation numbers pushed that thought right out of my mind. Santa Fe is at 7000 feet or more and in December, that means cold. (See above.)

Camping Map
Here’s a zoomed out screen grab from the Ultimate CG app on my iPhone for the area near White Sands. This app, like many others with the same functionality for iOS and Android devices, taps into a database of public campgrounds and campsites, many of which are free. It’s perfect for campers who want to stay as far from KOAs as possible.

So the solution is to stick to lower elevations or destinations farther south. I might start around Albuquerque and travel south from there. I’ve always wanted to visit White Sands. And there seems to be some good remote camping options down there.

Once I’m down there, I can continue west back into Arizona. I need to be in Tucson at the beginning of February for a jewelry-making class, but I seriously doubt my travels up to that point will take me through December and January. While my friend Bill has no qualms about zig-zagging back and forth through the southwest when he travels, my rig doesn’t get 25 mpg. In fact, I’m lucky to get half that, which means I burn twice as much fuel. At $3 to $4 per gallon for diesel, it starts adding up. (Remember, I’m trying to get into a budget mindset.)

So maybe I should go south from Flagstaff and stick to places in Arizona? Maybe camping near Sedona’s red rocks? Heading back to the Arizona side of the Colorado River? Now I’m heading into the territory I wanted to avoid: the same place I spent last year. While I wouldn’t mind spending a few days in Quartzsite in mid January — I want to attend the Pow Wow again — I don’t want to camp long term anywhere near Quartzsite. The Pow Wow is January 19 through 23. I prefer to go during the week (instead of on the weekend) to minimize exposure to crowds. So that pretty much sets when I need to be in Quartzsite.

And then there’s Tucson from February 2 through 5.

So I have to plan around that. What do I do between the two? Head over to southern New Mexico? Visit my friends in Gilbert and Chandler? Or Wickenburg? Or check out that campsite Bill showed me last winter in California, south of Desert Center? Or go farther west, perhaps all the way out to San Diego?

And will I be able to meet up on the road with my friend Bill? Possibly for a trip up to our favorite hot springs resort near Death Valley?

And then there’s the possibility that I might need to be home by February 10 to prep for crew duties on another boat trip — this time on the Intracoastal Waterway traveling at a slower pace from Charleston, SC to as far as we get in 2 1/2 months. (I’ll know more in a few days about whether that will actually happen; I’ve got my fingers crossed.)

I have to mention here that the possible boat trip is yet another reason why I’m not so motivated to head south. As I mentioned at the top of this post, I love my home. It’s comfortable. It’s easy to live in. If I go south for 2 1/2 months and then go on a boat trip for 2 1/2 months, that’s 5 months away from home. Do I really want to be away that long? I know I definitely want to do another boat trip, but do I really want to do another trip to Arizona?

So as you can see, I don’t really have a plan. I have ideas for a plan. Too many ideas.

The Clock is Ticking

Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick and calendar pages continue to whiz by. My house sitters expect to move in on December 1, which is less than two weeks from today. I can put them off until Christmas — they have somewhere else to stay until then — but do I really want to head south then?

I don’t know. I’m just making this up as I go along.

To Migrate or Not to Migrate?

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That is the question every damn year.

It’s that time of year again: the time when the days start getting crazy short and the nights start getting crazy long. The days when, because of geographic features near my home — namely, the 1000 foot cliff less than a quarter mile south of my property — direct sunlight reaches my home for fewer and fewer hours. The days when the leaves start turning brilliant autumn colors in preparation for the one big freeze that’ll turn them brown before colors actually peak and the one stiff wind that’ll blow them all away.

Gray Day
Today is a gray day at the aerie. Although the orchards haven’t started turning autumn colors yet, other trees have. It’s just a matter of time before the trees are bare and gray is the predominant color.

In other words, pre-winter.

Every winter since I moved here “full time” in 2013 I’ve spent at least part of the winter south of here in an RV. In the early years, it was the big fifth wheel I’d owned since 2010; later it was the big truck camper I bought to replace it, and, more recently, it’s been the slightly smaller big truck camper I bought to replace that. I leave my home in the able hands of a house-sitter (or two or three) in November or early December, and drive south until it’s warm enough to sleep in my camper at night without being plugged into a power source. I stay south until just past the point where I’m ready to come home, which is usually in February or March.

But before that, every year I have the same debate with myself: do I stay home this winter or migrate south?

The Argument for Staying Home

The best argument for staying home is that home is comfortable.

Although it gets cold outside — sometimes into the single digits at night — my home’s heat works fine. Because local power is renewable and so damn cheap, I have no qualms about cranking up the heat as high as I like to stay warm. My garage isn’t heated, but my jewelry shop down in the garage is insulated and the portable heater I use down there keeps it warm enough to work in comfort.

At home, I have everything I need to do anything I need to do. Want to cook a meal in a big oven or Insta-Pot? No problem. Need to store something large in the fridge or freezer? I’ve got space. Want to edit a bunch of video and upload it to YouTube? I can use a desktop computer with two monitors and upload via a super fast fiber connection to the Internet. Feeling under the weather? I can lounge in a comfy bed or on a sofa in front of a TV with a book close at hand. Want to explore new jewelry designs or techniques? The shop is already set up with any equipment I might need.

Staying home is easy.

The Difficulty of Travel

Traveling, on the other hand, is not. While moving from place to place in my truck/camper rig is not difficult — heck it’s as easy to drive and park as my truck is — finding a good overnight or multi-day spot can be. My problem is that I’m picky and a bit cheap. I don’t want to pull into a campground, hook up, and pay $40 per night for the privilege of having neighbors 15 feet away out my windows on all sides. I don’t care if that campground has full hookups, a laundry room, a heated pool, and a dog run. Places like that are like suburbia (or worse). I don’t live like that at home and I certainly don’t want to live like that when I travel.

I want to live out in the desert or in the mountains or at a lake or river or in the forest with the same kind of privacy I have at home. I want to let my dogs out by simply opening the door and letting them out — just as I do at home. I don’t want to hear a stranger’s voice or vehicle or generator or barking dog. I want to experience sunrises and sunsets without seeing them through wires or around buildings or over the tops of other RVs. I want to hear the wind and rain and see wildlife.

Last Year

Last year I camped at a site I knew well along the Colorado River south of I-10 in Arizona. It’s BLM land and, technically, you’re only supposed to stay there for 14 days before moving on. I stayed considerably longer. My friend Janet was with me for about half that time; she moved on to Quartzsite as she normally does in January.

I was set up with a little compound that included my camper and the cargo trailer I’d dragged down there. My mobile shop, I told myself. I later realized that it was a sort of anchor, limiting my travel possibilities. Because of it — and because the spot I’d set up in was so damn comfortable — I didn’t travel much at all last year once I’d parked and set up. It wasn’t until I hooked up with my friend Bill that I actually travelled.

Camper Setup
Here’s my truck camper, set up for a long stay at camp last year. You can read more about life at camp last year here.

My biggest fear in that spot was that some yahoo with loud equipment — generators, ATVS, radios, etc. — would pull into the area — it was big enough for multiple rigs, after all — and set up camp nearby, totally spoiling the peace and quiet I was able to enjoy. Yes, the spot did have visitors — there was a boat ramp there that saw some activity from fishermen — but no one (other than friends) spent the night. The fear of being intruded on by someone loud and obnoxious made my stay a little less enjoyable. And the knowledge that I was wasting time on a piece of desert when I could have been exploring new places convinced me not to spend more than a week at that spot again.

The realization that my cargo trailer was limiting my travel capabilities convinced me to leave it home in the future.

The Prospect of Traveling Light

Of course, not having the cargo trailer along would limit my comfort on the road. I couldn’t easily take the things I might “need” with me. After all, my truck’s huge cargo bed was full of my camper. My camper had some storage space, but not for large items. The back seat area of my truck was limited and there were some things I really needed to bring, including my generator and my bicycle (which folds).

It would also limit my ability to participate in art shows while traveling. I was all prepared to do shows last winter — I had all of my show equipment stowed in my cargo trailer — but COVID canceled most shows and the few that remained lacked the precautions that would have made me comfortable participating in them. (So yes, I lugged all that stuff all over the southwest for no reason.) Without the cargo trailer, would I be able to bring the tent, tables, displays, and other items I needed to do shows? I doubted it.

That meant that the trip would be strictly a vacation with no income-earning potential — and that didn’t jive with other plans I had for my life.

But This Is How It Works

I go through versions of this same debate every single year around this time. Lately, in the end, I make the same decision: stay home.

It’s a great idea. I can be comfortable and get work done. I can write, edit videos, and make jewelry — all of which have revenue potential for me. I can spend holidays with friends. I can go cross-country skiing for Christmas on some of the best groomed ski trails in the country. (And I do mean that literally; look up Methow Valley skiing.) I can spend the winter without worrying about where to camp, where to dump RV tanks, where to get water, and whether there’s enough solar power to top off my batteries before nightfall. Sounds great!

And then something happens that gets me packing my RV for the trip south: we change the clocks.

Suddenly, instead of the sun setting here at 5:46 PM, it sets at 4:34 PM. By December 5 of this year, it’ll be setting at 4:10 PM.

As someone whose life is governed by an internal clock powered by sunlight, I’m mentally ready for bed at 6 PM. And I can assure you that waking up at 2 AM after a full 8 hours of sleep is not optimal.

But before that, on around December 1, the Shadow Time will have begun here. And, most likely, the inversions will have started, shrouding the Wenatchee Valley in low clouds or fog that, because of my elevation, I’m often seeing directly out my windows. I remember being here one December or January when for three days in a row, when I looked out any of my windows, all I saw beyond the deck was white. I was living in a fog bank.

Truck at Home
Last year, I left home early, on November 15. With a cold snap and snow already on the ground, I couldn’t wait to get out of here. The trailer stays home this year.

This Year

I that’s where I stand today: I would like to stay home this winter but I know that as soon as we change the clocks, I’ll be eager to get out of here.

I have house-sitters all lined up and I know it would be disappointing to them if I told them I wasn’t leaving. So I’ll keep my current mindset to myself, knowing that it will change on the evening of November 7.

In the meantime, I have two Christmas art shows to attend in Washington State this November: one in Pasco on November 5-7 and one in Spokane on November 19-21. I’ll be taking my truck camper to both of them and I MUST be able to get all of my show gear on board. I’ve also started looking for shows in Oregon, California, and Arizona for December. If I can successfully pack for Pasco, I’ll head south right after Spokane.

Another winter south of the 45th parallel? You can bet money on it.

Differences in Cruising Styles

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There’s more than one way to get around on a boat — and more than one organization to support your travels.

I’m not sure if this blog post should go here or in my Great Loop blog, so I’ll put it here. I think I prefer to keep that blog about specific Great Loop and other boating trips. This blog is a good place for some thoughts about my travels and experiences.

That said, I’d like to discuss the various ways cruising can be done when covering a long distance.

Great Loop Completion Fever

The American Great Loop Cruiser’s Association (AGLCA), which I shared thoughts about here, is a huge supporter of the goal to complete the Great Loop. They have members only and fee-based video webinars — think narrated slide shows you can watch for $25 a pop — and fee-based rendezvous events with seminars to help you learn everything you need to know to complete the Great Loop. They also have forums which, as we all should know by now, is the modern way for organizations to accumulate free content under the guise of sharing knowledge. As I discovered last week, the AGLCA’s forums are heavily moderated and a member’s comment can be deleted or edited at the whim of the moderator, even when no stated rule is broken. (So much for a free exchange of ideas.) When you start planning or doing your Great Loop trip, you can buy a burgee to hang on your boat; when you complete it, you can buy a different colored burgee to hang on your boat. And if you complete it more than once, open you wallet and buy yet another colored burgee to hang on your boat. And yes, you can save a few bucks on all of the burgees and a few other things if you are a member; discounts are a benefit for AGLCA members.

One of the things I learned on my ill-fated journey aboard Nano is that some people do the Great Loop cruise just so they can say they’ve finished the Great Loop, or “crossed their wake.” It’s not all about the journey — all those places they can stop and visit along the way — as much as it’s the destination — crossing their wake to complete the journey.

I learned this early on in a discussion with Dianne, the other crew member. It had to be the first week when she stated, as a matter of fact, “The only reason people do the Great Loop is to be able to say they’ve done the Great Loop.” I told her I doubted that but she did not agree. (Surprise, surprise.) I told her that I saw the Great Loop as a way to explore the eastern waterways without having to backtrack to a starting point. (I suspect she thought I was full of shit.)

Doing a trip like this just to able to tell people I’d completed the Great Loop was silly because where I live, no one knows what the Great Loop is. In fact, when you leave the eastern part of the country and its boating communities, very few people know what the Great Loop is. It’s no fun to brag about something when you have to explain it every time you try. In fact, as if to prove my point, every time we stopped at a marina and there was another boater there that she could talk to, she made a point of telling them we were doing the Great Loop and having to explain to half of them what the Great Loop was.

I was naïve when I started the trip. I thought other people thought the way I did — they were in it for the journey. But I was ignoring facts: primarily, the rough travel plan. Capt Paul had planned the trip with the first half at a very fast pace — 30 or more miles a day — but had assured me that it was a general plan and would change. It didn’t change, however, until Day 10, when I suggested Newark instead of Lyons for an overnight stop. As things turned out, we needed to go as far as Newark that night, but I still wonder whether we would have been stuck at a crappy marina nowhere near the town of Lyons if lock closures hadn’t forced us to keep going.

It wasn’t until we got out into the Great Lakes that I realized the trip was really all about completing the Loop. Capt Paul had already started the Loop from Stuart, FL past New York City to Portland, ME a few years before. So he had the east coast portion done. This trip was all about completing the Loop. When he got to Stuart in November, he would be done.

Because of this, we were prepared to simply motor from one point to the next almost every day, with few shore days. We had no ground transportation — for example, bicycles — and didn’t even have a dinghy set up and ready to use. Few planned stops on the trip had points of interest or even grocery shopping opportunities within walking distance. We passed up many potentially interesting spots along the way. Yes, we did spend multiple days in several cities — Buffalo, Cleveland, and the outskirts of Detroit — and we did visit more boating related museums than I was aware existed. But we did no exploration on the water and very little hiking/biking/touring on land. Other than breakfast, we ate most of our meals in whatever restaurants we could find.

It reminded me of long road trips I’d done in the past, like from New Jersey to Arizona. The goal is to get there so you don’t make many stops along the way. You just motor and stop for fuel, food, and a place to spend the night. But on the boat, there was only one stop per day and that had to cover everything you needed.

I don’t know why I expected otherwise. I did have that plan and I had programmed it into Aqua Map so I knew exactly where we were supposed to stop. I guess when Capt Paul told me that it was just a rough plan and could change, I thought it could really change. I didn’t realize that the changes would only come much later, when we were on the Great Lakes and lake conditions might control when we cruised. In a way, that made it worse. Although it was the part of the journey that we could easily skip stops — the planned stops were sometimes laughably close together, for example just 20 miles between Port Huron and Lexington, MI? — many of those stops had nothing of use or interest to us. Getting stuck somewhere because weather was bad made it necessary to skip stops on subsequent days to “stay on schedule.” The only hard point in the schedule was Chicago, where I was supposed to disembark and another crew member was supposed to board in my place. I’d originally built 8 extra days into my Chicago departure date in case we were delayed; I don’t know if the other crew member had flexible travel plans.

I guess my point is this: I had naïvely and irrationally expected the trip to give me opportunities to explore interesting points of interest along the way and, in most cases, it didn’t. Both Capt Paul and Dianne were doing the trip to say they’d completed the Great Loop. (Dianne still has to find someone to take her from Florida to New York to complete her loop.)

I should add a few things here:

  • The Great Loop, as it’s laid out, is logically completed over the course of a year. You do the southern part in the winter months and the northern part in the summer months. You travel south from Chicago in Autumn and north from Florida in spring.
  • Many people will do the trip at a leisurely pace and park the boat for occasional trips home while enroute.
  • Capt Paul planned to do 4,000 miles of the trip — that’s 2/3 of the total Loop mileage — in four months. That’s 1,000 miles per month in a boat that cruises at 10 to 12 knots.
  • In the book I read about a woman doing the Loop solo, Crossing the Wake, she completed the entire loop in about 6 months. She was definitely one of those folks whose only concern was “doing the Loop.”

My point: although the mostly retired folks who do the Loop take their time about it, not everyone does.

Enjoying the Journey

The other extreme is someone who does the loop at a slow cruising speed with lots of multiple-day stops and dinghy trips to explore smaller adjacent waterways.

I was contacted by such a person recently. We’ll call him “Joe,” because I don’t see any reason to identify him. Joe’s boat is down for maintenance right now on the east coast’s Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and he’s home, but he’s thinking about his next leg. He told me a little, in an email, about how he cruises:

As far as how I travel, I’ve had 300 or so boat days of which about 100 have been travel days. Before I began I estimated that I would average 10 miles per day and that has pretty well happened, as well as my estimate of 1 travel day in each 3 day period. I have stayed in some spots for 7 days and alternatively have gone 80 miles some other days when there was nothing in between points. I’ve anchored out probably 10 times and would like to do more, especially now that I have solar panels. Some of the Georgia anchorages have been the most tranquil days I have experienced. I like to explore—have done museums, famous BBQ places, historic districts, biking through nature preserves, interpretive kayaking tours, popular Florida beaches by car when removed from the ICW, cities…all depends where we are. And now that the inflatable and outboard are repaired/replaced, I’d like to do some dinghy exploring if the opportunity arises. I like the social aspects of marinas and have traveled alone and with buddy boats. My travel is almost always at trawler speeds even though the boat is capable of more. I have stayed within the ICW when I had a choice, preferring not to have to find an inlet quickly should a situation require it, and also seeing the (more interesting and varied, I think) scenery from up close instead from a few miles offshore.

This is music to my ears (or eyes, technically, since I’m reading it and not hearing it). Here’s a person who is interested in the voyage more than the destination. All the activities Joe mentions are the kinds of things I’ve been dreaming about. I was really hoping to do some anchoring out on our trip and we did none — in fact, we were docked with a power connection every single night. (No roughing it!) I plan on doing a lot of anchoring out in my boat so I’m eager to experience it to see if it’s what I expected.

I’m also interested in the social aspects of marinas, which is one thing we mostly missed. Because most folks do the trip at a more leisurely pace than we did and just about all of them want to be to Chicago by Labor Day weekend because of potential weather issues on Lake Michigan in September, most long distance cruisers, including Loopers, were ahead of us. (We were in Detroit with a full month of cruising ahead of us on Labor Day weekend.) It was only when we reached Harrisville, MI on Lake Huron that we started catching up with them — or a handful of late Loopers caught up with us. Even then, stuck at a marina with them for an extra night due to a small craft advisory on the Lake, we did not socialize other than quick conversations. I was looking forward to more socialization with others, especially since my onboard socializations were so limited. It’s by chatting with other Loopers (without the fear of message editing/deletion by an overzealous moderator) that we learn about other things along the way, whether they’re great, good, disappointing, or to be avoided at all cost.

And finally, his comment about seeing the sights close up really hit home with me. There is nothing more boring than being “out to sea” on one of the Great Lakes for hours on end, miles away from anything that might be interesting onshore. Add rough water tossing you around like a cork in a blender and you’ve got a miserable travel day that really didn’t need to be so bad.

I suspect Joe plans his trips as he does them, making plans a few days ahead of his current location but being willing to change if he needs/wants to. That capability comes with the flexibility inherent in being more interested in the journey than the destination and deadlines. While it’s important to have some sort of plan with some sort of deadline — I don’t think anyone would deny that — I think a flexible plan is preferable to one created months in advance and almost set in stone.

My Preference for Cruising — and Planning

I think that when my time comes to plan my voyage along the Great Loop, I’ll take it more like Joe does. In fact, I have to admit that I’m not all that interested in “doing the Loop” anymore. I want to cruise along the Loop but it really isn’t that important to finish it.

Right now, I’m extremely interested in two parts of the loop:

  • For winter, the Florida Keys and ICW. This is a (mostly) heavily populated area with lots of people and facilities — very different from my usual travel. Maybe I need something different in my life? And I’ve always been interested in the ICW as a sort of slow-speed water highway up the east coast. How cool would it be to explore that and the rivers that feed into it?

  • Triangle Loop Map
    The Triangle Loop. In reality, there are a lot more options in that part of New York State.

    For summer, the New York State canal system. I had a taste of it on my trip but it wasn’t enough. I could easily spend an entire summer cruising the Erie and Canadian canals and the lakes they go through. Boat US had a great article about the mini loops that are available to explore; some version of the Triangle Loop looks good to me.

Why bother with the Loop at all? Well, as I told Dianne, it’s a way to explore a lot of territory without doubling back to return to a starting point. But what’s more impressive to me is the sheer volume of information available to Loopers about navigation, points of interest, and facilities. This makes it very easy to plan trips.

Most of the hard data about the Loop is available on services like Waterway Guide on their website and in their printed publications. (I’m not sold on their app; it needs a lot of improvement before I could recommend it.) The marine navigation app I like is Aqua Map, which offers the option of overlaying Waterway Guide data on the chart. So I can see a charted marina or bridge or lock or hazard and tap an icon to get more information about it right from Waterway Guide. I can’t tell you how useful this was for planning along the way. (It’s how I found Newark NY as a much better overnight alternative to Lyons NY on the one opportunity my input into an overnight destination was actually used.)

Alpena Map Alpena Marina
Here are two images from Aqua Map showing the Aqua Map chart with Waterway Guide icon for a marina (left) and the Waterway Guide info window that appears when you tap the marina icon (right). All the information you need, at your fingertips.

As far as supportive organizations go, there are alternatives to the AGLCA. The Marine Trawlers Owners Association (MTOA) was recommended to me by a AGLCA member who was appalled by my forum messages being tampered with. He told me that MTOA’s forums are not so strictly moderated so you can share opinions and information that a moderator might not like. Capt Paul is a member and hangs their burgee at the front of his boat.

For Ranger Tug owners, there’s TugNuts, a group of Ranger Tug owners. If I do buy a Ranger, I will definitely participate in their forums. As I discuss in the Day 27 post of my Great Loop Blog, their existing forum posts were helpful in troubleshooting a weird electrical issue we had in Detroit.

Those are just two examples. I guess my point is this: you don’t need to join the AGLCA and deal with their heavy-handed forum moderation to learn about the Great Loop and related matters.

Going Forward

While my first Great Loop adventure didn’t go as well as I wanted and ended before it was supposed to, I’m not discouraged. I know now that there are other cruisers who are more interested in the journey than the destination — as I am. Maybe I can even hitch a ride with one of them and learn firsthand about their style of cruising.

September 27, 2021 Update:
I have to add here that I’ve been contacted directly by several AGLCA members who claim that the management of AGLCA has driven friends of theirs from the organization. Clearly, there are problems and clearly AGLCA values the people who pay dues and keep quiet over those who question their operations or decisions. Is that the kind of organization anyone wants to be a member of? I don’t.

I’m also encouraged by the supporting messages and emails I’ve received from AGLCA members who were bothered by the heavy-handed moderation that caused some of my messages to be deleted or edited. (I can’t decide which is worse, honestly.) Thanks, folks! As we all know, it was the AGLCA’s moderator who blew the whole thing up and made it an issue. I now know better than to waste my time and energy participating in a forum where my comments can be discarded at the whim of a moderator.