Part 4 (Last part) - Late Sept – Early Oct, 2025 – Paris, France; London, England

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Paris

Our Palace of Versailles tour guide directs us to good, local, low-cost restaurants.  His main instruction; get off the main streets, by about five blocks.  His plan works, we find a street lined with restaurants, the hard part is choosing what we want to eat.  We finally pick one and enjoy our meal starting with a great French Onion Soup.  Satisfied, we walk back to the Eiffel Tower.  Being a Sunday, we encounter long lines to get to the tower.  We visit with another couple in line finding out this line gets us into the park, then we have to get into another line to get onto the tower itself.  We decide to take our hop-on hop-off bus tour instead.  The tour does what we need it to do.  We find the locations of the Louvre, Notre Dame, Arc de Triumph, along with the Eiffel Tower.  The route takes over two hours to complete.  A boat tour is included with the bus ticket so we see Paris from a different perspective.  A long walk home leaves us exhausted, we sleep well this night.

Part 3 - Mid – Late Sept, 2025 – Madrid, Spain; San Malo, France; Palace of Versailles

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Madrid

Palace of Versailles

We are up early for a taxi ride to the train station for an early train to Madrid.  Today, Nicida celebrates her 50^th anniversary of receiving her Bachelor’s Degree.  Two other graduates from her group of friends meet us at the apartment before we head off for the ceremony.  There are about 120 graduates attending this ceremony.  It is being broadcast to other locations for those that cannot make it to Madrid.  With the exception of one notable statement ‘Keep questioning, don’t judge,’ the entire proceedings are in Spanish.  As with all ceremonial programs each speaker has more to say than their allotted time so the program runs an hour longer than planned.  After several speeches, the graduates are announced, then come forward to receive their pins, commemorating the event.  It is nice to see the school photos from when they attended the school, of each of the graduates.  When the 50^th anniversary students are announced, I position myself among many others, for photos of those in Nicida’s class.  Being tall is an advantage this time.  A nice event.  Nicida and I retire to a local Venezuelan restaurant, where we had lunch earlier today.  We enjoy a nice meal while visiting with the restaurant owner.

Part 2 - Early Sept – mid Sept, 2025 – Madrid, Spain; Toledo, Spain; Valencia, Spain

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Madrid

Madrid Street Musicians

Conveniently, the train station in Vigo is located in a shopping mall.  It appears different than when we arrived a few days earlier because our trip back to Madrid is during mall business hours.  The train departs empty, but by the third stop is full of passengers.  Our train ride from Vigo back to Madrid is uneventful. 

Part 1 - Early September 2025, Barcelona, Spain; Vigo, Spain

Early September 2025 – Start of trip, Barcelona, Spain; Vigo, Spain

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Background/preparation

Bell Tower steps,
La Sagrada Familia

We are off on a European adventure.  Nicida is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of getting her Bachelor’s degree.  At the same time, she is meeting with a few her fellow graduates for a three-day get together in Madrid, Spain.  Finally, we will be visiting various friends and family members along our journey.  Hang on, to see how our multi-city, multi-country tour unfolds.

Our trip process starts with purchasing our flight tickets May.  Planning for this adventure is not as easy as it seems.  Dates and the location for the September ceremony are not determined until a month before we leave, late July.  Finding places to stay and train tickets is not a big issue because the ceremony occurs in late September, after the throngs of tourists subsides.  For scheduling and planning, we build two calendars using Excel spreadsheets, filling in parts that won’t change no matter what ceremony date is chosen. We fit destinations, tours, and family visits into the first 10 days of September and the last days of September, into October.  In between, we have tentative days and locations for either ceremony date.

I work my way down the list of reservations; 6-AirBnb’s, 1-hotel, 7-trains, 3-flights, and untold number of tours.

Once all the dates and locations are reserved, I print out all the paperwork needed to get into AirBnb’s, on to trains, tour buses, and museums.  The stack of papers is thick, but I don’t have to rely on my phone working.

Oh, by the way, one week before we left on our trip I was diagnosed with Covid.

Part 4 - final, Mid-October – Late-October; Canyonlands NP – White Rim Road; Pagosa Springs, CO

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Along I-70

Leaving Great Basin, we join back up with US-50.  We drive for miles, occasionally seeing vehicles traveling in the opposite direction.  The valleys widen as we continue east.  We come across a dried lakebed turned white, salt.  Driving through a few towns we finally join up with I-70.  As normal practice we stay away from Interstates, but this portion of I-70 is very picturesque.  We see geology at work.  Multicolored sandstone, some with horizontal layers, while others lean, pointing to the sky.  We see areas that resemble the Badlands of South Dakota, with hills and mesas. Be sure to stop at each of the rest areas/overlooks to take in the landscape.

Part 3, Early October; Lassen Volcanic NP; Great Basin NP

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Lassen Volcanic National Park

Sunset over Butte Lake

We arrive as the sun sets.  The campground is full of campers, which makes sense as this is a Saturday.  At least half of the sites are occupied by tents, with a much younger crowd.  We fix dinner, enjoy the evening, and plan our tour of Lassen Volcanic NP.

After an early breakfast we head off to see the park.  The Loomis Museum at Manzanita Lake, is closed.  Benjamin Franklin Loomis was a local homesteader and photographer.  May 22, 1915, he photographed the Lassen Peak as it erupted, recording six images.  Prior to this particular eruption, there was local interest in making this area a national park, because of the volcanic activity.  But there was not enough interest to actually get bureaucrats in Washington to recognize the Lassen area.  B. F.  Loomis’ series of photos generated a lot of interest, bringing national attention to the area.  Within 15 months of the eruption President Woodrow Wilson signed the Lassen Volcanic National Park Act.

Part 2, Late September – Early October; Napa, CA; Mendocino, CA; Redwoods NP

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San Francisco

Redwoods NP

We are heading to the San Francisco airport to pick up three of Nicida’s school friends then head off to Sonoma where they will visit and possibly/probably sample some wine.  Fortunately, they all arrive around noon making rendezvousing easy.  The drive into and through SF is a bit more intense, especially with four women getting together for the first time in a long time; and driving a truck camper down crowded city streets.

Part 1, Late September – Start of trip; Channel Islands NP; Pinnacles NP

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The start

Anacapa Island

We are back on the road, truck, camper and the open road.  We have three reasons for this trip. - Nicida’s college friends are getting together to celebrate their 54^th anniversary from college.  Their celebration will be in Sonoma, CA.  – We are escaping the continuous heat of TX. – This will be the swan song for our camper.  We have enjoyed using it for the past seven years.  We have had many great memories with our Hallmark Guanella.  A small sampling: southern UT three times, a 12-week drive to Alaska and back, 5 of the National Parks in CA.  As of this writing we have seen 39 of the 63 NPs having driven to 35.  The others we either had to fly to or take a boat.  At the end of this trip, we will have visited 42 NPs.  You can read all of our adventures on this blog, just look under the Archive, everything is sorted by year.

Part 7, the end - Early - Mid July, 2024 – Queenstown, Auckland, New Zealand

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Queenstown

Hobbiton

Now we are on our own.  It’s quite different from the comradery we have been enjoying the past 10 days.  For the last time on this trip we do laundry, and pack camera gear and other items we will not need until we get back home.

Part 6 - Early July, 2024 – Fox Glacier, Mount Cook, New Zealand – Photography Workshop

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Fox Glacier

Fox Glacier cave

Today, our road takes us between two huge lakes, Lake Wanaka, the fourth and Lake Hawea, the ninth largest in New Zealand.  We are actually driving along the opposite end of Lake Wanaka from where we were shooting this morning.  Both lakes lie in their own glacial valley in the Southern Alps.