Season Six Recap of 2024 and Season Seven Plans for 2025
Now that 2024 is over, we are taking the time to review our travels during Season Six of 2024. We’re also revealing what our plans are for Season Seven for 2025.
Season Six was filled with a variety of experiences. From Colorado, we headed west to California, then turned north up to Washington before turning around back south to California and east to home. We stayed inland, in the mountains on the way north and came back south along the Pacific coast. In addition to the main travel season, we also made a short ten day trip down to Texas for the Total Solar Eclipse in the spring (Total Solar Eclipse, Lake Whitney, Texas - April 8th, 2024).
We also made three short trips during the winter without our RV. These were mainly snow shoeing and cross country skiing trips: Snow Mountain Ranch, Keystone, and Soldier Hollow.
The statistics for Season Six (excluding the winter trips) were 11,983 miles in five and a half months, plus ten days for the Solar Eclipse trip, for a total of 170 nights on the road. We traveled through eight different states: Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington, camping in 49 different campgrounds. We visited 14 national parks along with 16 other federal lands, as well as 23 different state parks. We also strolled through ten different towns.
Our travels included deserts, mountains, giant trees, waterfalls, volcanoes, caves, sand dunes, lakes, the ocean, rocky beaches and tidal pools. The wildlife that we encountered were big horn sheep, deer, elk, hawks, eagles, quail, osprey, buffalo, bear, grouse, lizards, snails, banana slugs, seals, sea lions, dolphins, star fish, crabs, sea anemones, fish, sea otters, river otters, turkeys, turkey vultures, marmots, jack rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, geese, skunk, raccoons, bobcat, roadrunners, woodpeckers, beetles, bees, butterflies, and a tarantula.
We completed our 52 Hike Challenge in 2024 for the fifth year in a row. We actually went on 73 hikes for a total of 380 miles and 57,600 feet of elevation gain. We went on bike rides and Ann paddled her board across lakes. A boat took us across Lake Tahoe and another took us out onto the ocean.
The national parks for Season Six were Joshua Tree National Park, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Redwoods National and State Parks, Pinnacles National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Death Valley National Park in California, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, Great Basin National Park in Nevada, as well as Mount Rainier National Park and Olympic National Park in Washington along with Capitol Reef National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.
Other federal lands that we visited included Nine Mile Canyon and Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah, Lake Whitney in Texas, Colorado National Monument in Colorado, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada, Pyramid Lake, Hensley Lake, Lake Tahoe, Lava Beds National Monument, and Mammoth Lakes in California, Lake of the Woods, Diamond Lake, Trillium Lake, Mount Hood, and Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area in Oregon, and Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington.
The state parks for 2024 were Wasatch Mountain State Park, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Snow Canyon State Park, Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, and Goblin Valley State Park in Utah, Sugarite Canyon State Park in New Mexico, Caprock Canyons State Park in Texas, Smith Rock State Park, Milo McIver State Park, Fort Stevens State Park, South Beach State Park, and Harris Beach State Park in Oregon, Lewis and Clark State Park, Kinaskat-Palmer State Park, Scenic Beach State Park, Potlatch State Park, and Millersylvania State Park in Washington, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Van Damme State Park, Sonoma Coast State Park, and Portola Redwoods State Park, in California. And then there was Bloedel Reserve, which is a private nature preserve on Bainbridge Island in Washington and Crooked River Ranch RV Park, which is a private campground in Oregon.
For Season Seven, we are traveling a little differently. We’re storing our RV for the season and heading over to Europe. Although we won’t be camping, our style of travel will be familiar. There will be plenty of hiking and cycling along with strolling around small towns. However, our modes of travel and lodging will be different. There were be a variety of transportation, from boats, trains, planes, automobiles as well as by bicycle and on foot. Lodging will also be diverse, including hotels, on boats, on trains, in small B&B’s, and mountain huts.
We start off by taking Amtrak from Denver to Fort Lauderdale, then board a transatlantic cruise that transports us to England, with ports of call in Portugal, Morocco, and Spain. We spend about three months exploring England, Ireland, and Scotland which includes a cruise on the canals on a narrow boat, a hike and bike tour of the Cotsolds, and exploring the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula by car, learning to drive on the wrong side of the road.
After a few days in London, we hop over to Amsterdam to catch a cruise down the Rhine River. After spending some time enjoying the Alps of Switzerland, we head to Chamonix in France to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc. Tour du Mont Blanc is a 100 mile long distance hiking trail that circles the base of the tallest mountain in the Alps, Mont Blanc. As the trail passes through France, Italy and Switzerland, we are spending the nights in a mixture of small hotels and mountain huts. Most people complete the Tour du Mont Blanc in seven to ten days, but we’ve chosen to take a slower pace, taking 21 days to complete the route.
After completing the hike, we spend some time in northern Italy at Lake Como, the Cinque Terre, and the Dolomites. Then we make a loop through Austria, stopping in Salzburg, Vienna, and Innsbruck, before ending in Germany. A bike tour from Nurnberg is followed by a visit to Munich for the Oktoberfest. From there, we fly home on our first and only flight of the whole trip.
We’ve been planning this trip for about three years now, so we are really excited about getting this adventure started. We hope you’ll enjoy following along. We will try to make a post about once a week, but there may be times that there are two or three weeks between posts, like during the transatlantic cruise. Please be patient with us.
Check out our related video: Season Six Recap of 2024 and Season Seven Plans for 2025
(Ann)