Cloudland Canyon (May 15-17)

We departed on Sunday morning (May 15th) on schedule. We decided to spend the first couple of nights at Cloudland Canyon State Park....still in Georgia but the northwest corner not far from Chattanooga Tennessee.

This has been a great stop for us as we have talked about coming here for a couple years. We arrived early enough on Sunday to get a good hike in to the waterfalls in the park...they are not spectacular but still nice and the exercise was great. About 500 step (stairs) down to the bottom. I can still feel the burn from the return trip.

Today we hiked another of the trails here called west rim trail...it is about 5 miles long and travels along the rim of the canyon with beautiful views. (posting a few photos here) We enjoyed a picnic lunch at one of the overlooks with a great view.

Plan is to leave here tomorrow heading westward.....in the direction of Kansas City, Missouri although we will not make that in one travel day. We will overnight somewhere on the way and arrive there on Wednesday.

Two Days Out from Departure

Okay, we are now only two days out from our departure. I wanted to test loading an image (our home for the next several weeks) to the blog page to make sure it would load and work like I expected. This photo was taken at Mistletoe State Park in Georgia last spring.

Kathy and I plan to depart on Sunday (15 May) and take a our time getting to Yellowstone with some leisurely stops along the way. Ed and Kay plan to join us on our last night there and we will head north.

Trip Preparation - Less than 30 days out

Both us and the Culpeppers have been busy doing maintenance and repairs on vehicles and campers....in fact Ed and Kay are on a shakedown run with their camper/truck to Florida for the next several days.

We received several supplies in the mail over the last few days (thanks Amazon prime) that include many RV supplies (expecting more) and today we received our bear spray....sure hope we return home with those unused :-)

I am hopeful to see and photograph some bears but from a safe distance.

Camera equipment is being readied and extra storage space for the many photos we expect to take. Thinking about ordering a new lens that will assist with the distance part of those photographs. We hope to provide frequent posts to this blog documenting the trip, our experiences (good and bad) and photos of the highlights.

Generators (two Honda 2000i's) should arrive in the next few days.
All new tires on both campers.

Time is getting close and we are getting excited about the trip!

Introduction & Basic Plan

My wife, Kathy and I are planning a trip during the summer of 2016 with our good friends Ed and Kay Culpepper. We will be traveling by RV - both us and the Culpeppers  in 5th wheel campers. We plan to depart the Atlanta area separately in May..... Kathy and I will visit Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Glacier National Park. Around the timeframe at Glacier we will rendezvous with the Culpeppers and make our way up thru Banff National Park/Lake Louise and the Jasper area of Canada and on North to Alaska.

We anticipate leaving the Atlanta area around the 3rd week in May and while we are remaining flexible with travel dates we anticipate being gone 3-4 months.

We plan to use this blog to document our trip and share experiences/photos with friends, family and other interested individuals.