I just checked, and somehow I never did a top travel memories of 2025 post nor a preview of 2026 plans post! WTH? I always do that! Maybe I was just too excited about how I was planning to get a puppy in 8 months back then. Have I mentioned that we have a puppy? (I have) She’s six months old today (or so. It’s an estimated birthday, but she was around 8 weeks when she got to the shelter with her littermates, so probably accurate within a couple of days. Anyway, we’re going with it. She’s a Taurus). She and Abe dressed up as a space dog and outer space this year for Halloween:
(Probably you noticed that this intro was a thinly veiled excuse to post a picture of my puppy).
So one thing I miss when I’m even more behind on blogging than usual is doing chatty posts about smaller things instead of big summer trip stops. Like, say, upcoming plans. Or the quick stops at the beginnings of trips or in the middle that are just about getting to the next place. Anyway, I’m doing one of those right now! Probably no one will find this by googling or on Pinterest, but it’s not like there’s any ad revenue from this blog anyway! We’re all just friends here! It’s just me and the half dozen people who still read blogs! Follow me for content written by a human!
So first up let me tell you about our big trip from summer of 2026. It was very big. And a long time coming, because who doesn’t have the Canadian Rockies on their RV wish list? We started out with the very long drive up through the midwest, made a quick stop in Minneapolis and an even quicker stop in Fargo (which we liked a lot! There will be a post someday!) before crossing the border near Winnipeg. From there we spent some time in Winnipeg and Saskatoon–that was the prairies part of our Prairies to the Pacific trip–before hitting more traditional tourist territory with a stop in Drumheller, Alberta. Then onward to Calgary and a bunch of Canadian Rockies stops (if you can’t wait for me to write about them, I already talked about these stops over on the RV Atlas podcast). Then we hit the Pacific part with a stop in Vancouver before crossing back over the border to head to Olympic National Park. For the last leg, we made our way back east and spent a few days in Yellowstone and a few more in Denver before heading home. So. Lots of bangers! Let’s dig in to the boring first couple of days!
We left on May 24 and spent our first night outside of Paducah, KY, at the Paducah KOA. We stopped at a rest area in Tennessee to take pictures with Dolly, of course:
We’ve been to Paducah a few times, and it’s a pretty fun city with a good bit to see…but this time we were just passing through. The KOA was pretty nice. We had one of the pull-throughs by the lake; there was another section up a steep hill, and we were glad we didn’t need to navigate the hill with the trailer.
There are some nice public spaces, including a gazebo by a lake and a nice pool with a pavilion. Clean bathhouses…basically everything you need for a solid overnight stop:
This was a Sunday evening, so our options for things to do in the immediate area were pretty sparse. We attempted to go to Dam Brewhaus for dinner; they have a nice outdoor patio area, and it looked liked a good spot…unfortunately the kitchen closed at 6, and we didn’t get there until 6:20. So we abandoned that plan and stopped by a store for stuff to make quesadillas back at the trailer instead.
It was nice to be back on the road (we hadn’t managed any RV trips since the last summer trip aside from one quick shakedown trip in spring). As you can see, Rory was especially pleased about the whole thing:
For this first part of the trip, we had Milo and August with us (as well as Abe) but no Ari yet. But Ari shows up later!
The next day we did another long haul north, stopping for the night at Chatfield Park in Keokuk, Iowa.
This was a pretty amazing campground in a lot of ways–like look at that awesome full hook-up site with a concrete pad and patio, for which we paid all of $26! There’s a nice playground and some walking trails in the park as well. The bathhouses are kinda dated, but clean, with pay showers. The big problem we had was bugs. So many bugs. They were gnats and not mosquitoes at least, but they were still bothersome enough that we didn’t want to spend much time outside despite that lovely site. I bet it’s a great place to be in fall, though.
And that’s all I’ve got for this post! Under 1000 words! Crazy! We left Keokuk and drove to our campground near Minneapolis for our first multi-night stay. Which I’ll talk about soon!
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