Busy relaxing.

Keeping busy while relaxing? Relaxing in between keeping busy? Either way, the day seems to fly by even though we aren't doing very much. We are happy not worrying about anything right now!

Cookies and pizza and homemade RV's!.

Now that we have a full tank of propane, Ruth can use the oven. Many RV's don't even come with a decent size oven, but Ruth really enjoys using ours. Yesterday afternoon, she made some gluten free chocolate chip cookies!

Sherman fired right up!

We've been running our fridge off electricity since we got here, because our propane tank was nearly empty. But propane is much cheaper and RV refrigerators are more efficient when switched over to "gas " mode. We could have had a propane truck come into the campground to fill us up, but Sherman has been sitting for more than six months and it would do him good to go for a drive.

We love market day!

We love going into the local Saturday market to pick up our fruits and veggies for the week. There's one popular stand where the guy adds everything up so quickly that you can't understand what he says. He pretty much sounds like an auctioneer!

Relaxing

Well, our first day of relaxing went very well!

We are getting right back into routine, and did our morning power walk around the perimeter of the property here. Ruth did eight laps which is 4 miles (6.5 kms) , and I did six laps, or 3 miles (4.8 kms). I also began doing some push ups and other arm/chest/back exercises.

Happy to be Home!

We left Zacatecas around 9:30am yesterday morning. We've done this exact drive before with the motorhome so we knew what to expect and where to turn. However we had to go through the city of Aguascalientes and there are several ways to do that. The route we had done with Sherman last year was terrible and full of potholes, so we chose a different route. Got lucky, because it was all fresh, brand new pavement!

The City of Zacatecas

Thanks for all of your comments and concern everybody, we're totally fine. We had an email last night from the Comandante at the municipal police saying that the photo I emailed her was going to be very helpful. So maybe they will catch the bad guys yet!

Mugged!

Okay, sorry for the dramatic title but it's true, we did get mugged today.

We're both fine, and the bad guys got away with very little. In hindsight, we think we did almost everything right so we're going to tell you the story in the hope that someone else can learn from what we did. We also learned from the experience, so we are trying to take away some good from something that is not so good!

Monterrey to Zacatecas

We were trying to figure our route from Chris and Jaun's place in Santiago. They live south of Monterrey, and we didn't want to deal with the traffic in both Monterrey and Saltillo. But there's this narrow road that goes through the mountains, and we figured the little blue car was up to the task. Are we ever glad we did!

Some nice views of Monterrey

Juan was working yesterday, but Chris took us up to the mountains surrounding Monterrey. There's a national park called Chipinque Parque Ecologico and Chris had been there many years ago and wanted to see what it was like now.

The strange things you see on a hike!

We haven't gone for a good hike for quite a while, so Chris and Juan took us to the nearby La Estanzuela State Park yesterday. But first, we had to have a good breakfast. Ruth made some of her good maiz flour pancakes, and we had a tin of real Canadian maple syrup to use with them. That, and a couple of slices of bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice made for a great start to the day!

Hello, Mexico!

We wanted to cross the border early, and Mexico had a time change a week before the United States so the border station didn't open until 9:00am Texas time, although it was 8:00am in Mexico. We did one last stop at the Walmart to pick up some gluten free Chex cereal for Ruth, and then we did the 18 mile (28 km) drive northwest to the Columbia bridge crossing.

We're at the Mexico border

We did the drive from San Antonio to Laredo yesterday, and we're ready to cross the border. In fact, we'll be doing that a couple of hours from now!

Made it to San Antonio!

Well, we're only 160 miles (260 kms) from the Mexico border! We'll do some last minute preparations today, and then head for Laredo for tonight and cross the border tomorrow morning.

Oklahoma City (day 2)

Our time in Oklahoma City went by way too quickly. We had couchsurfer hosts lined up further south in both Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas but we wanted to squeeze in some more touring before heading down the road again. First stop was the Oklahoma State Capital Building.

Oklahoma City

Well that was an expensive day! And busy! It's all good though. We have a list of things we wanted to get done before crossing into Mexico, and Oklahoma City has proved to have pretty much everything we need.

St. Louis to Oklahoma City

Well, not quite Oklahoma City, but pretty close. We did get an early start because we wanted to do a long drive. We've been away from "home" since May and now that we're getting close we are kind of feeling like we just want to get there.

1,300 bottles per minute!

We've been on brewery tours before, but the huge Anheuser Busch beer factory here in St. Louis is really something else. It's actually amazing how they can produce that much volume of product. One assembly line they have there produces 1,300 bottles per minute!

Free prescription eyeglasses?

Yep.

You might have noticed some new advertising here at Travel with Kevin and Ruth. We were contacted by the Firmoo.com online optical store, and they asked if we wanted to review and advertise their company. The only way to do that is to try out their product, so they agreed to send us each a new pair of prescription glasses. The neat thing is, every one of our readers gets a free pair of glasses too!

Cincinnati to St. Louis

We slept in this morning! I had thought we would have woken up by 7:00am like we normally do, but it was almost 8:00am by the time we made our way up for coffee and tea.

Crash!

Well, what a difference a day makes. Woke up to a cold and overcast day. Went for a walk and it started raining. Soaking wet feet. Then our couchsurfing host Christina offered to take us for a drive to show us some sights. Then someone crashed into us. Hard. Let me tell you all about our day...

Pittsburgh to Cincinnati

We had a 290 mile (460 km) drive to do today, but we still wanted to see more of Pittsburgh! So we decided to do some more touring before hitting the highway.

A great day in Pittsburgh!

First of all, we couldn't have asked for better weather. It was a little cloudy and windy in the morning, but by early afternoon the sun came out and it was sunny and warm! We won't say no to 80F (27C) and sunshine in late October! Perfect!

Pittsburgh Architecture Tour

We were offered the opportunity to do a private walking tour of downtown Pittsburgh with an architectural expert. We had done a similar architecture tour of Chicago back in May and had really enjoyed it, so we jumped at the chance.

Hello, Pittsburgh!

We slept in a little bit this morning. All that driving and then all that socializing made for a long day yesterday. But we sure did have fun with Connie and Barry in the short time that we were there.

Hyatt Place Pittsburgh - North Shore

The Hyatt Place Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh is fairly new. It opened it's doors in December of 2010, so it's less than two years old. If you're visiting downtown Pittsburgh for any reason, it's all about location!

Beavertown, Pennsylvania

Well it was a long driving day, but we arrived at our destination. And have been having a blast ever since! You'll notice that we're a little late posting the days events, but at least it's being done. Better late than never!

Road trip!

This will be the last time you hear from us until Monday evening. I think that for the next couple of weeks we're going to try and post the blog in the evening rather than in the morning so that we can get an early start each day.

Two more sleeps!

Almost ready to go. Got a few more things done yesterday. Had a great day with our son Alex, played some pool and watched some playoff baseball. Not sure when we're going to see each other again because we may not make it back to the Ottawa area next spring. Good thing for video over the internet!

Fantastic Cruise Deal

Just happened across this fantastic deal and thought I would mention it just in case anybody can take advantage. There are thousands of Canadians who go to Florida for the winter and I'm sure many of them fly. Here's a great way to get down there a little differently...

Getting ready to go...

We arrived here in Galetta, Ontario on Monday evening. So that gave us only about six full days to see all of our friends and relatives in the area as well as prepare the little blue car for the long journey into Mexico. We head out of here this coming Monday morning, October 22.

Montreal Walking Tour

We purposely planned our VIA Rail trip from Halifax to Ottawa so that we would have a stopover for the day in Montreal. We had such a short time, but we made the most of it and we were lucky that it didn't rain so we were able to be outside pretty much the whole time.

VIA Rail Part 2

When we left you in yesterday's post, it was Sunday night and we were on the VIA Rail train somewhere between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montreal, Quebec and we were just going to sleep. The beds were comfortable enough and we both agreed that the pillows were really good.

VIA Rail Part 1

Lindsey and Justin and Cameron drove us to Halifax yesterday morning so that we could catch our 12:15pm train “The Ocean” which runs from Halifax to Montreal. It was a Sunday, so there was very little traffic on the roads and we made it with lots of time to spare. There’s a big grocery store right beside the Halifax VIA Rail station so Ruth went over there to get some snacks for the train ride while I went in the station to collect our tickets that had been reserved in advance.

The Pumpkin People of Kentville

A nice fall day yesterday, but with a bit of a nip in the air. In fact, it felt colder here than when we were in Iceland! Mid October is definitely the time of year you want to be getting out of Canada if you don't like the cold. Winter is on it's way, and I heard from both my mother and my son yesterday that they had snow flurries in Ottawa yesterday morning!

Which hotel in Reykjavik?

We did something a little different for accommodation during our five days in Iceland. We stayed in five different hotels! A different one each night.

Sometimes you have to relax!

And that's just what we're doing right now. This is our week off from traveling so we're simply enjoying spending time with our daughter Lindsey and her family. The weather has been just "okay" here in the beautiful Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, so we haven't really been going out that much.

Heys ePac17 Roller Backpack Review

We just spent four months traveling Europe using these relatively small backpacks as our only luggage, so this is as good a time as any to tell you what we think of them so far. First, we'll bring you back to June 7, 2012 when we received these laptop backpacks so that you can have a look at our first impressions.

Iceland - Things You May Not Know

We learned a few things during our five days to Iceland. Some facts we were already aware of,  and some were a surprise. But it's an interesting country to visit and we thought we would share some of the things that we thought you may not know of.

CenterHotel Thingholt

Our last night in Reykjavik was spent at CenterHotel Thingholt. The hotel is located on a side street in the central core and the building that houses it is a fairly drab looking concrete building. On the outside.

Goodbye Iceland, Hello Canada.

We took time to relax yesterday morning, something we haven't done for the last five days. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Iceland, but because we were only there for five days we kept going all the time to see as much as we could in that short period of time. So we had no firm plans yesterday, other than our flight to Canada which was scheduled to leave at 6:40pm last night.

Iceland Golden Circle Tour

We were up early again yesterday because Reykjavik Excursions was picking us up at our hotel at 8:30am for the Golden Circle day tour. This is one of their most popular tours, and if you only have a short time in Iceland then it's a good way to see some interesting sights that are fairly close by.

CenterHotel Plaza

We made our way over to the CenterHotel Plaza on Friday evening. Due to the timing of our tours, we weren't able to spend much time in the hotel...just sleeping and a quick breakfast in the morning.

The Wonders of Snaefellsnes

This morning we were up bright and early and Reykjavik Excursions picked us up at our hotel just after 7:30am. We had to get an early start because we were headed out for a twelve hour tour!

Reykjavik Grand Excursion

We were going to spend most of the afternoon on a tour bus, so we figured we had better get some exercise this morning. You can't go to Iceland without experiencing their local thermal pools, and there are five such pools in Reykjavik alone.

CenterHotel Arnarhvoll

Our second night in Reykjavik was spent at the CenterHotel Arnarvholl, a slightly more upscale hotel in the Reykjavik downtown area.

Wandering around Reykjavik

I know you've already seen pics from our Elding whale watching tour but we had to tell you how the rest of our day went as well! We woke up to a mostly sunny sky, and it stayed that way pretty much all day. Temperature was a bit warmer, maybe 10C (50F), but still very windy.

Whale Watching in Iceland

We signed up with Elding Whale Watching this afternoon for an adventure at sea! They picked us up at our hotel at about 12:45pm and it was only a short drive over to the marina here in Reykjavik. But when we got there, we were told we were going for a longer bus drive.

CenterHotel Klopp

Here in downtown Reykjavik, CenterHotels operates 5 different buildings and we're going to give you a profile of each one! Our first night was at the Centerhotel Klopp.

Iceland update

We're going to be pretty active over the next four days so you'll probably see more than one post per day from us. That being the case, our regular readers might want to back up a post or two and make sure you haven't missed something!