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Strangest Year In Our Lifetime!
Unfortunately, not many 'Adventure Days' for us this travel season. Many folks worldwide are in much more uncomfortable circumstances than we are ... we're all just trying to make the best of it.
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We began the year with 8+ weeks on Cozumel Island MEXICO. The first 5 weeks at the north and south ends and then the final 3 weeks near San Miguel where we met up with some members of CANUSUKair.
A few weeks into our stay on Cozumel, the covid-19 virus was reported by world news Jan 10 and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Mar 11. We arrived in Mexico Jan 17. After several weeks, many nations (including Canada) began issuing travel advisories encouraging their citizens to return home or risk the potential of being stranded in other countries. We were fortunate to be able to leave Mexico, on schedule, without having to modify our travel plans. There were no reported cases of the virus on Cozumel Island, our flight experienced a minor delay, we landed in Toronto without incident and self isolated for the required 2 week period. Other travellers were not as fortunate as us getting home. Many countries began closing their marine ports, airports and land crossings to international travel. We arrived home Mar 15 and at that time there were several hundred thousand Canadians left in other countries trying to make alternate arrangements to get home.
A few weeks into our stay on Cozumel, the covid-19 virus was reported by world news Jan 10 and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Mar 11. We arrived in Mexico Jan 17. After several weeks, many nations (including Canada) began issuing travel advisories encouraging their citizens to return home or risk the potential of being stranded in other countries. We were fortunate to be able to leave Mexico, on schedule, without having to modify our travel plans. There were no reported cases of the virus on Cozumel Island, our flight experienced a minor delay, we landed in Toronto without incident and self isolated for the required 2 week period. Other travellers were not as fortunate as us getting home. Many countries began closing their marine ports, airports and land crossings to international travel. We arrived home Mar 15 and at that time there were several hundred thousand Canadians left in other countries trying to make alternate arrangements to get home.
After nearly 6 months at home, we've come to the conclusion, (not being 'winter folks'), that we needed to escape, if only for a short trip. The unpleasant scenario of spending the winter months cooped-up for long periods of time, was beginning to stress us out. Soooo ... LOAF came out of storage. We've been fortunate to get some reservation campsite bookings but don't really have a solid itinerary in mind ... only that we'll wander around Ontario for a month or so and search out the Autumn colours.
Update #1: Well that 'road tripping' plan didn't go well. Our first 4 days in Algonquin PP were rainy with nighttime/daytime temperatures of 4/11C. We recently had a major solar upgrade completed on our rig; we added 160 watts of solar panel (nearly tripling our energy capability) and added a 3000 watt inverter. By day 4 our solar batteries were no longer holding a charge, our 12v system only functioned with the truck running and we couldn't even run our furnace fan. Diagnosis: Our original AGM batteries have died, we've headed home and will have the problem sorted out be the RV shop that completed the solar upgrade. We've replaced the AGM batteries and suspect that our inverter has been fried.
Update#2: We've discovered that our drained AGM batteries were incorrectly replaced with deep cycle marine batteries, not AGM as we specified to both the service manager and the mechanic that did the work. I've been in touch with the shop, they've admitted their mistake, will credit us and make arrangements to ship the batteries back to Sudbury.
We resumed our road trip a few weeks later that included some late Fall hiking in Algonquin PP.
What's Next? ... Depends on covid-19?
The map below is interactive. To view our route in detail you will need to begin by clicking on [ ] (top right corner) for full screen. Use the hand to pan and +/- to zoom and reduce, as needed.
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