A Retired, Single RVer Travels
For some 30 years I practiced law in Mesa, Arizona. (Please don't hold that against me. I really wasn't a very good lawyer.) When I was about to turn 62 years old and collect social security I decided to quit my practice and go camping. I already owned a Coleman tent-camper and a small pick-up. My marriage had gone to hell and I had a bad case of the woe-is-mes. I decided that a few days or months on the road would be a treat. I loved it immediately. I spent weeks and months in campgrounds around the Southwest. I fished in dozens of lakes and met dozens of people, most of whom were far finer persons than
those I had associated with in my practice. I enjoyed them all but found that most were either married or seriously mated. I was still in a couples society. I was not really a part of any social group. I missed sitting around the fire and telling lies to people with my own lifestyle. I loved the RVing lifestyle but missed a closer social life. Then I discovered Loners on Wheels, Inc. I don't know where I first heard about the Loners on Wheels (LoWs) but somehow I was invited to a camp-out sponsored by the Tucson chapter. I loved it! Here were a bunch of campers, just
like me, having the time of their lives. Card games every night. Happy hour each evening. Coffee together each morning. Hikes and fishing and doing nothing. It was great! I joined
immediately. A few words about the LoWs. This is a club composed of thousands of single campers. It has chapters in every state and most of the provinces of Canada. To be a LoW, one must be legally single and have a desire to socialize and camp with other singles. It is not a dating service. If your sole purpose is to find a mate, you can do much better with Parents Without Partners or any one of a number of like organizations. The 3,000 or so members of this club plan camp-outs at least once a month. We band together simply because we are not comfortable with the couples only society from which we all came. In this club we can enjoy wonderful social activities and
yet retain our happy single lifestyle. Many of us LoWs are retired. The RVing lifestyle was made for us. Most of my family are working their hearts out trying to get to the point where I now am! We still have loving family and friends "back home" but they simply don't have the time to give us the love and affection we find in this club. Come join me!! Jack Matlock is a senior and single full time RVer who has enthusiastically endorsed the RVing lifestyle. He started his RVing with a small pick-up and a Coleman tent camper. He presently has a 33 foot 5th wheel with three slide outs. As a single Jack quickly learned that we live in a mated society. Even the RVing society was based on couples. He wanted to escape into a world where he could socialize with other singles. He looked for a group of single campers who would share his coffee hours and fishing trips. He found Loners on Wheels, a singles only RVing club dedicated to enjoying the single lifestyle and retaining the independence and travel each RVer enjoys. For the past seven years he has enjoyed this group. He plans to enjoy it for the rest of his life! http://www.lonersonwheels.com/
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The Classy Way to Do WA
Western Australia ? South-West Coast driving holiday.
Great Australian Road Trips
Okay, so road trips in Western Australia might bring to mind punishing distances and dusty towns, and accidentally forgetting to fill up on petrol only to pass your remaining three days under the thin shade of a dead tree wondering if any car is likely to come your way. And no doubt this is readily available in a state the size of many small countries sticky-taped together, with frequent stretches of desert.
For those with different tastes, the classy (and petrol-station dotted) option is the gorgeous coast to the south of Perth, with the south-west pocket of Bunbury, Margaret River and Albany, stretching on east to Esperance and Cape Arid National Park.
Getting started ? from Perth downwards.
So have a bit of a wander around Perth ? check out Fremantle (where the Perth cappuccino elite head en masse on the weekend) and commune with the cute furry side of nature on a day-trip to Rottnest Island. Not the most attractive name for an island, but the quokkas (little kangaroo-rat things with a penchant for your peanut butter sandwiches) and the gorgeous beaches make this a brilliant side trip. Just make sure you bring your bicycle legs for the day, as there's hardly any motorised transportation. After that, it's onwards in a southerly direction.
Need a car for your road trip? Hire one at Car Rental Perth.
Wine, more wine, and then some nibbley things.
Right, so first you'll need to make a stop at Bunbury, if only for a day or so to have a traipse around, stretch the legs, and have a dabble at the water's edge to chance a meeting with a dolphin or two.
Then it's time to get serious and head on in to the Margaret River Region. Winos and gourmands will happily revel in many chance encounters with world-class restaurants (sometimes attached to wineries) which dot the countryside. Surfers may never want to come back in from the swell ? the surfing here is world-renowned.
Further along the coast, before you arrive in Albany for a frolic, you'll want to have some quality time with some very tall plants. This here is Tall Timber Country, and the karri forests will imbue you with a somber respect for all things leafy. Stop off at the Valley of the Giants to take the Treetop walk, or take on the Gloucestor Tree near Pemberton ? steps fixed around its trunk allow you to climb up 60 metres high.
A day-trip out from Albany will thrust you into the heart of another wine-growing region (it seems the one necessity of this road trip would be a designated driver) ? the Mount Barker, Porongurup National Park and Frankland area can get you over the driving limit in the most delightful way.
And finally, a short drive away is the lovely town of Esperance and its ridiculously blue ocean, situated at the western end of the Archipelago of Recherch. The archipelago has 110 coastal islands ? full of crafty old goats and colonies of seals ? which you can tramp about on at your leisure. Or there's always a rewarding trek to be had in surrounding national parks like Cape Le Grand and Cape Arid.
From Esperance you've got the option of returning to Perth via an inland route, maybe heading up to Kalgoorlie before heading back on the Great Eastern Highway, or really change your road trip's tempo, nip up north and turn right onto the Eyre Highway.
In that case you'd better steel yourself for a very long drive to Adelaide on a straight road which goes for thousands of kilometres through an unvarying landscape designed especially to send you insane. Or, perhaps returning to Perth to hop on a plane going that direction might be a more attractive option?
Need a car to get you started?
There's loads of websites that collect the specials of all the car rental companies to save you time looking around. Just do a google search for "car hire deals" or check out a website like http://www.vroomvroomvroom.com.au which often has some good Perth and Western Australia specials.
Take care on those roads and keep your eyes peeled for kangaroos!
San Francisco Beaches
When you are planning a vacation to Maui or Rio de Janeiro you may put beaches on the top of you list of things to see. However, when planning a trip to San Francisco, you may have heard of North Beach, but North Beach doesn't have any beaches (though the neighborhood was named after a beach that used to be on its north shoreline). If fact, San Francisco has several beaches that provide diversions for residents and visitors alike.
Yachats, OR: An Outdoor Lovers Paradise on the Oregon Coast
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Too much to do in London!
No one can truly say they know London well. To know London completely is impossible. London changes faster than pigeons descending into the fountains of Trafalgar Square. Home to inhabitants for over 2,000 years now London has grown from the protective circle of the Tower to a sprawling metropolis, the ideal platform for constant illustrious activity.
Always where there is history there are tales to tell. Tourists are naturally drawn to the regular tourist attractions, yet it is the true travellers that seek deeper to find the gems of a 2,000 year-old town. It only takes a very small amount of investigating to find something more rewarding, more interesting, more inspiring in London, than the London Dungeons (although it must be said ? is a damn good laugh if you can bear the hour long queues!).
For instance, not even a minute's walk from the London Dungeons is the Hay's Galleria. This gem is for some totally bizarre reason hidden from all guidebooks and tourist information ? no doubt to preserve its lack of thousands of tourists making it a less exclusive haven. Please go there! It's a beautiful indoor/outdoor menagerie of a few select shops, with a vast concourse of cafes, market stalls, bands, presentations, and of course, it overlooks a beautiful part of the Thames.
Turn right from Hays Galleria and you find yourself in a Thames-side walkway next to the newest buildings in town. The architecture is phenomenal, and these lord-mayor buildings are still so new that you can imagine that the cellophane has just freshly been peeled off all the windows. You are welcome to enter the Lord Mayor's building (it's the one shaped like a golf ball), go to the top and marvel at the mind-boggling roundness of it all ? plus of course see the spectacular views of the HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge & the Tower of London. Continue strolling directly into the I-Witness open-air gallery, before maybe snacking on a hot-dog in the mini-fairground.
Walk past the green that previously hosted many Hollywood film premieres in giant marquees, the David Blaine in-a-box episode, plus many other varied events, and you are literally underneath Tower Bridge, keep walking and you are now in Shad Thames, a true delight of traffic-free, cobbled streets full of people, giving you a precise feeling of how the London streets felt hundreds of years ago. It is as if these streets have been restored from long ago, thus delivering to the traveller a wonderfully rich blend of old and new in the same vicinity. Circle around Shad Thames, past the ever-changing Design-Museum, and find yourself in Butlers Wharf, a charming quay-side collection of bars & restaurants all overlooking the Thames opposite the equally picturesque St Katherine's Dock. Trust me when I tell you that Butlers Wharf is the ultimate in romantic settings.
Hays Galleria to Butlers Wharf is one walk of quite possibly hundreds to choose from, in fact ? that's a whole day right there! There are equal delights even if you turned left out of Hay's Galleria instead, especially the Clink Street Prison Museum, Vinopolis (Wine Museum), Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral, I could go on?.
Great streets, great walks, great museums (forget the big-ones ? go to the Children's museum in Bethnal Green for a real treat). It is frustrating to think that the bulk of visitors to London wind up staying in some of the least interesting areas. Paddington & Bayswater are both great areas, being so close to Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens (now home to the finally-completed Princess Diana shrine). Kensington & Earls Court have their highlights too, but there is more to London than the tried and tested tourist routes.
I recently stayed in a five star hotel in the middle of the city on the weekend for less than one hundred pounds a night, and was amazed at exactly how completely empty the city of London was. I was in heaven! There I was in the middle of one of the oldest cities around, and I had it all to myself! City hotels are notorious for being completely empty on weekends, hence the great rates. I am sure tourists pay over the hundred pounds per night threshold to stay in 'trendy' Kensington etal, when they could easily stay next to Tower Bridge, St Paul's, Millennium Bridge etc, for much less.
Needless to say that the City of London (the financial centre) is absolutely coloured with history, everywhere you go there are buildings proclaiming their 16th century origins, and they are in abundance.
I was recently taken to what is supposedly one of the oldest London pubs in existence. Again, this pub is not only hidden from the guidebooks and the common information sources, it is also hidden from the public! I had to be taken there, as I would never have been able to find it unless accompanied. This pub is hidden from the world. It is sandwiched between two narrow streets and therefore completely obscured from any main thoroughfare. It has its own courtyard and as you stand supping a pint outside, it is as if you are in Victorian London. Look down the misty streets and it is easy to conjure up an old bobby on the beat blowing his whistle, or Jack the Ripper lurking in the shadows. Oh - and there's a 150 year old tree growing through the building, to add to the oddity of the pub.
Hampstead is another great area waiting to be discovered. Covered in green spaces, Hampstead (North London) is perfect for the idyllic setting combined with the close proximity to the big-smoke. Steeped in its own folklore, Hampstead was home to Dick Turpin (apparently he was born at the Spaniard's Inn ? hugely popular and famous pub on the Heath) of which his ghost still roams Kenwood house, and the surrounding woodlands. The high streets of Hampstead, Belsize Park, and the immaculately kept Primrose Hill are possibly the last untouched-by-commercialism streets in London (no Starbucks here!). If you want breath-taking views of the city, historical sites detailing the 'first entry point into London', combined with al-fresco dining, and an altogether more relaxed atmosphere, Hampstead is the place, and less than 15 minutes on the tube to the city centre! Now do you see why it seems frustrating that tourists stay in less desirable areas when they could stay in an altogether more inspiring location, just as close to all the major attractions?
Of course, Hampstead is one of London's many beauty spots, yet the city is not all about beauty. As with any home to approximately 10 million people, varied activity is rife. London events cannot help but affect all, every Londoner has an opinion on the congestion zone, on the ill-fated Millennium Dome, on Tony Blair, in fact on any topic you care to mention. Start a conversation with any London black-cab driver ? typically famous for their outspoken views, and you will find yourself immediately thrown into the debate of the day.
So, when visiting London do not even attempt to see it all ? you cannot.
In a city where already this year a Roman road has been uncovered a mile below ground level dating back to 1 AD, and where Paddington workers uncovered Brunel's first iron-bridge ? one they didn't know existed - London is forever creating wonders on a regular basis.
enq@VisitHotels.com
www.VisitHotels.com
Maples for Autumn Colour
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While the best of the autumn color may be over for this year, the coming winter months are the time to consider how best to prepare for next years autumn glory.
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How to Save Money AND help the planet
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Stay Out of That Old Mine!
It seems like the most adventurous thing in the world. That dark opening in the hillside beckons, tantalizes, excites. What wondrous treasures await discovery inside? What artifacts might remain in this time capsule, mute testimony to an era when grizzled men moved tons of rock in pursuit of their dreams? Such is the poetic, romance-novel appeal that might induce you to take leave of your senses and crawl into an old mine. Thousands of such small openings are scattered throughout the country. Although most common in the historically "hard rock" Western mining states, they can also be found in the old lead and copper districts of the Midwest. In reality, multiple dangers lurk beyond the pale ring of light that filters through the adit mouth.
Mount Chimborazo: Climbing Glaciers Near The Equator
The climb up the glaciers to the summit of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador isn't considered highly technical. Technically, it is mountaineering, but how hard could it be, considering that I went to 20,600 feet the first time I used crampons and an ice axe? Okay, I had used them once for practice, on a sledding hill near my house. I climbed almost forty feet while people walked by with their sleds, warning their kids to stay away from me.
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Discover Knotts Berry Farm
Of course you know about Southern California's premier attraction, Disneyland in Anaheim, but did you know that less than ten (10) minuets down the freeway, in Buena Park, is another great amusement park, Knott's Berry Farm.
Knott's Berry Farm, America's first theme park, is located at 8039 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park, CA 90620, telephone number (714) 220-5200 and has over one hundred fifty (150) rides in six themed areas: Ghost Town, Fiesta Village®, The Boardwalk, Indian Trails, Wild Water Wilderness® and Camp Snoopy which is the official home of Snoopy and the Peanuts characters. The park is home to the high-flying 3,125 foot Silver Bullet roller coaster which sends riders climbing to a height of 146 feet and soaring back down an initial drop of 109 feet. It has a top speed of fifty five (55) miles per hour and riders will experience spirals, corkscrews, a cobra roll, and overbanked curves. It is also home to the 118 foot tall GhostRider, one of the longest and tallest wooden roller coasters in the world with a 108-foot initial banked drop, 13 additional drops, sudden dips, banked turns and maximum G-forces of 3.14
Wild Water Wilderness is home to Bigfoot Rapids which "is a thrilling, outdoor whitewater river raft ride that will bounce, toss, spin and splash passengers as they brave fast moving currents and dodge soaring geisers as they experience the unforgettable fun of shooting the rapids". Towering cliffs, huge boulders, cascading water falls, soaring geysers and trees, shrubs and wild flowers--all indigenous to California--combine to create an authentic setting for Bigfoot Rapids.
At Camp Snoopy, the whole family can enjoy many of the rides, "made for the young and the young-at-heart. Ride our new Charlie Brown Speedway, or Woodstock's Airmail (the kid-size version of Supreme Scream®), have the kids take you for a spin at Rocky Road Truckin' Company, or check out Timberline Twister the smallest of our rollercoaster family".
The park holds numerous restaurants and shops and has it's own first class hotel, The Knott's Berry Farm Resort Hotel, which offers a variety of packages to suit your needs, including Snoopy themed rooms for children where Snoopy himself will visit and provide "tuck in" service.
Check out Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant, where 20,000,000 guests have eaten Mrs. Knott's traditional chicken dinners. "Each dinner is made from the "just-right" plump birds she insisted upon, and the fixin's still include lighter-than-air buttermilk biscuits, fluffy mashed potatoes, rich chicken gravy and mouth-watering farm-fresh vegetables". The menu features other items as well including various lunch and dinner entrees, soups, salads, sandwiches and a complete Farm breakfast featuring French toast, pancakes, and daily specials.
Knott's Berry Farm is an amusement park and resort for the whole family, try it.
For more information about the city of Buena Park, California see http://buenapark.usacitydirectories.com, a directory of links to city of Buena Park, California guides and directories listing hotels, restaurants, information, resources, services, things to do, places to go and more.
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