Oct. 29, 2009 - It's just about the end of camping for 2009, well, for the females in the family anyway, and what a year it has been.  We were able to manage the schedules of the four of us in such a way that everyone was happy.  

We did the usual trips within a few hours of home, there was a boys' mountain biking trip on the Kettle Valley Railway in British Columbia, a father/daughter kayaking trip, and we were able to see a really big chunk of the continent on a 25-day 10,000 km loop.

We had booked a year in advance at Assateague State Park in Maryland, apparently a must-do trip.  And it was; in Ontario Parks you get raccoons on your site, at Assateague it's wild ponies.  

But we also wanted to do the Great Canadian Epic Road Trip out west.  Well, we figured the Atlantic Ocean was, theoretically, on the way to Banff. Isn't it? We're up for anything so we did indeed go out west via the Atlantic Ocean; the ocean and the mountains in one trip.  Heaven!  That trip covered five provinces and 13 states, including Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, NY, DE, MD, PA, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, WV, MI, MT and ND.

The season had its fair share of problems though.  The axles came loose on the trailer and we were "this close" to one of them coming right off.  The fact that we were in downtown Chicago hardly helped.  The Air Lift 1000 airbags on the truck had to be repaired three times, so I got pretty adept at that.  I had a stupid human trick type of incident where the Hensley Arrow paid the price.  We also experienced our first flat tire on the trailer, along with not one but two flooding incidents in the trailer. Maybe we need to get a good luck charm to stick to the dash of the truck.  All in all I guess we were due.

All the evidence is on our Trips page.  

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