Discover America’s Secrets on Your Next Holiday

Why a holiday to America is a must

America is a wonderful country that never ceases to amaze. It has something for any kind of travelling or holiday experience. Whether you want a lazy beach holiday or hike across mountains, it has it all.

The country is often in the news for the wrong reasons, making it is easy to believe the American people are at each other’s throats all the time. However, this is largely media driven with most Americans being level headed, friendly people who are very happy to see you, especially after the two year lockdown. You’ll find this out for yourself when you discover the United States.

Max's one year anniversary, and a beautiful bike ride

First off, we celebrated our one year anniversary with Max. Yes, it was one year ago yesterday that we introduced you to our new European motorhome. Hard to believe it's been a year already isn't it? And even harder to believe is the fact that Max has already been to 17 different countries!

Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkiye, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Denmark, and Norway.

We made our way to the popular tourist town of Voss, Norway.

We arrived here in Norway June 1st, and we depart July 26th. So we have a total of 56 days here. You'd think that's a lot of time, but for us it's not. We travel slowly. The half way point for this visit is June 28th.

Our plan was (and still is) to travel as far north as we can until the half way date, and then turn around and start heading south on the coastal route.

Too many motorhomes!

Now that we are in the fjord areas of Norway, we notice just how many motorhomes and campervans there are up here. Too many, and almost not enough places to park them all! I would expect that it is normally busy with motorhomes in June, July, and August in Norway, however I figure that this year is worse due to pent up demand caused by the Covid shutdowns the last two summers.

So we've had to adapt how we do things a little bit.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

We were due for a day of rest, so we got up and drove down to the town of Kinsarvik and found a good free internet connection. We had some future travel planning to take care of!

We've had our flights back to Canada booked for quite a while. We leave from Amsterdam on August 5th. 

The four huge waterfalls of the Husadalen Valley near Kinsarvik, Norway

We said goodbye to Marti and Ryan yesterday morning. They are heading to Bergen for a few days, and then flying back to Texas. It was fun seeing them again and doing some more mountain adventures. Pretty sure we'll meet up again somewhere else in the world!

Ruth and I headed a little further north to the town of Kinsarvik. 

The spectacular Trolltunga via ferrata!

Trolltunga is a famous granite rock cliff hovering over a fjord in Norway. It's one of the most popular hikes in Norway, despite the fact that it's also one of the most gruelling and difficult, even for experienced hikers. But there are several ways to get up there.

The most common way is to simply hike up from the lower parking lot. It's a 28 km (17.4 mile) hike round trip!

Water everywhere!

Norway is all about the water. It is everywhere... lakes, streams, fjords, waterfalls, rivers. 

And rain. Lots of rain. On average, Norway "enjoys" 239 days of precipitation per year. But all of that water makes for some beautiful scenery, especially at this time of year when snow is melting.

Do you know what a via ferrata is?

Saturday was pretty much a day to relax. We were parked in a quiet, beautiful spot and we didn't have anywhere we needed to be, so we decided to just stay there and enjoy the day. Besides, it was a Saturday and to move just for the sake of moving and then have to find another spot didn't make any sense.

Of course we didn't just do nothing all day... we did get out for a 6 km (3.7 mile) walk.

Motorhome dump stations in Norway

Well we can't just show you pretty pictures all the time, we have to give you some practical information too! (Don't worry... there are pretty pictures further down!). One of our readers asked the other day how we empty and refill holding tanks if we're not staying at any campgrounds. So here you are...

Fortunately, like Germany, Norway is a very motorhome friendly country and some municipalities and some gas stations have free RV dump and fill facilities. In fact, some of them are really nice!

New boots for Ruth, and hike to a waterfall...

It was such a beautiful day when we woke up... mostly blue sky and sunshine. So we decided to go for a short hike right away. After all, we were already parked at the trailhead so we might as well use the trail!

It was only a short one though... 2 kms up a ridge to have a bit of a view of the town below.

Norway is a hiking and free camping paradise

While we are seeing a lot of motorhomes on the road here in Norway, there are also a lot of places for those motorhomes to overnight. There are quite a few campgrounds, although they seem pretty busy already and it's not even busy season yet!

But there are also a lot of free camping places. 

Bucket list hike... almost accomplished!

Norway has a lot of world class hiking trails, and some of them are very tough. Our son has been to Norway, and he told us several years ago that we had better get there soon because we're not getting any younger! 

Some of them are also very popular... not only because of the generally spectacular scenery, but because they might offer attractions that aren't available anywhere else in the world.

Another warm up hike, and grocery prices in Norway

Our friends Marti and Ryan flew from Texas to Sweden, then rented a car and had a five hour drive to meet us at their Airbnb near the village of Sinnes.

But we were already fairly close to Sinnes, so while they were driving, we decided to go for another hike.

It doesn't matter how expensive a country is if you don't buy anything!

We got up at 6:30am (sunrise is at 4:30am!) and decided to do some driving right away. As I've said before, we're trying to conserve our cellular data, and so far it's been pretty easy to find free WiFi in just about any town. Every town has a library, although the hours vary a lot, and not all of them have unsecured WiFi. And, most grocery stores, even the small ones seem to have an unsecured connection.

Speaking of grocery stores, we haven't been in one yet. We arrived on June 1st, and today is the 6th and we haven't spent any money in Norway yet! 

Yes, Norway is stunning!

Yesterday we did our first longer hike in Norway. Not really that long though. In fact, at just under four hours it was more of a training hike for some of our upcoming Norway adventures!

We had slept close by so that we could get an early start on the trail, and we managed to get going by 9:15am.

And we're not even in the good parts of Norway yet!

It's so nice not to have much of a plan, and simply be able wander and explore at our leisure. And especially when there is so much to see... and we're not even in the good parts of Norway yet!

Yesterday we drove a little further north. But only a little... 40 kms (25 miles) to be exact!

Staying in shape for what's to come!

It was such a nice campsite that we had for our first night in Norway that we decided to stay a second night. We were located right beside a nice bike trail, so Ruth packed us a lunch while I got the bikes ready to go.

We had no idea what route we were going to follow, or how long we were going to be gone.

Welcome to Norway! Country number 52...

Norway is a new country for us and it has been on our "to do" list for a long time. But it's a country that is best explored by motorhome, so we needed to get a European motorhome to do it. And the original plan was to do it last summer, but then Covid threw a wrench into things and we weren't able to pick up Max until mid June of last year. By then, we decided it was best to put it off another year.

But we are here now, and we're really excited. It's going to be a great two months!

Very frustrating!

We posted our May expense report yesterday evening. You can read it here if you missed it.

It was only a 35 km (22 mile) drive to the port town of Hirtshals at the northern tip of Denmark. We had a few things to do there, so we arrived fairly early.

May Expenses

Well, May was an interesting month from an expenses perspective. We drove a lot of miles, having started the month in southern Romania and ending it at the northern tip of Denmark!

Our planned budget was about $1,700 CAD, and we spent a total of $1,817 CAD ($1,437 USD, €1,338). Not bad, considering we drove about 2,600 kms (1,615 miles) and visited 6 different European countries.

Now very close to our ferry departure to Norway

We had been parked overnight at an area that is very popular with hikers and bikers so it only made sense to go for a bike ride before we left. Ruth had read that there is a 12 km (7.5 mile) bike route around the lake, so I got the bikes off and we went for a ride.

Temperature never got much above 13C (55F), and there was not much sunshine, but there was also no wind to speak of.

Denmark is one of the safest countries in the world

Denmark is one of the safest countries in the world, especially outside of Copenhagen. There is an extremely low crime rate, and the risk of natural disaster is virtually zero. There is hardly any graffiti, which is often an indicator of the level of crime. Interestingly, housing prices are quite low. You can buy a nice liveable house and property for about $100,000. But vehicles and fuel are expensive. Overall, I would suggest that Denmark is simply a nice country. It's unfortunate that they get winter here!

The official language is Danish, however they are taught English at a very young age, and 86% of the people speak English as a second language.

Welcome to Denmark!

Denmark is not a new country for us.

In fact, Denmark was country #7 on our list of visited countries. We were in Copenhagen way back in 1999. We flew here from Canada for a long weekend!

Well, that was a miserable day!

We had to drive right through the middle of the city of Hamburg, but we waited until almost 10:00am, and really, the traffic wasn't very bad. Certainly better than I expected, so that was good.

There's one direct route north and it's all on the freeway. We normally try and avoid the freeway, but the weather wasn't great and there wasn't anything we wanted to see along the way.

Matching more of my father's photos in Hamburg, Germany

Some of you will remember that my father did two trips to Europe in the 1950's and took quite a lot of slide photos. Ruth has digitized them, and when we are in some of the same areas, we try to stand in the same spot he might have stood in order to match up those 1950's photos and see what it looks like today.

You can see previous examples of our efforts here, here, and here.

Made it to the big city of Hamburg

Lots of driving the last few days. Max's odometer crossed the 14,000 km (8,700 mile) mark yesterday. We picked him up on June 18th of last year. It's hard to believe we have had him for almost a year already! 

That's quite a few miles in the first year, but I think the second year will be much less.