August/September 2025 Canlife Correspondence -- Solar Power, September 11, Steep Grades, & Some RV Staples!

August felt a little too full of fun, traveling, and work gigs to get an adequate newsletter put together, so here's our "almost monthly" August / September issue for some good times with the ole Hamlet in tow! 

Do Ya Come from Away?

She walked out on stage and captivated us with her story about the day, 24 years ago, when the North American airspace was suddenly closed, and airplanes crossing the northern Atlantic were quickly diverted to her tiny little town of Gander, Newfoundland.  She’d been the manager of the airport ground crew that morning, and even her off-duty staff came in and rolled up their sleeves – all hands on deck!

The Gander airport used to be one of the biggest in the world before the days of modern aircraft that can cross the Atlantic without needling to refuel.  By the turn of the millennia, flights had slowed to a trickle. On September 11, 2001, over 38 commercial airplanes carrying nearly 7000 passengers and crew from 95 countries, landed at her airport – with nowhere to go, and nowhere to stay.  For the next 5 days, the small staff worked nearly around the clock to service and re-service each of the planes.  With just one water truck, one fuel truck, one lavatory truck, a lot of sitting aircraft, and a lot of unknowns, the effort was non-stop.  When the last plane finally took off, the image of it disappearing into the sky burned into her memory.

The larger story of how Gander and the surrounding communities hosted the “plane people” comes to life in the Broadway Musical “Come From Away.”  The production, in Gander, now wrapping up its 3rd season, features some of the same performers from the original Broadway cast.  Each night before the opening curtain, a different community member shares their story from that day with the audience, like a new stitch in the collective quilt of understanding.  We bawled, we laughed out loud – at all the same moments as when we first saw the production as a movie.  Seeing it live, in person, in the very place where it all happened is a memory now forever burned into our hearts.  If you’ve not seen it, we highly encourage you!

We all have so many memories from that day, some that are collectively shared with others and some that are just our own.  Storytelling, in all its creative forms, helps us do two things – share our unique perspective with anyone who will listen and get it out of our heads before it becomes overwhelming.  But, how people receive those stories depends upon their own unique perspective and memory. 

We’re reminded of that very phenomenon, right now, as we’re speaking at America’s Largest RV Show in Hershey, PA.  No matter how many stories, videos or pictures we share about how we choose to live the RV lifestyle, many folks still focus on how small our camper is, and question how we’ve been able to make it work.  It’s not magic, it’s just that Hamlet offers us a cozy and comfortable home-on-wheels and the ability to go or fit into nearly anywhere. It allows us the best of both worlds -- to come from away and be right at home at the same time.

We always say that a few extra square feet of living space is not going to make or break a trip or relationship.  We know it’s hard to imagine; I know that I couldn’t have imagined that we’d be doing this for 13 years. When we drove away from the Blue Ridge Mountains in September 2012, we thought it would only be for about a year-and-a-half, two at the most.  But here we are...still loving it!

I remember this customer at 45 North Winery in Michigan where we worked a few summers ago.  During his wine tasting, we swapped life stories while discussing fermentation and flavor profiles.  He lamented how his adult kids were too busy to visit so he and his wife sort of rambled around their large and mostly empty house, how he’d like to retire but his business partner can’t afford to buy him out, and how he’d love to travel but just can’t get away.  He was stuck on a treadmill and visibly unhappy about it.  Then he asked about me, and I told him about Hamlet and how we’d been living a life of travel, seasonal work, and volunteer service.  He looked at me and said “Wow, 72 sq feet, man I..I feel sorry for you.”  I replied, “Now wait a minute, you just told me that you have this big empty house where your kids don’t visit and you can’t get out of your job that you don’t like;  just who exactly should feel sorry for whom here?  I have a home that I love, I get to travel, and I get to see family and friends all the time."  We laughed, and he left a big tip!

One of the characters from the musical, “Bob” a skeptical New Yorker, shares that he not only came to appreciate the Gander town residents who gave him a temporary home during the 9/11 event, he felt completely “at home” in Newfoundland.  His father back home in New York City was worried sick about him.  When Bob finally returns to New York City, at Ground Zero, he asks himself, “How can I tell him [dad] that I was not only ok, but I was so much better?”  Indeed, how can WE?  

We, and I mean all of us here, often struggle to share our perspective with others, because they always hear it through the lens of their own perspective – “we see the world not as it is, but as we are” writes Anaïs Nin.  I’m not suggesting that everyone sell their house, quit their job, buy a tiny vehicle with a tiny living space and travel the country, it’s definitely not for everyone.  What I am suggesting is that an untested idea, an unexamined life, has unintended consequences.  We will never know when some tragic event will swoop in and wreck our well laid out plans.  If you want to get out there, just do it...before the curtain falls.  

If an image is worth a thousand words...check out our short weekly videos from our summer travels in Newfoundland & Labrador, with MANY more to come!  See our entire playlist here. 

Week 1:  Port aux Basque to the Bay of Islands

Week 2:  Gros Morne National Park

Week 3:  Labrador (& Quebec) Coast

Weeks 4-8...Stay Tuned!

Quick Newfoundland & Labrador Trip Stats:

• 8.5 weeks 
• 3741 miles (best roads: Labrador for the win!, worst road: Hwy 480 to Burgeo)
• 6 ferry rides (shortest: 1.25 hours, longest: 16 hours)
• 3 boat excursions  
  
• 3 live theater productions
• 5 major milestones celebrated (final Canadian province, northernmost tip of Appalachian Mtns, most eastern point of North America, 25th wedding anniversary, and 13th nomadiversary)
• 12 icebergs
• 36 hikes
• 5 bike rides
• 10 paddle trips
• 11 NL provincial parks
• 2 Harvest Hosts
• 2 Parks Canada national parks
• 5 national historic sites
• 500+ blueberries picked (and eaten!)
• 61 nights in off-grid campgrounds and boondocking (using solar power)
• 0 nights plugged in
• 1,000,000 memories
• 1 helluva fantastic experience!

Our Newfoundland & Labrador Wildlife Count!

• 2 moose
• 1 black bear
• 10 caribou (herd)
• 6 river otters (family)
• 1000's of puffins and birds, birds, birds galore
• 20+ whales: humpback, beluga, pilot, orca, minke (most variety we've even seen anywhere!).  +1 dead, beached sperm whale which was both gross and fascinating at the same time.

Tips & Links for Planning YOUR Newfoundland & Labrador RV Adventure!
After spending 2+ months traveling around and off-grid camping in this stunning province, we've learned a few things to share with those of you who are planning a future road trip to this special place in northeastern Canada.  We've put together a helpful list of resources for our newsletter subscribers!  As always, let us know what else you'd like to know, and we'll add to it.

In Front of the Mic:  America's Largest RV Show in Hershey, PA

Many thanks for SHOWing up, y'all!  Soooo great to see and meet so many of you at America's Largest RV Show last week!  A WARM welcome to all of our brand NEW followers. It was truly a blast again to be there this year, for our 5th appearance!  If you didn't have chance to give feedback while at the show, please use this link or the show app.  Both PRVCA and we really appreciate it!

If you want to plan for next year, we've written a couple of helpful blogs that'll help you find where to camp, activities for the whole family, and tips for shopping the Hershey show.

Where Else Will you Be Speaking This Year?  While Hershey concludes our 2025 RV Show schedule, our Winter 2026 RV show schedule is really shaping up!  We'll be buzzing around Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama in Jan-Feb 2026.  Check out our upcoming seminar line up for details about the shows!  As the shows choose seminars topics from our list of options, we'll be filling in more details over the next couple of months.

RV Pantry Staples that Always Make the Cut

A few years ago, we met up with some friends at a rented vacation house. And, naturally, as full-time RVers, we arrived in our rig. One of our friends was searching through the huge rental kitchen while preparing dinner, saying “Darn it, I wish I’d brought the zester!” “We’ve got one," we hollered. "I’ll be right back.”  Then the relay continued. “Soy Sauce?” Yep!  “Baking Soda?” Hold on a sec!  “Chili Crisp?” Oh, 100 percent!  When she finally realized that she couldn’t stump us, she asked, “How could you possibly have all this stuff in that little camper?” We told her the truth: it’s never about size; it’s always about imagination -- and how you use it.  And that’s especially true when it comes to stocking your RV pantry with the staples!

Interested in Diving into a Solar RV Conversion?  

Check out this great school bus to RV conversion that we did with our friends in Boone last spring!  We helped them build out a compact, energy dense system for under $3500, and it gives them all the power they need to run what they want while enjoying music festivals around the southeast.  Installation video here!

Driving Your RV on Steep Grades:  A Safety Guide 

After nearly 13 years of full-time RVing all over the North American continent, we’ve definitely experienced a few white-knuckle grades and narrow winding roads!  So, we thought we’d provide some basic tips for making these incredible journeys a bit less scary...and a lot more safe for those of you who are NEW to driving a BIG rig.

Which RV Options are Really Worth It?
The simple answer is...YOUR RV LIFESTYLE makes all the difference!  The fact is that the RV options that are important to specific buyers are as unique as the 11.2 million households in the U.S. who own RVs.  Diving deeper, we turned to our Facebook and Instagram audiences to see what they thought.  Not surprisingly, responses were all over the map. From Class A owners valuing more space and laundry facilities to small pop-up campers wanting to fit into the garage (and not offend HOA rules), the RV features that folks can’t live without, reflect how they use their RVs.  Here's what they told us!

Our America's National Parks Series

Planning a fall or winter national park trip?  It's a great way to avoid crowds and enjoy cooler weather while traveling!  We've been busy adding a couple more articles to our Best of America's National Parks series.  Our latest additions, Yellowstone and Badlands National Park, are ideal places to visit in the fall!

P.S.  This adorable national park map can be purchased on Etsy. 

What's NEXT on Our Bucket List?

Hamlet waited patiently for us in Halifax, Nova Scotia while we spent a week at the Hershey Show.  Now, we are back to our regularly scheduled program!  Our loose plans are to chase autumn through southern Nova Scotia and coastal New Brunswick, then on to New England.  There's a lot of NEW in that sentence.  While we've been to all of these places in the past, we'll be taking new roads and visiting new sites.  We also have a ton of OLD friends in the northeastern US whom we haven't seen in ages, so plan on doing some "moochdocking" along the way while we travel south to the mountains of North Carolina before Thanksgiving.  We'll reconnect with Shari's parents and friends in Boone, NC for a couple of weeks and then we are cooking up some BIG PLANS to finally start ticking off a couple more of those final 8 national parks on our bucket list which are harder (and more expensive) to get to!  

Parting Shots: The Coastal Beauty of Newfoundland & Labrador is Unmatched!

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