Freedom in a Can: Adventures with Hamlet

What's Up with National Parks During the Government Shutdown? We wanted to find out first-hand.   After a summer of traveling in the Maritime and Atlantic Provinces of Northeast Canada, we finally crossed the U.S. border and into Maine about a week ago.  With its small towns, coastal roads, nearly 4,000 islands, it offers a nice soft landing for us after our remote travels where rush hour means that the caribou joined us for dinner.  We're not quite ready for most East Coast U.S. traffic! We spent a few days in Downeast Maine at Acadia National Park.  This park is dear to our hearts, because it's the first US park that we visited with Hamlet (2012) and also the first in which we volunteered in the Education Program during the spring and fall seasons (2015).  We wore the Volunteer Ranger hats and tan shirts, and felt so wicked cool when we walked into a third grade classroom.   Through visits  this week  with our friends who remain connec...

If getting away from the intense crowds, summer heat, and going off-the-grid interests you, then go north…far, far north…my friend!  From arctic tundra where the summer sun never sets, to stunning rocky summits, to grasslands larger than the state of Montana, to coastal beaches and rocky coves which seem forgotten in time, Canada has it all…and then covers it in cheese curds and gravy. Bon appetite! Road trippin' with solar power in Canada might surprise anyone unfamiliar with the “Great White North.” While the friendly land next door might be filled with more evergreen trees than hockey pucks, it offers a surprising diversity of landscape. Many solar powered RVers might think that Canada’s forests are probably so dense that no viable charging sunlight can penetrate. And while that’s certainly true in a few places, just like down in the states, there are an equal number of places where solar is not only the best option – it’s the only option. The US might have the oldest and per...