A week from today we begin a long-awaited season of adventure, traveling with our three woofuses and staying in our home away from home, the K9 Camper. Our first destination? New Hampshire. I think it is a fitting topic for Earth Day today, exploring our big blue-green marble. What do I think I know of New Hampshire? Pine forests, rocky beaches and maple syrup. I know once there, we will discover much, much more!
For far too long my husband Rob and I have traveled with a purpose, usually business, and this left us no time to explore and enjoy the places we visited. Now we are like the crew on Star Trek, planning a voyage simply to explore and make the “unknown” known to us. Travel beckons, lifting the spirits and inspiring day dreams of unexplored fields, mountains, streams and tiny towns.
I have so many places in mind to visit. I don’t call it a bucket list, because that to me says that I won’t visit that place again. I enjoy going back to places I love. Let’s call it a dream list. I have yet to visit Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls or the shores of Maine. All of these populate the dream list. Then there’s Chincoteague Island (I was a fan of the Misty books as a child), the Florida Keys and The Great Smoky Mountains of the Carolinas. All of this is just staying on the east coast.
To travel west, we need time. It takes time to get there and we want time to explore once we arrive. This requires more than a long weekend. Journeys further afield like this may need to wait a year or two until we organize our lives to accommodate it. However the dream list knows no boundaries of space or time. So let’s add the Redwood Forests, The Grand Canyon, and Glacier National Park to the itinerary of our dreamscape. And I must see the Dakotas. My father told me once of staying at a motel in North Dakota, and each parking spot had a heating device to warm your engine. Weather that cold – our snow dogs would be in heaven! We would probably visit in the warmer summer months; the K9 Camper has a heater but I wouldn’t want to test it on sub zero degree weather.
Dogs need to travel as much as we do. I know a lot of dogs, like people, are home bodies. Yet dogs’ senses are so finely attuned, that they smell and hear intensely, at a far greater level than humans. Imagine the joy they feel in an entirely new environment, with foreign smells and sounds to investigate! Ecstatic sensory overload. Knowing that a change in routine – new places, new faces – is not just acceptable, but loads of fun, will make both you and your dogs more confident and happy.
We’ve picked up some light up dog collars for night time exploring. I’ve packed a new tiny tea kettle to make tea every day, to jumpstart each day’s adventures. We’ll be sleeping in the camper this weekend (in our driveway) to further acclimate the dogs to our new holiday home. We are ready to explore!
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