On the Road Again!
At approximately 1805 on Wednesday 12 October (6:05pm for you English persons!) I started down the drive (at my temporary home ? for the last two months) and was met by my Beautiful Husband Paul and our elder Basset, Tasha. What a sight for sore eyes!
As much as I enjoyed my Netherlands stay, and immersing myself in the Wonderful World of biking as my means of transportation, I was more than massively elated to finally come to the end of my summer sojourn.
I have moved eight times since 30 May and I had had enough of being separated from my beloved family.
We had the motorhome fully (and I mean FULLY packed) in about an hours’ time. After a few quick errands around the area, we took off for another two hour drive to Heemskerk, which is northwest of Amsterdam.
The following day we had an appointment for Tasha with a holistic vet. This woman really knows her stuff! She spent about 20 minutes adjusting Tasha’s back and pelvis along with acupuncture injections along her spine. We spent a good hour there and learned so much. This vet was so accommodating and even helped us locate a campground just 20 minutes away!
After some shopping in the area we headed north again, as we had made an appointment to see our first boats—a romantic-but-not-practical antique ⛵️ sailing vessel, and a motor cruiser, the type of boat we can afford and will allow us to live our “duel life” in the motorhome for half the year, and afloat the remaining half.
We found a couple of lovely spots in which to park the motorhome for the following two nights. The first night we were next to a small, just outside of town, marina near the town of Hindeloopen. They even had an unlocked toilet and shower facility! There were a couple of interesting looking characters walking about and working on their ⛵️ boats, and Paul started to make up short stories about these people that were quite intriguing!……More to come in the near future on this possible development–stay tuned!
On Saturday afternoon we drove to Heech and saw a couple of sailing ⛵️ vessels–a lemsteraak (which we didn’t care for), and a tjalk (another type of classic sailing ship) built in 1896. She was a beauty and we liked her very much. However, given what we want to do she would not be practical, so we drew a line under her and moved on. That night we drove out towards one of the many lakes in the region and came across one of the prettiest and most tranquil spots we have seen so far. We both spied it at the same time, turned our heads towards one another in unison, and gave it a thumbs up.
We were not disappointed. We had an almost full moon that night, along with the lake on our right, and a beautiful meadow on our left that afforded us a wonderful view of a windmill and sailing boats making their way out towards the lake. It was a warm and beautiful morning so we plopped the pups outside on the grass with their rawhide chews and went back to our tasks at hand.
After awhile I decided Florence needed a nice long walk and away we went. We ended up at a campground that had facilities for our motorhome. We raced back to Paul and told him about our find. Next thing I knew, we were on our way there to spend the rest of the warm afternoon basking in the sun. We ended up having a bit of lunch in the lounge chairs on a dock, reading and watching the sailboats glide by. It was a little piece of heaven!
The next day we headed up to Leeuwarden where we finally had our first look at a motor cruiser, a Super Favorite Cruiser named “Bellissima” and beautiful she was! We spent a good couple of hours going over her with a fine tooth comb, and were even able to take her out for a short trip. We are both smitten…..now we have to put our practical heads together and see if we can make this dual life a possibility!
Stay tuned, more to follow soon!