Coming Up: Rockies Redux

Happy 2026, readers! After a few surgeries during the late fall and winter (feels like the price of admission once you're in your 70s...), Doug and Jeannette are both ready to get on the road again, and so is the Ciaowagen!

You may remember that our 2025 Ciaowagen adventures ended prematurely when our RV's engine crapped out while we were in Nashville, TN and had to be replaced. Fortunately that's all been taken care of. The Ciaowagen is like a heart transplant patient with a new lease on life. The coach and chassis have 106,000 miles on them. The engine: only 700 miles, plus a new three-year warranty to boot.

We've been around and through the country multiple times since 2018, as you can see in the map below. Basically, we've already been everywhere.

Our 2018-2025 Ciaowagen travels mapped out on Google Earth

Consequently, we're moving into our "greatest hits" phase, revisiting places we've loved. [Thankfully, we're not quite at the "tribute band" phase yet, where other people have to take our travels for us]

We're devoting 2026 to a trip we've dubbed "Rockies Redux." Our planned route, which will take eight months to complete, is shown in the map below (subject to tweaks along the way).

We leave around March 1, and we'll take two weeks to get out to Arizona by heading southwest through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas (where we'll visit a couple of friends from last fall's RV caravan down the Mississippi River), and New Mexico (where we'll visit White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns national parks).

We'll spend a month at one of our favorite campgrounds, Desert Trails RV Park, a 15-minute drive west from downtown Tucson.

Then we'll start heading north, traveling up the western side of the Rockies. We'll poke above the border into Canada, then turn and head south down the eastern side of the Rockies.

We'll fly back home a couple of times during the trip for family celebrations. Our middle son, Mace, who has moved back home and attends school, will watch over our Virginia house in our absence.

Among the places we'll visit are:

• 15 national parks in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado

• 2 national parks in Alberta, Canada

• Several national monuments and national historical parks in Arizona, Wyoming, and New Mexico

• Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains

• The Calgary Stampede

• The Black Hills of South Dakota

• Cities such as Dallas/Fort Worth, Tucson, Calgary, and Sante Fe

We'll spend a couple of days at the Albequerque Balloon Fiesta in early October before turning back toward Virginia.

On our way back east, we'll visit Cumberland Gap in Tennessee, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. These are two places we'd hoped to visit in 2025, but had to abandon when our RV engine broke in Nashville.

We'll return to Virginia sometime in the second half of October, and have a late celebration of Doug's 75th birthday.

We hope you'll follow along on our adventures!