Winnebago’s Electric RV Prototype

Above, the Winnebago eRV2 camper van. Photo by Winnebago Industries.

With the automotive industry introducing more and more electric vehicles (EV), it was inevitable that RV manufacturers would follow suit.

But is an electric RV practical? I have serious doubts, considering EV technology as it now stands.

Outside magazine's website (Outsideonline.com) has a review of Winnebago's new electric Class B RV, the eRV2. Writer Robert Annis took it out for a test drive (five day's worth) and gives his opinion.

He starts with:

Minutes after Winnebago introduced their electric concept camper van in 2022, I began hounding the company to let me take it for a spin. Thankfully, after unveiling their latest prototype, called the eRV2, earlier this year, they finally relented and agreed to let me borrow it for a five-day test drive in California.

The state has the most charging stations of any other in the country, so I chose to test the eRV2—which will likely be available to consumers early next year—north of the Bay Area, believing it would likely have the best ratio of chargers to gorgeous scenery. I wanted to test the range of the vehicle, the amenities, and the overall comfort to see if it was a practical vehicle for both weekend road trips and extended jaunts. Here’s what I found out.

To read more, go here. 

Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park

Above, the Painted Desert area of Petrified Forest National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Petrified Forest National Park is only about 92 miles from home. I have toured the park once, and that was just the Painted Desert area. I plan on going back to see the Petrified Forest after all the coronavirus lockdowns are over.

Above, the Painted Desert Inn is now preserved as a museum. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

However, if one is curious about Petrified Forest National Park, Outside magazine's website has an article on one visitor's visit to the park.

It begins with:

At Petrified Forest, in northeastern Arizona, when they say the park closes at 6 P.M., they mean it. After driving eight hours from the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas and through the deserted highways of rural New Mexico, I arrived at a locked gate a few minutes too late, and my plans for a sunset hike went down in flames.

Instead, I had to watch picturesque, feathery clouds turn shades of electric pink from just outside the park’s boundaries. With snow forecast for the next morning, I was going to have a very short window to see the park and make it count. 

After a hearty breakfast at Joe and Aggie’s Café, a down-home Route 66 relic that’s been around since the 1940s, I set off for the park’s most famous area, the Rainbow Forest. Hillsides in every direction were spattered with fluffy, white snow, like a Jackson Pollack painting, a stark contrast to the colorful badlands and deep jewel tones of the area’s petrified trees. 

I elected to hike the three-quarter-mile Crystal Forest Trail as the snow began to let up, sauntering along the paved loop and paying rapt attention to the 200-million-year-old stone logs that lay around me. The place felt spooky and surreal. I tried to picture the landscape as it once was, with Triassic ferns and ginkgoes sprawling across a tropical, green river delta where phytosaurs roamed.  

Petrified Forest can feel like a mind game for most visitors. It forces you to flip your preexisting notion of what a forest is on its head. Rather than straining your neck to take in tall trees, you’re forced to meditate on broken trunks scattered around haphazardly. Once I understood that, the park really came into focus. I began to peer through the petrified trees and the layers of sedimentary rock, envisioning what the place once was: a dense woodland teeming with life.

 The article also has information on where to eat and where to stay.

To read more, go here.

Most Visited National Parks In 2019

Above, an eruption at Yellowstone's Old Faithful Geyser last summer. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Outside Online has posted the numbers for the most visited national parks in 2019.

I managed to visit three national parks last year: Petrified Forest National Park, Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Visiting Petrified Forest National Park is easy for me, it's only about 90 miles from home.

They wrote:

For more than a decade, Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Parks have topped the list of most popular in the U.S. Last year proved to be no different.  

The 2019 Department of the Interior visitation numbers, released on February 27, show that Great Smoky Mountains saw 12.5 million visits in 2019, over twice as many as the Grand Canyon’s 5.97 million, which came in a distant second. In total, the national parks system received 327.5 million recreation visits in 2019, a 2.9 percent increase since 2018 and the third highest number since 1904 (topped only by 2016 and 2017—the result of the NPS celebrating its centennial in 2016).  

“The numbers once again affirm that Americans and visitors from around the world love the natural, cultural, and historic experience provided by our national parks,” said secretary of the interior David Bernhardt in a press release.  

Our other favorite national parks also held their rank. Zion National Park remained in fourth place with 4.49 million, while Yosemite National Park leapfrogged Yellowstone for fifth after recovering from a 2018 drop in visitation due to the Northern California wildfires. Of the top ten, Great Smoky Mountains and Zion have seen the biggest rise in visitors—an almost 25-percent increase over the past 20 years. 

To read more, go here. 

Outside: Ultimate Yellowstone National Park Travel Guide

Above, Old Faithful Inn is a short walk from Old Faithful Geyser. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It there is one national park in the United States that should be on everyone's "bucket list", that would have to be Yellowstone National Park. I have been to Yellowstone three times and it never fails to captivate.

Although things are now winding down at the park in preparation for the winter season, it is not too early to begin planning a visit to Yellowstone next year. Because, if you don't, lodges and campgrounds get booked up pretty fast.

Above, Old Faithful Geyser during eruption last July. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

I visited Yellowstone last summer and, as I expected, it was jamb-packed with people.

Thankfully, Outside magazine's website has posted their "Ultimate Yellowstone National Park Travel Guide" to help in the planning.

They (with tongue firmly in cheek) begin with:

Yellowstone is a trippy place. Its 2.2 million acres are dotted with bubbling mud pots, steaming hot pools of concentric rainbow hues, and some 500 geysers that spew water—and, occasionally, cinderblocks and decades-old pacifiers. Among it all are elk, bighorn sheep, and 1,000-pound bison that would just as soon toss you 10 feet in the air as look at you. 

The people are just as strange. More than 4 million pour in from around the globe every year, causing mile-long bear jams on the park’s two-lane roads, in addition to petting bison, challenging bison to fights, loading them into their cars, and peeing directly into Old Faithful. (Luckily, the park has its own jail.) Yellowstone visitors have been boiled to death in thermal pools, drowned while searching for hidden treasure, and, of course, eaten by grizzlies.  

Personally, I find the mayhem fascinating (apart from people throwing garbage into geysers—honestly, what the hell?) and indicative of just how wild the landscape is. When president Ulysses S. Grant designated the area the country’s first park in 1872, Yellowstone took hold in the modern imagination as the quintessential portrait of the American West and, despite its recent news coverage, has largely remained that way. Spanning the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into parts of Montana and Idaho, the park’s sheer magnitude means that, with the right planning, you can have the unspoiled experience that made our forefathers awestruck enough to preserve it. 

To read more, go here. 

Yosemite Guide Recommended Gear

Above, Yosemite's symbol, Half Dome. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

For those who plan to visit Yosemite National Park and, while there, hike, there are a few things (five of them) that Outside Online says one needs to bring along.

They begin with:

Yosemite National Park hosts an annual average of 4 million visitors, who flock year-round to experience the hulking granite, tumbling waterfalls, and iconic trails of the High Sierra. As a guide in the Valley, I often see people who are ill-prepared for their trip. There are a few items we recommend beyond staples like a backpack, headlamp, sun protection, and a pair of broken-in boots that will greatly enhance your experience in the granite gem of the West, no matter the season.

To see what they are, go here.