Season Seven Recap of 2025 and Season Eight Plans for 2026

Now that we’ve finished our last post for Season Seven: Europe, it is time to recap 2025 and reveal our plans for Season Eight: Route 66 for 2026.

If there is one word to describe our Europe trip, it would be variety. We didn’t travel by RV, but we did travel by just about every thing else and stayed in quite a range of lodging types. Our experiences included large cities, small towns, and remote locations, from rugged coastlines and mountains, to peaceful pastures, streams, and rivers. There was a mixture of hiking, cycling, and strolling the streets of towns, both as part of organized tours and on our own. We encountered wildlife out in nature along with history and architecture in cities.

By the numbers, we visited twelve different countries, including Spain, Morocco, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany. We were away from home for 205 nights, just under seven months.

We took a lot of trains. The first one was before we even left the United States, on Amtrak from Denver, Colorado to Fort Lauderdale (Amtrak: Denver to Ft. Lauderdale - March 3rd to 6th, 2025). Most of our travel in England (such as Southampton, England - March 24th, 2025), France (like Chamonix, France - July 17th to 19th, 2025), Italy (for example Lake Como, Italy - August 13th to 16th, 2025), Switzerland (Gimmelwald, Switzerland - July 13th to 16th, 2025 was one), Austria (Salzburg, Austria - August 26th to 29th, 2025 along with others), and Germany (Ingolstadt, Germany - September 14th to 15th, 2025 as an example) was by train, sometimes in combination with a bus to reach more remote areas. We even took a couple of trains for sight-seeing excursions, such as the Chocolate Train from Montreux up to Montbovon in Switzerland (Lausanne, Switzerland - July 10th to 12th, 2025) and the Montenvers cog train up to the glacier at Mer de Glace in Chamonix, France.

To get around Ireland (such as Kilkenny, Ireland - April 22nd to 25th, 2025) and Scotland (Glencoe, Scotland - May 30th to June 1st, 2025 for example), we rented cars. It was our first experience driving on the wrong side of the road, from the wrong side of the car. By the end, we were getting pretty good at using roundabouts, as there were a lot of them. Our first car rental was for a few days in England. We never did get used to the very narrow roads, flanked on the sides with either thick, gnarly shrubbery or stone walls, such as what we encountered in Dartmoor National Park in England (Dartmoor National Park, England - March 28th - 31st, 2025).

Then there were boats, lots of boats. Some of them were cruises, like the Transatlantic Princess Cruise from Ft. Lauderdale in Florida to Southampton in England (Transatlantic Cruise: Part 1 of 2 - March 9th to 15th, 2025), a narrow boat cruise on the canals of England (Canal Cruise on Takara Narrow Boat in England: Part 1 of 2 - April 2nd to 5th, 2025), and the Rhine River cruise on Viking (Rhine Cruise Day 2: Kinderdijk, Netherlands - July 4th, 2025). There were ferry boat rides. Some were long, like the ferry from Conwy in Wales to Dublin in Ireland and back (Conwy, Wales - April 15th to 16th and May 18th to 19th, 2025). While others were short, like the ferries from the Tarbert Ferry to Killimer in Ireland (Doolin & Cliffs of Moher, Ireland - May 7th to 11th, 2025), the Mallaig-Armadale ferry to get to the Isle of Skye in Scotland (Isle of Skye, Scotland - June 2nd to 5th, 2025), and the ferry from Manarola to Vernazza in Italy (Cinque Terre, Italy - August 17th to 22nd, 2025).

And some boat rides were not necessarily a means of transportation, but experiences on their own, like the Great Blasket Island Eco Tour from Dingle in Ireland (Dingle, Ireland - May 2nd to 6th, 2025), the Cliffs of Moher boat tour from Doolin also in Ireland (Doolin & Cliffs of Moher, Ireland - May 7th to 11th, 2025), the Boat Tour around Skellig Michael from Portmagee, Ireland (Portmagee & Skellig, Ireland - April 29th to May 1st, 2025), the Wildlife Tour from Oban in Scotland (Oban, Scotland - May 26th to 29th, 2025), and the boat tour on Lake Como in Italy (Lake Como, Italy - August 13th to 16th, 2025). We even used a boat solely for the purpose of lodging, a house boat docked in a canal in Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Netherlands - June 29th to July 3rd, 2025).

We also used some buses. In large cities, we liked to take the Hop-on / hop-off bus tours to get a feel for the city but we ride them for the whole route and not get off. It was the way we introduced ourselves to London (London, England - June 24th to 28th, 2025) and York (York, England - May 20th to 22nd and June 20th to 23rd, 2025) in England, Edinburgh in Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland - June 13th to 16th, 2025), and Dublin in Ireland (Dublin, Ireland - April 17th to 21st and May 16th to 17th, 2025). There were also a few specific bus tours, like the bus tour of Casablanca, Morocco as part of our Princess Cruise (Casablanca, Morocco - March 20th, 2025) and the Dover & Canterbury bus tour (Dover & Canterbury, England - June 27th, 2025) that we took from London.

Cable cars were a great way to get up mountains, like the ones from Chamonix to reach the Tour du Mont Blanc hiking trail (TMB Days 1 & 2: Le Brévent to Refuge du Fioux - July 20th to 21st, 2025), the gondola up to Compatsch in the Dolomites in Italy (Dolomites, Italy - August 23rd to 25th, 2025), the cable cars up to Hefelekar in Innsbruck Austria (Innsbruck, Austria - September 3rd to 5th, 2025) and the series of gondolas to not only reach the top of Schilthorn in Switzerland, but also just to reach our lodging part way up in Gimmelwald (Gimmelwald, Switzerland - July 13th to 16th, 2025).

We rented e-bikes four times. Two of those times they were our means of transportation from town to town, as they were part of our hike and bike tour of the Cotswolds (Moreton-in-Marsh, England - April 9th, and 14th, 2025) and our Bavarian bike tour in Germany (Bavarian Bike Tour - September 6th to 13th, 2025). The other two times were day tours, as we explored Inishmore Island in Ireland (Inishmore, Ireland - May 10th to 11th, 2025) and rode the Great Western Greenway, also in Ireland (Westport, Ireland - May 12th to 15th, 2025).

Hiking was our mode of transportation as we went along the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB Days 11 & 12: Courmayeur to Rifugio Walter Bonatti - July 30th to 31st, 2025), a 100 mile hiking trail through France, Italy, and Switzerland. The TMB was also where we experienced mountain huts as the majority of our lodging along the way.

Our other unique lodging experiences included a cottage on a sheep farm near Keswick England (Lake District National Park, England - May 22nd to 25th, 2025), a Skeabost View Pod which was a type of glamping cabin on the Isle of Skye in Scotland (Isle of Skye, Scotland - June 2nd to 5th, 2025), and a house boat in Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Netherlands - June 29th to July 3rd, 2025).

We also tried to include new experiences along the way. In Salisbury England, we booked the Stone Circle Experience at Stonehenge (Salisbury & Stonehenge, England - March 24th to 27th, 2025), participated in the Dunbrody Famine Ship Experience in Wexford Ireland (Kilkenny, Ireland - April 22nd to 25th, 2025), listened to trad music sessions (traditional music) in the pubs of Dingle Ireland (Dingle, Ireland - May 2nd to 6th, 2025), went on a Hawk Walk at the Ireland’s School of Falconry at Ashford Castle (Westport, Ireland - May 12th to 15th, 2025), spent a day at the Beamish Museum (a large open air museum) in England (Durham, England - June 17th to 19th, 2025), enjoyed a musical concert in the castle in Salzburg (Salzburg, Austria - August 26th to 29th, 2025), listened to a concert inside the cathedral in Vienna Austria (Vienna, Austria - August 30th to September 2nd, 2025), and took a cooking class in Varenna on Lake Como (Lake Como, Italy - August 13th to 16th, 2025).

In between those experiences, we explored small towns, such as Exeter (Exeter, England - March 27th, 28th, 31st, and April 1st, 2025) and Bradford-on-Avon (Bradford-on-Avon, England - April 1st to 2nd, 2025) in England, St. Andrews in Scotland (St. Andrews, Scotland - June 10th to 12th, 2025), and Rüdesheim in Germany (Rhine Cruise Day 4: Koblenz to Rüdesheim, Germany - July 6th, 2025).

And we toured our fair share of large cities, such as Dublin in Ireland (Dublin, Ireland - April 17th to 21st and May 16th to 17th, 2025), London in England (London, England - June 24th to 28th, 2025), Edinburgh in Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland - June 13th to 16th, 2025), Amsterdam in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Netherlands - June 29th to July 3rd, 2025), and Vienna in Austria (Vienna, Austria - August 30th to September 2nd, 2025).

In addition, we managed to work in some of our usual travel activities, such as visiting national parks and hiking. The national parks included the Teide National Park on the island of Santa Cruz in the Spanish Canary Islands (Tenerife, Spain - March 18th, 2025), Dartmoor National Park in England (Dartmoor National Park, England - March 28th - 31st, 2025), Killarney National Park in Ireland (Kenmare, Ireland - April 26th to 28th, 2025), Lake District National Park in England (Lake District National Park, England - May 22nd to 25th, 2025), Cairngorms National Park in Scotland (Cairngorms National Park, Scotland - June 6th to 10th, 2025), and Cinque Terre National Park in Italy (Cinque Terre, Italy - August 17th to 22nd, 2025).

Even though we were a long way from home, we were able to share part of our journey with some family and friends. Even before we left the States, a friend spent time with us during our Amtrak layover in Washington DC (Amtrak: Denver to Ft. Lauderdale - March 3rd to 6th, 2025) and a couple more friends just happened to be in Ft. Lauderdale while we were there for a few days before our transatlantic cruise (Fort Lauderdale, Florida - March 7th to 8th, 2025). Our daughter joined us to tour London (London, England - June 24th to 28th, 2025).

Then the finale of our trip was in Munich, where our son joined us along with a few other relatives as we all enjoyed Oktoberfest together (Munich & Oktoberfest, Germany - September 16th to 24th, 2025). The Oktoberfest was the inspiration for our whole trip and it was a great climax to end on.

Season Seven: Europe was a trip of a lifetime, but the logistics and planning took a lot of effort and time. So Season Eight: Route 66 is a little more low-key and relaxing. We’re back in Red Tail (our Winnebago EKKO), so we know what our transportation is. The price of gas is higher now, but we can cook most of our meals. And we can carry more clothes with us, not feeling like we’re living out of a suitcase, and no longer have to hand wash our clothing every night.

We’re surprised it took us this long to do Route 66, but the year 2026 seemed to be the perfect year. It’s the 100 year anniversary of Route 66 and one of us turns 66 years old this year. Of course, that probably means that the route will be pretty busy this year.

We’re basically following Route 66, but we’re doing it Backroad Buddies style. We’ll travel about two to four hours, then stop for three to four nights to explore the surrounding area. We’re starting off heading through northern Nebraska as we make our way over to Chicago to start Route 66.

After spending the 4th of July and America’s 250th in Chicago, we make our way down Route 66 to St. Louis in Missouri. From there we take a side trip Tennessee to meet up with Ann’s brother and friends for a week. Then we return to St. Louis to continue Route 66 all the way to Santa Monica in California.

We round out our main trip by visiting the Channel Islands National Park and a quick stop at the Grand Canyon on the way back home.

In addition to our main trip, we’re also doing a few shorter trips. We already made a two week trip to the Phoenix Arizona area with a couple of our friends. In the fall, we plan on going to the RV Miles Homecoming Gathering in Amana Iowa and to the Tucson EKKO Rally. On the Tucson trip, we’ll be picking up some sites that we had to skip during Season Five: Southern States in 2023. Those places include Saguaro National Park, Kartchner Caverns State Park in Arizona and White Sands National Park.

Well, that wraps things up. As we write this, we are already on the road. We got a late start this year, but it should still be a great travel season. And we can’t wait to share it all with you!

Check out our related video: Season Seven Recap of 2025 and Season Eight Plans for 2026

(Ann)