Spending a month exploring New Zealand

A heads-up: we will be visiting my family and exploring New Zealand for 30 days from November 7th to December 7th.

Blog posts will continue while away, since the posts are a couple of months behind real-time. Though I may not cross-post to Facebook during this time, since that has to be done manually, so if you read the posts via Facebook, you’ll need to visit the Sinclair Trails website directly if you don’t want to miss my thrilling content.

We’ll continue the RV lifestyle in NZ: we are renting a campervan and driving around the country. Here’s our route, starting in Auckland, and finishing in Christchurch (the southern loop is in a clockwise direction):

New Zealand route

Not sure yet if I’ll have blog posts about our NZ adventure; no doubt I’ll take lots of photos, so I probably will. Stay tuned!

Taking a week off

We are heading into the Disney World bubble next week, and for that reason and since the blog posts are fast catching up to real-time due to staying in one place for multiple weeks recently, I’ve decided to take a week off from the blog.

So, no new Sinclair Trails blog posts next week. The next post will be on the 17th.

In the meantime, enjoy some cat pics.

Paladin and David

Paladin and water view

Paladin

Follow Sinclair Trails on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Micro.blog, Facebook, YouTube, and more

Sinclair Trails is now on the Mastodon and Bluesky social networks, joining Micro.blog, Threads, Facebook, YouTube, and of course the blog and its RSS feed.

On Mastodon, follow @[email protected].

On Bluesky, follow @sinclairtrails.com.

On Micro.blog, follow @sinclairtrails.

On Threads, follow @sinclairtrails.

On Facebook, follow @dejal (my personal account, where I cross-post Sinclair Trails posts).

On YouTube, follow @SinclairTrails for travel timelapse videos.

Of course, the Sinclair Trails blog

In a RSS reader (like the excellent NewsBlur, that I work on), follow sinclairtrails.com/feed.

New posts appear first on the Sinclair Trails blog and RSS feed, then on Micro.blog, which cross-posts them to Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads.

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Modification Mondays, Travel Tuesdays, Whereabouts Wednesdays, To and Fro Thursdays and Fridays

Looking at the blog posts I have scheduled for the coming weeks and months (!), I’ve decided to bring a little more uniformity to the posting schedule.

So starting next week, you can look forward to regular features on each day:

  • Modification Mondays: where I post about some improvement I did to our coach, e.g. this coming Monday will be documenting replacing the bedroom ceiling fan motor (again). These will continue to be organized in the blog category modifications.
  • Travel Tuesdays: a post with photos from our travel day, followed by the YouTube timelapse video. Blog category travel.
  • Whereabouts Wednesdays: a post reviewing the RV park where we stayed. Blog category campsite.
  • To and Fro Thursdays and Fridays: posts about things we did while staying there; parks, food, and other attractions. Blog category exploring.
  • If I need more than two days of posts for our activities, they’ll continue into the weekend, but not beyond.

I’ve edited my upcoming posts to follow this schedule. We’ll see how this goes, but I like more predictability in my posts, and hopefully you’ll enjoy knowing what kinds of things to expect. If you only care about RV modifications, you can just read Monday’s posts and ignore the others, and conversely if you only care about things we do and see, Thursdays onwards are for you. You can even filter the blog via the modifications, travel, campsite, and exploring categories, amongst others. (If you’re reading this on the Sinclair Trails site, see the sidebar via the hamburger menu for a complete list.)

Paladin

Taking a break: heading to the US Virgin Islands

I won’t be posting on this blog for a week or so, as Jenn and I will be dropping off our coach for servicing, Paladin for boarding, and will be catching flights for the first time in years, heading to the US Virgin Islands to celebrate Jenn’s milestone birthday.

Paladin

No doubt I’ll take lots of photos and will do some blog posts once we’re back, so you can look forward to that.

Next post on the 17th. See you then!

Moving to thrice-weekly posts

Jenn and I have been homebodies over winter, what with having colds, and not feeling like exploring much. So I’m running low on blog posts.

Therefore, I’ve decided to switch from an everyday posting schedule to three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Don’t look so shocked:

Paladin

I may do extra posts occasionally, and of course may increase the frequency again if I start to accumulate too many posts, but for now this seems a good pace.

Taking a break; happy Thanksgiving

We’ve been taking it easy recently, not doing many interesting things, so I’ve caught up with scheduled blog posts; the next post will be travel to our current location, which I don’t like to publish until after we leave.

So, after doing a new post every day for the past year or so, I’m going to take a break for a week, ostensibly to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday week. See you on Monday the 28th!

(I will still do single-picture daily posts on my personal blog, if only for the Micro.blog challenge going on this month.)

I’ll leave you with this picture of a roadside attraction from that travel day:

Selfie at Prada Marfa

Sinclair Trails logo

Sinclair Trails now has a professionally-designed logo, crafted by Gert van Duinen of Cresk, based on our design ideas (so credit to them if you like it, blame to us if you don’t).

The central concept of the logo is an S-shaped road, which is contained within compass points inspired by the Tiffin logo, and decorated with trees and mountains, and surrounded by the name:

Sinclair Trails logo

We also have an edition of the logo without the encircling name:

Sinclair Trails logo

And for smaller icons like the website favicon, there’s a simplified edition, with just the core elements:

Sinclair Trails simplified

I’ve updated the website, YouTube channel, Twitter account, and Facebook page to use the logo. (I think that’s everything.)

We will get a large sticker to put on our coach, and make some cards, too. Unfortunately not in time for the Tiffin rally, which starts tomorrow.