RVing Alaska and Canada
With the usual progression from tent camping to truck camper to mini-motorhome, Sharlene "Charlie" Minshall and her husband traveled all over the country on a shoestring while raising their children. They dreamed of eventually taking on a full-time traveling lifestyle together. This was not to be. "Charlie" became a full-time solo RVer after the death of her best friend and husband.In 1986, Minshall left her native state of Michigan and has since traveled over 250,000 miles throughout all fifty United States, seventeen Mexican States, and all Canadian Provinces and Territories except Nunavut.Although Sharlene stayed home to raise her two daughters, the last ten years before going on the road, she was a medical secretary in a Regional Radiation Oncology Center in South Bend, Indiana. Prompted by her daughters and various friends, she combined traveling with writing. She has published nearly 400 articles and columns in numerous regional and national RV magazines. Minshall has written six RV-related "how-to" and "on-the-road" adventure books. Since 1996, she has been an instructor for the Life on Wheels educational conferences held each year in Idaho, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.Major adventures outside of Alaska have found her living on a beach in Baja; RVing old Mexico as far south as Acapulco; traveling the Trans-Labrador Highway from Goose Bay to Baie-Comeau, Quebec; and being part of the first RV barge campground trip down the Mississippi River. Not satisfied with average adventures, she has often combined RVing with kayaking, motorcycling, paragliding and whitewater rafting.The author has made four major trips to Alaska since 1987, collecting "how-to" material, adventures and stories. On the trip north in 2001, the author's faithful Sprinter motorhome odometer turned over 200,000 miles. In a humorous and very personal way, Minshall tells about opening her arms to adventure, turning the lemon of losing her mate, into the lemonade of life after fifty.