5/17/17 – Hoge Veluwe National Park, NL

Monday we left Gaasper Camping for the 35 kilometer drive to Utrecht. We (Bruce) are getting more and more comfortable with driving the camper – I don’t know if I said earlier but the transmission is a manual 5-gear on the column. We are completely comfortable with the “4-on-the-floor” transmissions or the old 3 gears on the column, but 5 forward gears on the column is taking some getting used to.
Anyhow, we got to the Texaco station, Donna’s pickup point, and while waiting for her we filled up the tank. We were pleasantly surprised to learn we are getting over 24mpg. That kind of mileage and the fact that Europe is far more compact than the U.S. will help us a lot in our travels. In fact, since we took Willie off premise and began the actual road trip we had cover 448km in 2 weeks; that, my friends is a whopping 278 miles. We’re covering a lot of ground.
Donna had her mechanic, Robert, install a door lock that we think will work to our satisfaction.
In our last rain storm we discovered a leak in the largest of our three skylights; Bruce and Robert devised a gasket to seal the leak. We hope it works.
Last tasks completed, we were off to the Hoge Veluwe National Park, a 5400 hectare (16,000 acres) former estate owned by the the Kroller-Muller family. They were a very wealthy couple in the early 1900s who purchased the land for a hunting grounds for him and a showcase for her art collection. Her collection of over 11,500 works was turned over to the nation in the 1920s and became the Kroller-Muller art museum, one of the most renowned museums in the Netherlands. Many famous paintings by many world-renowned artists are on display: Picasso, Seurat, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh are well represented. In fact, the Van Gogh collection is the second largest in the world with 90 paintings and more than 180 drawings.
We settled in at the Droom Park Hooge Veluwe, the same camping we discovered on our last trip in 2008. It is literally across the street from one of the entrances to the Park. Much to our dismay we found the campground being redeveloped as a stylish mobile home park (I’m sure they aren’t called that here and the homes are definitely not mobile) with the area left for actual camping confined to about 50 pitches which will be closed down this year. It is a real pity, this was one of the best campings we stayed in on our previous visit.

We opted to stay for three nights. Tuesday, a lovely day in the mid 70s, we spent projecting on the rig: we installed an indoor clothesline, a magnetic insect screen door (that died way quicker than it took to install, but I guess at 2.99 euros I was expecting way too much.) and rearranged the interior even more with the idea of using our space efficiently. We met our only neighbors, Ronald and Anita, on a week long holiday, from Breda. After dinner we sat and visited with them for a couple of hours. We made plans to play Rummycube – a game evidently known in the Netherlands as well as in the States – the next evening.
We’ve been pretty proud of ourselves for counting steps of 12,000-14,000 daily when we are touristing but we were shown up pretty strongly by these guys when they told us they rode their bikes to and from Arnhem, 30 kilometers away AND walked 17,000 steps in one day. These Dutch are so damn fit!!!

Wednesday we rode our bikes to the Kroller Muller museum. The day was going to be a scorcher at projected 82F. We prepared, dressing in very lightweight clothes, and bringing liquid refreshments along with our sandwiches. We opened the Map My Ride app on our iphones to track our ride and around 11am we commenced our ride. One way was about 14 km or over 8-1/2 miles and two thirds of the bike path was in the blazing sun. By the time we reached the museum, we were overheated, our thighs were killing us and we were pooped. (Please understand that, while we have excellent bicycles at home, it has been at least two years since we have done any riding). Getting off our bikes with pleasure, we took a few moments to catch our wind before entering the museum.
I love museums, museums and old churches. I love the history both represent – that window into a past that is no more.
The Kroller Muller has art dating from the 1500s to the modern era. The Impressionists, the Pointillists, the Van Gogh collection, all were happening right when Helene Muller was collecting and she has many famous paintings.
The museum also has a fabulous sculpture garden with amazing avant-garde pieces. Opened in 1962, it alone is 25 hectares (61 acres) with 160 works.
We took a couple of hours perusing the museum then prepared to ride home.
Oh god, we quickly found out we were not recovered from the first leg of the bike ride. Now we learned that we had definitely over extended ourselves as we pedaled ever more slowly, bodies screaming, to the park gates. Reminder to Bruce and Peg: for crying out loud, work up to longer bike rides slowly.
We begged off Rummycube with our new found friends, downed an ibuprofen and collapsed for a couple of hours before we started packing up for Thursday’s departure.
We are in the market for a portable gas barbecue so on our way to Aachen, Germany (we are actually leaving the Netherlands!) we will stop at Obelink, a giant camping store on the NL/DE border.
We think we have devised a plan of action for this trip. June 1 will find us on a ferry to the United Kingdom which we plan to tour as well as Ireland for most of the summer, about 3 months. Then we will return to the Continent and take 2 months crossing it to Croatia. After time spent there we will return to Mediterranean countries for the remainder of the trip. The UNESCO based trip became too difficult so we will mark them as we find them rather than specifically searching them out.
As happens with our travels, all itineraries are subject to change but this is the current plan.