Made it back to Europe and our motorhome Max!

Well, the last 24 hours or so are a bit of a blur. Let me see if I can back us up a bit and try and remember all the details...

It started off Thursday morning around 11:00am when our daughter Lindsey came to pick us up and take us to the Ottawa airport. She arrived right on time and I loaded the bikes into the back of her van.

We are off to Europe!

Not much time this morning because we are flying to Europe today! The next blog post will be coming to you from Germany.

We fly Ottawa to Toronto then Toronto to Frankfurt. From there, we take the train to the town of Dulmen where our motorhome Max is waiting for us.

Here's the plan for the next few days...

September Expenses - things are about to get much cheaper!

September was a little higher than expected. Mostly because of our plan to ship our bicycles and a few other things to Germany with us. But, we also did a lot more driving than we originally planned, and the fuel added up.

We spent a total of $3,338 CAD ($2,620 USD). Here's how it all broke down...

The next visit will be better

Just reflecting on the past few weeks as we prepare to head back to Europe tomorrow. 

We arrived in Ottawa in mid August right at the end of a heat wave, so our timing was pretty lucky in that regard. Overall, the weather has been decent. But as I've said before, September is the best time of year to visit Canada, in our opinion.

But we've been just too busy to enjoy it as much as we would have liked to.

Getting ready to head out

Only two more sleeps. We're busy getting ready to head out on Thursday late morning. 

We're not traveling as light this time around. The bikes are all boxed up and ready to go. And besides our normal carry on bags, this time we're actually bringing a larger suitcase with us as well that we will just ditch after we've emptied it upon arrival.

Best ribs ever.

Little bit of a late post today, but I didn't have much time this morning because we were told we had to be out by 10:00am.

Saturday turned out to be better than expected from a weather perspective. The guys weren't that ambitious but we managed to get three of us out for a short 5 km (3 mile) hike in Bon Echo Provincial Park. 

Good start to the weekend

Yesterday, I said goodbye to Ruth and drove two hours to a big chalet on Mazinaw Lake near Bon Echo Provinical Park to meet up with my friends for our annual guys weekend away.

Not the best weather though. It was actually chilly sitting out on the deck, and when it started spitting with rain it almost felt like it was going to snow!

Visit with the Newstate Nomads

After three different phone calls with Air Canada, we ended up getting our upcoming flights changed around enough to be able to bring the bicycles with us. The original booking was Ottawa to Montreal to Frankfurt to Dusseldorf. But part of the problem was the Ottawa to Montreal airplane was too small to accept the bikes in the holding bay. 

The other part of the problem was that we had a codeshare flight with Lufthansa on the Frankfurt to Dusseldorf leg and it was going to require confirmation from them that they would accept the bikes.

Changing some flights

Yesterday was the first day of fall. And you can sure tell winter is on it's way. The leaves are changing color, and the temperatures are cooling off. Here in the Ottawa area, you can go from summer to winter pretty quickly. There is still the possibility of some nice weather in October, but it's hit or miss. It's also common to get some snow flurries by the end of October. 

But we are out of here long before that possibility occurs. In fact, we fly out a week from today!

Toronto Zoo with the grandkids

My own grandmother lived in Toronto and I have fond memories of going to Toronto's Riverdale Zoo when I was a kid. In fact, it was walking distance from her house! But that zoo closed in 1974, and the animals were relocated to a bigger and better facility. Good thing too, because I remember the enclosure the black bears were in... just a concrete holding cell... it really wasn't very nice.

The "new" Toronto Zoo is so much better, but there are still some animals who just don't seem at home in their enclosure.