Dinner party

We've spent much of our last week here in Canada visiting with friends, as it could be a long time before we're back here again. 

We had Bob and Denise here on Monday, but forgot to get a picture!

Settle down...? Why would we want to do that??!

We actually missed it, and Ruth only reminded me the other day that we began our 18th year of alternate lifestyle travel on October 15th. In fact, you can go back and read our very first blog post to see when we set off across Canada with our motorhome Sherman.

We're often asked "when do you plan to settle down", or "what is the end game"?

What's the plan for Mexico?

One week from now, we will be sitting on an airplane flying direct from Ottawa to Cancun. We are sooo ready to go! Yesterday, after the ridiculous one hour time change that they still do here in Ontario, sunset was at 4:50pm! That is way to early to be getting dark. And it'll be even worse a week from now. So yes, we are ready!

Then, we have one night in Cancun staying with our friend Carmen who lives there. The next afternoon, we fly Cancun to Reynosa. 

Igor update

We are happy that we receive regular updates from Bjorn and Freya as they make their way to the Mexico border with Igor. It's almost like being there. And, we've been to many of the places along their route, so we are able to give them some hints on things to see and do, although they are doing pretty good on their own!

Friends from the Mexico RV caravan

The other day, I noticed through a facebook post that a couple of our Mexico RV Caravan friends were going to be arriving in Ottawa.

Michel and Louise were on our spring 2018 Yucatan caravan trip. They are the couple who took over when Sherman broke down and we had to gets some repairs done.

October Expenses

Financially, we completed Igor during the month of October. With the mechanical repairs finished, and the new fridge and furnace installed, the major items are done. All of that has been included as a "capital expense", which now stands at a total of $26,325 CAD ($19,000 USD). Anything else that needs to be done will be included as repair and maintenance as part of our monthly expenses, unless it is something that we feel will increase Igor's value.

Will we ever recoup that much when we sell him? It's difficult to say. That figure is certainly higher than we expected it to be when we bought him, but we did a lot of improvements for our own comfort and not necessarily expecting it to be returned to us. Time will tell.

Indian summer

We're having a bit of an end of season heat wave here in the Ottawa area. Temperature got up to 23C (73F) yesterday, so we took a drive down to the village of Burritt's Rapids to go for a walk.

Burritt's Rapids is along the route of the Rideau Canal.

Memories of Zihuatanejo

Yesterday, we went to visit Wendy, the mother of one of my oldest friends, Dave. 

Dave was the best man at our wedding! And his mom and dad were avid fans of Mexico, traveling down there regularly until they were well into their 80's. They really loved the beach town of Zihuatanejo, and we actually stopped in to visit them there a couple of times when we had our motorhome Sherman.

Great photo!

Yesterday morning, I was sat doing some computer work when I glanced out the window. I said to Ruth "oh, look at that" and pointed outside.

There was an owl sitting on a branch just the other side of the back deck!

Two weeks to go!

We're enjoying the down time, but we do admit that we're just about ready to go! It's starting to get chilly here in Canada, although they're calling for a two day heat wave this coming Wednesday and Thursday where temperatures are supposed to get up to 23C (73F).

Two weeks from today, we will be flying to Cancun.

A funny story

Our nearest Walmart is about twenty minutes away. We had to do some grocery shopping, and there were a couple of deals there that we wanted to pick up, so we decided to go to the one at Kemptville where there is also a forest with some walking trails.

So we stopped at the forest first to get some exercise.

Igor had an adventure!

Well, it was great while it lasted, but our unseasonably warm temperatures have reverted back to normal. As I write this, the morning of October 25th, it is -1C (30F) outside. That's about normal for this time of year, and in fact I see the forecast is calling for -6C (21F) by Sunday night.

At least we haven't seen any snow flurries yet.

Igor video tour, and a great deal for our Canadian readers

We heard from Bjorn and Freya yesterday as they made their way with Igor to Niagara Falls, and from there into New York State.

They had a few issues with US border control, which was not unexpected. As Bjorn says "When you are a Belgian citizen coming in with a Canadian van, and going to Mexico, it sets off multiple alarms".

A bit of panic!

So yesterday morning, Bjorn and Freya were getting ready to leave with Igor when there was a bit of a panic.

"I can't find our passports" says Freya.

You can still buy bacon and eggs breakfast for $4.99!

Saturday afternoon, we drove to Montreal to pick up our Belgian friends Bjorn and Freya. They had arrived in Canada on Thursday and spent a night with a friend downtown.

Traffic was terrible, and there were several delays, with more along the route. Eventually, they offered to take public transit to the north part of the city, and we met them there.

Back to downtown Ottawa

Ruth's sister Lesley is in town with her friend Lynn, so yesterday morning Ruth took off downtown with the two of them to do a tour of the Parliament West Block, and then a wander around the central Ottawa area. 

Of course many of the sights they saw were similar to the ones we posted a couple of weeks ago, but the parliament tour was interesting.

Nice weekend ahead!

Looks like we're going to have an "Indian summer" weekend, with sunshine and highs around 21C (70F). Great weather to welcome our friends Bjorn and Freya who are flying to Montreal today.

Their plans in Montreal have changed, so we will be picking them up there on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday. We have an airbnb rented just south of Ottawa for the four of us through until Monday, then they will probably take off across the border heading south through the U.S. with Igor on Monday morning.

For the first time in years, I have an actual useable phone number!

Cellular data access is always a problem for us when we return to Canada because it's just so expensive compared to other countries. 

During the last three months, we've been using an eSIM package that costs $30 CAD ($22 USD) tax included for 15GB of data. And that's data only... no voice calls or texting. And I'll tell you, 15 GB doesn't last very long anymore!

We have heat!

It was quite a few hours of work, but Igor's gasoline heater installation is finally finished! 

Drilling holes through the van floor, running the wires for the thermostat inside wall panels, tapping into the fuel line and running the line to the new fuel pump, and hooking it up to the heater, then running the cables directly to the battery was all more time consuming than I thought it would have been.

Out with the old, and in with the new!

Yesterday, I took a break from the furnace installation to do the fridge installation.

Igor's 31 year old Dometic propane/120VAC fridge was still working, but it wouldn't keep a stable temperature. Especially on propane, which we would have been using most of the time. Given that we are setting Igor up for an extended trip to Mexico and south of Mexico, we wanted something that didn't use propane, and something that we were more confident in.