Chilly mornings and more blog reading visitors!

Woke up yesterday morning and the temperature was only 5C (41F). It was nice and bright and sunny but it was chilly, and there was a mist coming off the lake. Really pretty. But, you could sure tell that it felt like September in Canada. Funny enough, it's supposed to warm up by Friday with highs above 30C (86F) again!

It was chilly again this morning though, with some area reporting frost although we didn't see any here at the park.

Useful items to take on your travels

Travelling has become something that people do both as a hobby but also as an actual career these days, as the websites and blogs devoted to travel that have sprung up during the digital era have acted as an inspiration to many.

Of course, while most people think of exotic locations and adventure, bag packing is a necessary chore that must be completed before all that, but if you know what to pack it will make this process quicker and less stressful.

Winding things down here at the park

Well, our last long weekend of the summer is over. Labor Day weekend is normally pretty quiet around here, but it was slightly busier than normal this year. The weather was fantastic... warm and sunny all weekend. And fairly calm too, which made for great boating weather. Well, calm with the exception of a major windstorm that went through on Saturday night.

But, like any long weekend around here, it was not entirely glitch free!

Can't wait to get on the road again! But first need to fix some things...

Wow, thanks for the fantastic response to yesterday's post. It will be an adventure, won't it?? We think Sherman is up for the challenge, but he has not been used nearly enough the last couple of years. The last time we drove him was our trip from Saskatchewan to Ottawa at the end of last September. And while that was a good trip, he did have some minor mechanical issues along the way. Most of them were sorted out when I changed spark plugs and plug wires last fall. But there were some other things I noticed as well.

By the time we arrive in Ottawa, he will have been sitting for a full year!

A two year North American full time motorhome adventure!

Our motorhome Sherman, at age 21 is starting to show some signs of wear and tear. We think that he's still got lots of life left in him yet though! And with less than 100,000 miles on the chassis, we still believe that he's got enough motivation in him to take us on a two year North American motorhome adventure!

And so this is the plan...

August Expenses

Well, it was another cheap month. Exactly the way we planned it. Although, groceries were a bit higher due to the fact that we had five grocery shopping days during the month of August. And our friend Doug brought us a couple of Amazon packages up from the U.S..

But otherwise, it was a darn cheap month!

The little blue car is for sale!

As much as we don't want to sell it, we don't see the point of keeping it. We simply don't think we need a car for the foreseeable future. We will be living and traveling in the motorhome, and if we do ever need a car we will rent one as necessary.

If we didn't have to pay, we would just keep it in storage. But long term storage at $500 a year or so doesn't make sense for a $3,000 car!

A tough decision to make...

This was our fourth summer in a row managing the park. And we spent the summer of 2013 managing Sturgeon Lake Regional Park in northern Saskatchewan. So we haven't had a summer off since 2012.

We've decided we need a summer off, so we're taking a break.

It only lasted two weeks...

When our friend Doug was here earlier this month, he helped me install the new water pump assembly after the motor burned out in the other one. This is the second time this summer that a motor has burned out, and it's never happened before in the four years we've been here. Strange.

The pump itself breaks down regularly, but never as often as it has this year. Yesterday, it broke down again!

Activity at the park, and a special birthday!

Do you remember last year when one of our young great horned owls was electrocuted? You can read about it here. At the time, we had contacted the power company to see if they could put some kind of shield on the wiring to prevent it from happening again. They said that they would put it on their "to do" list, but I guess it wasn't a priority and it never got done.

But I kept on asking, and when one of their reps was out here on another matter two months ago, I brought it up with them again.

This time we got some action, and they went over and above what we expected!

Bugs!

We've been really lucky this summer with regards to mosquitoes. Especially compared to last summer when we were swarmed by the little buggers every time we stepped out the door. It was so bad last year that you almost couldn't go outside without having bug spray on.

It must be related to how much rain we get. Last year, it rained almost every second day. This year, we've hardly had any rain at all. In fact, we bought a new rain gauge for the park over two weeks ago and haven't had a chance to use it yet!

Movie tracking apps

We don't watch television, but we do watch movies. So when we're traveling both by air and in the motorhome, we always have a selection of movies on the laptop. But sometimes when I'm looking for movies to watch I can't remember if we've seen it or not!

I finally downloaded a movie watching app onto the smartphone. Not to watch movies with... but to keep track of the movies we've watched.

Another mouse problem!

Ruth had gone to Swift Current with the little blue car to do groceries on Wednesday and when she came back she said that she thought she might have hit a bird and asked if I could have a look under the front end. Well, I did not see any evidence of a bird strike.

However, I did notice something that didn't look quite right!

More blog reading visitors

We don't have many reservations at this time of year. In fact, I checked back in the blog to see what I was saying at this time last year and the year before... and it's the same thing. Still, we have a few campers who are enjoying the park when it is quiet. And although we don't have many reservations, we do get a few campers who show up unannounced.

Like Jim and Judy from British Columbia.

Retracing our route in Spain

I've been wanting to do this post for a while, so I finally sat down and did some mapping. More for our own records than anything else, but perhaps somebody thinking about RV'ing in southern Spain will also get some benefit from it.

And now that things are starting to slow down at the park, we're going to try to get back into our regular daily postings even though we still won't be actually traveling for another month or so.

Things are winding down...

There is still just over a month (actually 34 days, but who's counting!) to go for us here at the park this year, but things do seem to be winding down. The park is pretty empty this week, despite the nice weather.

That's typical for this time of year though. When harvest begins, most of the local clientele are back at work. And the Labor Day long weekend coming up is the last hurrah for the summer season but it will depend on the weather.

The day we met Sherman

I almost forgot! It was ten years ago today that we met Sherman.

On Sunday, August 19, 2007 we drove from Ottawa and crossed the United States border down to a little town near Albany, New York. About a five hour drive each way.

About two and a half weeks prior to that, we had made the rash decision to sell our house, quit our jobs, and buy a motorhome to travel North America for a couple of years!

Our route in Mexico this winter

We're sure excited about our return to Mexico this coming winter. I know, it's still over 4 months away and we've got a lot of stuff to show you in the meantime, including 19 days in Barbados and a six week RV trip through the U.S. to the Mexican border.

But what can I say? We're most excited about our return to Mexico!

A few decent wildlife photos around the park...

It was our friend Doug's last day here yesterday, and he wanted to take us out for lunch. There's a nice little cafe in the town of Cabri called "House of Heart" with good old fashioned home cooking. We've been there before, and it's a great little spot.

Fortunately, the park is pretty quiet during the week, so we were able to take an hour and a half and go in to town.

Back in business

When the pump when down yesterday morning, it was pouring rain. This is actually a good thing (not the timing, but the rain!) because the park has been under a fire ban for over a month now, and the steady morning rain was enough for the ban to be removed.

So the campers will now be happy that they can have campfires again!

Well, I was all set to do a blog post...

When someone called and said the water pump is down. I ran out (in the pouring rain) to see if it was something simple... but it's not.

What we chose for a new solar charge controller...

I showed you in our last post that our friend Doug had brought a new charge controller up from the states for Sherman's solar charging system. I wanted to expand on that a little bit and explain why I wanted a new one and why it is different from the one we had before.

Charge controllers are rated by the number of amps they can process to the batteries. In our case, we have 240 watts of solar panels that produce about 15.0 amps under ideal conditions.

Lots of news!

On Tuesday, our friend Wendy arrived from Moose Jaw to visit for a couple of days. She and her husband were full time RVers for 22 years until he passed away 10 years ago. Now, she has a class B van that she takes on trips, but lives in an apartment in Moose Jaw.

She just brought her minivan with her to visit us though, and she's staying in our spare bedroom.

And, another visitor showed up yesterday!

A pretty successful weekend

Well, our last busy weekend of the season is over. Sure, there will be a few people around the park for the next couple of weekends, but we won't be sold out again this year like we were last weekend!

Plus, harvest is starting a little early this year because of the dry June and July. So most of our local clientele are out working the fields for the next month or so.

You just have to give your head a shake

Here in the province of Saskatchewan, they have a great recycling program where almost all empty drink containers have a deposit on them. Juice boxes, all bottles and cans... virtually any kind of drink container. This way, none of it is tossed out the window of a car, and what is tossed out the window is soon picked up by someone who collects them for the deposit money.

Of course we collect a lot of those containers here at the park, and many people who camp here "donate" their recycling for the park to be able to collect the deposit.

Busy weekend coming up

Well, you may not hear from us much this weekend. The park is sold out, as it is every August long weekend up here in Canada. It's actually been sold out for almost three weeks now, and I'm still fielding about ten phone calls a day from people looking for a campsite.

We had about a half an inch of rain on Tuesday, but it wasn't enough to remove our fire ban which is instituted by the RM (Rural Municipality) that governs the area.

Google Assistant

In some ways, I am fairly familiar with computers and high tech stuff. In other ways, we're definitely a little behind the times.

For example, we didn't own a "smart" phone until our son donated his old iPhone 4s to us just over two years ago. And of course the iPhone 4s was ahead of it's time when it came out in 2011... but by mid 2015, the time we started using it, technology had already surpassed it.

July Expenses

Well here we are on the last day of July! Tomorrow, we'll be able to say "next month we're outta here!"...lol.

And we're not planning on spending any money today, so we might as well give you our July expense report.

It was a good July for us! We only spend $675 in total, and that included buying a brand new laptop! Wow!

RV'ing in Newfoundland!

Canada's newest province is Newfoundland and Labrador. Often, the province is simply called Newfoundland although Labrador is part of the mainland and Newfoundland itself is an island. In fact, 92% of the provinces population live on the island of Newfoundland while 8% live in Labrador.

The entire area has a population of 528,000 people.

Parched

Last Sunday, the park was packed. It was a beautiful hot sunny day, with hardly any wind... perfect weather for getting the boat out on the lake... and that's exactly what people did. It was a zoo... hardly any parking spots and you almost couldn't make your way through the number of trucks and boat trailers that were parked out front.

Even at 9:00pm Sunday night when the concession usually closes, there was still a lineup of people trying to buy ice cream!

But by Monday, things had quieted right down. And yesterday was dead, despite the beautiful weather!

RV Caravan trip to Mexico

Most of our regular readers will remember when we led an RV caravan group in Mexico for the month of February in 2016. That was a kind of a test run for us to be able to decide if we wanted to lead a longer caravan.

And, we did end up making a commitment to lead one this coming winter. I was talking with the organizer yesterday, and it turns out that you can still come with us if you like!

Drive to the Arctic Ocean

We have some campers visiting the park who are from Whitehorse, Yukon Territories. We had spoken on the phone when they made their reservations here, and I had mentioned how we wanted to drive up there in the motorhome someday.

She had offered to bring some tourist info down with them, and they were here this weekend.

Nova Scotia

One of our favorite provinces in Canada is Nova Scotia. We've spent a fair bit of time there because our daughter and her husband Justin lived there for about 7 years and our grandson Cameron was born in Nova Scotia!

And Nova Scotia is a fantastic province to explore in the motorhome. Fabulous little coves and fishing villages, and easy boondocking.

Visitors, and a project almost finished...

Had an email a couple of weeks ago from blog reader Nancy and her husband Larry, a couple from Washington state who were coming through the area and wanted to stop in and say hi. Of course! We love getting visitors here at the park.

So Nancy and Larry arrived with their big diesel pusher motorhome... certainly one of the bigger rigs we've ever seen here...

Prince Edward Island

I had tried to get our profile of Canada's different provinces and territories finished by Canada's 150th birthday celebration on July 1st, but it just didn't happen. Oh well... we're just going to continue and get it finished anyhow!

So next up is Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province.

What's the least money you would have to spend to get a usable motorhome...?

I don't know what I was thinking that made me go on the kijiji website (similar to Craigslist, but here in Canada) looking at cheap motorhomes the other day. But it got us thinking... how little could you spend on an RV that would take you to South America?

Ever since we went to Colombia, we've thought about driving from Canada to the southernmost tip of Argentina and Tierra del Fuego National Park.

It almost seems too cheap...

When we go back to Ottawa at the end of September we'll need some transportation. So I've been checking the car rental prices, and came across a website that looks like it's going to pay off.

I had found a pretty good deal through Thrifty Car Rental. Including taxes, it was going to be $396 CAD ($315 USD) for three weeks. Not bad, and I booked it.

It feels like a long weekend!

When I ordered a new laptop on Amazon Prime Day last Tuesday, the shipment said it would arrive on Monday the 17th. But I got the arrival notification on Friday morning so I headed in to the post office to pick it up before the weekend.

I've been using my old laptop as the office computer here since May, and it was getting to be a pain bringing it between the house and the office every time I wanted to do something.