Our old laptops

Wow...slept in this morning! Ruth looks at the clock and says "that can't be right!". It was 7:45am!

But it was correct. It's a bit of a dull morning with some rain, so it wasn't very bright outside. Plus, I had been up until 11:30pm or so counting the weekend's receipts to be handed in, so I guess I was tired.

A day in the life of campground managers

Ruth was up around 7:00am yesterday. I was closer to 7:30am. Slept like a rock. I had called the RCMP and asked if they could do a drive through late Saturday evening, and apparently they had done so. They even called back and left a message that everything was okay.

After the fireworks, most people had called it a night, so we were a little surprised that it was a fairly quiet Saturday night considering it was a long weekend and we're full up.

But yesterday during the day was busy for us.

Fireworks!

I'm impressed that individual campers in a little regional park like this can raise $2,000 in private donations to put on a spectacular fireworks show.

And word gets out, and people came from miles around to watch the show. I heard several regulars saying that the park had never been so full. And, we had no late night problems last night!

Three drunks and a fire ring

Wow, busy day yesterday. And the campground is full. We got everybody checked in okay, with one exception. Turned out okay, but it could have been a pain.

So this one lady checked in to a tenting site that she had reserved. She asked for a load of firewood to be delivered, but when Russell went to drop it off, he said the site was empty.

July Expenses

Wow, today is the first day of August! Time is flying. We are 3/5 of the way through our contract here. And after this weekend, the park will be slowly emptying out over the next six weeks.

July expenses were pretty much right on schedule, in fact we had a pretty cheap month.

Finally made it out onto the lake!

Went out on a three hour boat trip yesterday evening. Great to finally get out on the lake and see what's around the corner!

The more we see of this little part of Saskatchewan, the more we like it. Took lots of pics for a change, so enjoy...

What's important to you?

Just curious what it is that makes for a great campground?

As campground managers, we know what we like and we try to implement those things into the park that we're running. But our ideas are ours alone, and we know that we don't always think like your typical RVer!

8 Reasons You Should Take an RV Vacation

Before we got into the RV lifestyle, we used to be tent campers. We took a lot of camping vacations with our children, including one two week long excursion to Newfoundland, Canada.

It was a lot of fun. But when it rained, or there were too many bugs, we were envious of the people in the RV's!

Our Oasis on the Prairies

This place where we are working really is a little oasis. Surrounded by the farm fields of the Saskatchewan prairies, you wouldn't even know it exists until you're almost here.

Yesterday, we went for a walk around the hills surrounding the park.

It's looking like a great week

And it's going to be busy here at the park. Next weekend is August long weekend here in Canada and the campground is sold out. Almost. We still have a couple of tenting sites open, but the tenters tend to wait until the last minute to see what the weather's going to be like.

And so far, the weather is looking like it's going to be great!

Would you visit Kazakhstan?

Do you even know where it is??

We receive quite a few emails from our readers, but I was surprised to open an email from a reader who lives in Kazakhstan and invited us to visit. I had actually forgotten about this until I saw a news article the other day regarding tourist visas to Kazakhstan, which have been historically very difficult to obtain.

Gotta give credit where it's due

Cell phone companies take a lot of flack, and usually with good reason. They simply don't seem to have very good customer service. We've also experienced poor service with them, and several times over the years I've been frustrated by their stupidity, for lack of a better word.

But yesterday I actually had a good customer service experience!

We love going to church!

Just not on Sunday mornings.

Anybody who knows us, knows that we are not religious people in any way. However, we do like going to church, and we have probably been to more churches than most people who are religious!

Couchsurfers coming for a visit!

We're excited that we've got couchsurfers coming this weekend! A younger married couple and their dog visiting Canada from the Netherlands.

Finally, we get to give back to the system. We had hosted a couple of times when we owned our home back in 2007, but since we sold we have only hosted once, when we hosted our friend June from South Korea.

Solar Panel Price Drop!

I can't believe how much solar panels have dropped in price since we originally equipped our motorhome with them almost six years ago. It's to the point where I can't really understand why anybody wouldn't have them.

I mean, even if you always park in RV parks, wouldn't you want the option of being self sufficient if you want to be?

Best rainbow ever!

They were calling for a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, and boy did we ever get one! It poured buckets for about a half an hour and then it slowly tapered off for another half hour.

And then the clouds abruptly moved on and the sun came out!

More than half way through

I meant to mention it last week, but we are now more than half way through our time here at the park. And, more than half way through busy season. The time has gone quickly!

As we get into the second half of our time here, we find ourselves doing more planning for the coming off season.

Park of the Year!

The Saskatchewan Regional Parks system has 75 different parks.  Each year, the Regional Parks board choose a "Park of the Year" and a "Park on the Move".

The park we managed last year was chosen as "Park of the Year"!

A two km hike at two o'clock in the morning!

We knew there would be nights like this. In fact, we've been lucky so far in that this is the first one at this campground.

The park is sold out this weekend, and will be for the next two weekends. Everybody comes out to enjoy the weekend, and some of them stay up too late. Often, it's the young people, but not always!

How often do you play?

We play almost every day! Whether we're traveling or staying here at the park, we always have some sort of game available to keep us occupied.

And when do we play?

During dinner!

Gluten Free Beer

The words "Free Beer" go really well together, but the words "Gluten Free Beer" don't do so well!

In fact, we haven't found any decent gluten free beer yet. That is, until we found out that a lot of beer is gluten free anyhow!

If you hate mosquitoes, you need to read this post!

This seems to be an exceptionally bad summer for mosquitoes in many parts of North America. So I'm going to explain how we deal with these little pests.

In one word, Thermacell

Planning for South Korea

Ruth has been spending a lot of her free time on the internet, planning for South Korea. For the most part, I do the searching for the best travel prices (planes, trains, buses, etc.) and she does the searching for the best things to do once we get there!

So far, it looks like we're not going to have much problem using up our 28 days there!

Great weekend!

What a good weekend we had! The campground was packed, the weather was perfect, and the people were having fun.

We put in lots of hours though!

My Grandfather's Watch

I didn't get to know either one of my grandfathers. On my dad's side, my grandfather lived in British Columbia and I only met him once, when my father took me for a visit in 1966. I was four years old, and he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack later that year. He was only 61.

On my mom's side, my grandfather lived in Toronto, and while we visited once or twice a year, he also passed away very young.

Almost a full house!

It's pretty quiet during the week here at the park. But on the weekends, the place is hopping! Our full hookup campsites are sold out this weekend, and will be sold out for the next three weekends.

Apparently things start to quiet down again after the August long weekend here in Canada (Aug 2, 3, 4).

How to save big shopping at Amazon

Okay, so I'll admit that we're fairly new to this. But in researching how best to serve you with this, I came across some things that will actually help you save money.

As our regular readers know, we're pretty frugal. I don't think we're "cheap". We just like getting the best value for our money, and a big part of that is not paying regular price for something. Everything comes on sale at some point in time, so if you can at all avoid it, don't buy something unless it's on sale.

So, here's what we found...

Almost finished!

Wow, what a busy four days we had! You'll notice that we took a rare blog post holiday on one of them. So now we've got some catching up to do with you and we have a few things to talk about.

Number one is our almost finished playground that is open for business!

Our Namibia top ten!

Back in January, we told you the ten reasons that you should visit Namibia . Today, we're going to tell you the ten places that you should visit while you're there!

We've put some new pictures in today's post, as well as the link back to when we were there so you can get more information.

If you give someone an inch...

they'll try and take a mile!

The Regional Parks of Saskatchewan have a policy that every passenger vehicle in the park has to have a permit on it. We sell day use permits for $8.00 per day, or season passes for $40 that are valid in every Regional Park in Saskatchewan.

Fun watching our new playground being built!

The new playground here at the park is our main capital project for this year. Interesting story behind the old one, and why it had to be replaced.

The one we replaced is only about six years old. But it was not made to standards that exist today, and so it couldn't legally be added to or adapted in any way.

Bermuda, and a Dead Rat

Still looking for ways down to Mexico from Seattle, where we'll be when we return from Korea in early November. Found a flight deal from Seattle to Bermuda, then Bermuda to Los Angeles. $366 USD per person. Great price. We could spend two weeks in Bermuda before heading to Los Angeles.

Good deal, however then we still have to make our way to Mexico and it's not much cheaper getting there from Los Angeles than it is direct from Seattle.

Happy 4th of July!

Hoping all of our American friends and readers are enjoying their holiday today. It's been a long time since we were in the U.S. on Independence Day. We think it was about twenty years ago!

Dammit. I left my 4th of July t-shirt in the motorhome! You'll have to make do with a photo from the past...

Lots of trailers, but no people

Ruth went into town yesterday to do the running around and grocery shopping. She almost met more people from the park while she was in town than we have at the campground! Odd, because yesterday was really our first real day of summer weather. Sure, there were a few people around and enjoying the park, but not as many as I thought there would have been.

The nice weather is supposed to continue though, so hopefully we'll see a full house this weekend.

June Expenses

We have really low expenses while we're working here at the campground for the summer. So how is it that we spent $1,900 in the month of June??

Well, we're suckers for a cheap airfare deal...

Happy Birthday, Canada!

Canada's 147th birthday today, and of course it's a national holiday across the country. It was on this date in 1867 that the British North American Act combined the colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the then Province of Canada (the lower sections of modern day Ontario and Quebec) to become the country of Canada.

British Columbia and Prince Edward Island joined Canada by 1873, with Saskatchewan and Alberta being created in 1905. Newfoundland joined the party in 1949.

It was an odd weekend...

The weekend went pretty smoothly actually. But what made it odd was a bit of lack of people. Our daily campsites were pretty much sold out, and those people were camping and having fun. But a lot of the regular campers from our seasonal sites weren't there!

And the weekend is not really over yet because today is a sort of a holiday. Actually, the holiday (Canada Day) is tomorrow...July 1st. But because it takes place on a Tuesday, many people across the country will have taken today off work as well as tomorrow.

My Photo of the Loch Ness Monster!

I saw some photos the other day that made me want to return to Scotland. We were there once, for a week way back in May of 1987. Holy cow, that's more than 25 years ago!

A lot of the photos I was looking at were from Scotland's Isle of Skye. I have some history there, and it's always been on our list of places we want to see. Can't really remember why we didn't go there back in 1987, but we had an 8 month old daughter at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it.

And so it begins...

A pretty good start to our busy summer season here at the campground. We had everything ready to go, or at least we thought we did. Turns out that we missed a couple of things.

Nothing serious, but it did cause a little bit of aggravation.

Enough visitors for a dinner party!

And we didn't even have to cook!

So... a nice little class B unit pulled in yesterday, and I'm outside talking to Sharon, the lady who runs our canteen. The couple in the class B park, and start wandering over towards us. He's got a bottle of wine in his hand. "Are you Kevin?" the guy asks.

Even more visitors!

Apparently being only 45 minutes off the Trans Canada highway means that we're a lot more accessible to travelers.

We've been here less than two months and we have already received our seventh set of visitors!

Two more days of peace and quiet

And then the fun begins.

It's going to be very busy here between June 27th and August 4th. Actually, we're sort of looking forward to it. The campground is pretty much ready for the hoards of people, and the water level has risen to the point where the boaters will be able to use  the lake.