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.

We're past the half way point...

We're now into the second half of our summer work season. Yesterday was the official half way point. The next month will go by fairly quickly because the park is busy, and then things will start to quiet down as summer harvest will start in mid August and a lot of our clientele will be hard at work.

September typically drags for me, but we've got a few projects on the go here to keep us occupied during the last month of the season.

Bought a new laptop!

Yesterday was Amazon Prime Day and like many of you I was in the market for a great deal. My current laptop is only about two and a half years old, but it was a cheap ($248 USD, $311 CAD) laptop when I bought it and the processing power isn't very good. It still works fine, but I was on the lookout for something that can keep up with today's technology a little better.

So when I saw that one was coming on sale for Prime Day up here in Canada, I made a point of getting up at 4:00am to buy it!

Ruth's brother's new trailer...

Pretty busy weekend here at the park. Not sold out, but busier than we expected it would be based on the reservations that came in May and June. Lots of last minute people calling to see if we have availability because the weather has been so good.

And, there are NO mosquitoes. Well, perhaps one or two. But compared to last year, there are none.

A project on the go...

A little project on the go here at the park. When things are busy, I can't go too far from the office area because I know it won't be long before my pager goes off telling me that there is someone waiting at the office. So Ruth had delegated me to do one of her landscaping projects nearby.

We had ordered a pallet of patio stones and they needed to be installed outside our main bathroom.

Surprise visitors!

We didn't have anybody scheduled to arrive here at the park yesterday, but of course we do get the occasionally unexpected arrival. And, of course they usually arrive right as we're sitting down to supper!

So yesterday as Ruth was putting supper on the table, I just happened to notice through the kitchen window that a trailer was driving up. So I headed out the door to meet them at the office.

Things are going pretty good so far...

Well, July 1st long weekend came and went and we're enjoying some beautiful hot summer weather here at the park this week... and into the foreseeable future!

Oh, I haven't mentioned our workcampers lately. Barry and Jeannie showed up here in mid June with their motorhome. They were readers of this blog, and applied to come and work with us when we advertised the opportunity last fall.

June Expenses

Well, we were pretty much on track with expenses until we bought three new pairs of eyeglass. But, it had to be done. And, our grocery expenses were still above what they should be but we continue to believe (hope?) that things will average out in that department over the next three months.

So, we spent a total of $1,033 CAD ($800 USD) for the month of June. Here's how it all broke down...

Barbados update...

We told you a couple of weeks ago that we booked a trip to Barbados. We leave Ottawa October 25th for 19 days of island life in the sun. It's been a long time since we've been to the Caribbean, and we're really looking forward to relaxing and exploring the island.

But Barbados is fairly expensive, so in true Kevin and Ruth fashion I started looking for a deal. Fortunately, one thing in our favor is that we'll be there before busy season actually starts.

Canada Day at the Park

The day didn't start off great. Our water pump went down at some point overnight, and I spent most of the morning trying to fix it to no avail. I ended up calling our local specialist, and he came out on Canada Day to fix up our problem. Turns out the impellers inside the pump had broken and nothing I could have done was going to fix it without having the right parts. But I tried really hard because I didn't want to have to call him on a holiday.

Meanwhile, Ruth was going around supplying water to the toilets to flush them manually because we still had a park full of people to look after!

Happy 150th Birthday Canada!

Ruth and I were only about 5 years old when Canada celebrated its 100th birthday on July 1, 1967. So we don't really remember the big event. And so we had better enjoy this one because it's highly unlikely we'll be around to see Canada's 200th birthday in 2067!

Even at 150 years old, Canada is a relatively young country. And it almost didn't make it this far. Most recently, the independence of the province of Quebec has been an issue, and in 1995 there was a referendum in that province where the people voted on whether or not to become an independent nation.

We have been *really* busy...

Our regular readers may have noticed that we've skipped a few of our daily posts this month, and at other times when we have posted they have not been at our normal posting time, which is usually mid morning.

We've just been super busy here at the park getting things ready for our six week camping season. The time seems to just fly, and now here we are at the end of June and our busy period starts today!

New Brunswick - Canada's only bilingual province

Canada is an officially bilingual country, but each province can choose whether or not to be provincially bilingual. Yes, it's all very complicated! There is only one province that has chosen to be officially bilingual, and that province is New Brunswick.

New Brunswick is a province that we haven't spent much time exploring. Much like Saskatchewan is a province that many people drive through while on their way west, New Brunswick is the province many people drive through to get to the east coast. And we are guilty of that as well!

Quebec - Canada's French speaking province

Continuing our series leading up to Canada's 150th birthday, we are now heading east to the province of Quebec.

Quebec has a population of 8.3 million, with most of the people living in and around the two major cities, Montreal, and Quebec City.

Rent out your RV...?

I saw a question posed on facebook the other day. It was asking people what they thought about the idea of renting out your own personal RV when you're not using it.

The responses were astoundingly negative. I mean, there must have been over 100 responses and they were all negative...

Except mine.