How to Get the Best Airfare Deals

Very few people on your airplane paid the same price. In fact, the variance in pricing is amazing. But you want to be one of the lucky few who paid the lowest price! How do you do that? We've booked some fantastic airline fares over the last couple of years and we're going to show you how we do it.

There are three things you have to have to book the best deal. Patience, persistence, and flexibility.

Before and after

What a change to the park in almost four weeks. I took a couple of "after" shots this morning, but we've got some showers happening at the moment, so I'll try and do a few more another day when the sky is blue.

But for now, you'll get an idea of the changes.

Some things are worth the extra money...

When we received our new hats last fall, the good folks at Tilley had included a couple of surprises for us to try out!

Tilley is known around the world for it's hats. They've been making the best quality hats since 1984, and have since expanded their product line into other clothing and accessories.

I thought the water was supposed to rise in the spring??

The water level here at the park continues to drop. Lake Diefenbaker is actually a reservoir lake, formed by a dam at the eastern end. Most of the water flow comes from the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary, and the spring runoff from the mountains really doesn't reach this area until mid June.

I was told about a website yesterday that forecasts the flow to the lake, and they're saying it will continue to drop until May 31st.

Fun with airfares

I've been booking a lot of airfares lately!

We told you about our great deal ($471 return) from Calgary to Seoul, South Korea. But our daughter and son also have some trips coming up and I thought I'd tell you about the deals they got. One of them is totally amazing!!

What a day!

You'd think my "what a day!" title would be related to how much work we did at the campground or something. But no, it's because we went shopping yesterday! Let me tell you, I'd rather stay at the campground and work.

Okay, but first things first. I'm sure you all want to know who won $50 dollars in our contest...

Our baby owl is about to fly!

We want to talk a little bit about our pump and water system here at the park, but before we get to that we'll show you some more pictures of our baby owl. Actually, it's not so much a baby anymore...it's a youngster.

The changes in the owlet have been amazing over the last two weeks...

What do we eat?

A couple of weeks ago, we posted our grocery bill. Many of you have questions about our gluten free eating habits, so Ruth thought it would be good to show you exactly what she makes with all that food and how it fits into our daily intake.

So here's the list of what we eat each day...

Who wants $50 USD cash???

Yep, we're giving away some cash this time! We love doing these little contests, and it's been a while, so we're looking forward to seeing one of our regular readers pocket the cash! However, you can win even if you stopped by here today for the first time!

This time, we've partnered with DriveNow Australia who has sponsored this contest for you. It's pretty simple, so let's get to it...

Things are coming together

Due to water leaks from frozen pipes and valves over the winter, we didn't have the five washrooms totally ready to go when campers arrived on Friday. But all of them have full service campsites, so it wasn't a big deal. Besides, we did have two of them ready, so if they really wanted to use the public facilities they would just have to walk a couple of minutes.

We probably have twenty or so rigs in the campground at this time.

DriveNow in Australia

What started out as an advertising post almost has me sold on the idea itself. We've always known that the best way to explore Australia would be in a motorhome or some kind of van or RV. And we always kind of thought that maybe buying and selling would be the way to go because renting usually adds up.

But some of the deals from DriveNow are pretty attractive.

Open for business!

Well, our campground officially opens for business this afternoon. It's not totally ready, but most of the items not ready are beyond our control.

That's okay though, because it's not going to be busy. In fact, we don't have any reservations. Although there will be some of the seasonal campers here for the long weekend.

We're hosting another giveaway!!!

That's right, we're giving away some cash again! Working with one of our advertising partners, we're going to give somebody a little thank you for putting up with the occasional advertising post.

We love doing this kind of stuff...we make some money, and so does one of you!! But you'll have to wait until Monday morning to see the details.

Never expected to wake up and do THAT this morning...

I just booked us a flight to Seoul, South Korea.

I belong to several flight alert services, and I had an email waiting in my inbox alerting me to an oddball Delta airlines deal that went from Saskatoon to Hong Kong for under $500 return. That's quite a bit less than half the usual price, and I would have booked it but the dates wouldn't line up for us. So I started doing some research...

A little bit sore

We've worked hard these last few days. Because the upcoming holiday weekend is early this year, there isn't as many days as normal to get the park ready. And because our muscles are a bit out of shape from winter, we're a little bit sore!

But things are almost ready.

And they said it wouldn't last...

A special day for us today, as we celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary! We were married May 12th, 1984 at a little church in Galetta, Ontario, Canada.

We were only 22 years old when we got married. And we had only known each other for just over a year!

Only four more days

Including today, we only have four more days until the seasonal campers are allowed to start bringing their trailers and campers in. Our hired help has today off, but Ruth and I will be working.

We have around 122 usable campsites sites here at the park, and 80 of them are taken up with seasonal campers. It's those 80 sites that we have to have ready.

An update on our "family" in Mexico

I've been meaning to post this for a while now. Our regular readers will remember a couple of months ago when we asked you to help a family in Mexico who we have become good friends with. We actually consider these people to be family in Mexico!

Baby Great Horned Owl

Remember the other day when we posted a picture of a great horned owl? Well it turned out that it lives here in the park.

We think that it was the female, and we know that it has a baby!

Our grocery bill

Lots of stuff happening here at the park. We had the tree trimming guys here, a construction guy doing some work on the bathrooms, and the grader came in to fix our roads.

Nice to see things coming together!

Where the deer and the antelope play

There are lots of deer and antelope playing here!

Technically, they're not antelope. The "antelope" here are actually pronghorns or even pronghorn antelopes. But locally everyone calls them antelope, so that's what we're going to do as well.

"I'd like to make a campsite reservation please..."

Yeah, you, and everyone else!

Yesterday was the day we began taking reservations. We figured it would be busy, and we were right. The phone started ringing at 7:45am, and there was even one guy who arrived here at that time to make his booking in person!

Health update

Last October, I wrote a blog post about our health and our health care. You can read it here...

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2013/10/our-health-and-health-care.html

I had said I would update you a month after that, but we were pretty busy telling you about our Southern Africa trip! So here's the update now...

Getting the campground ready!

Leaves, and computers. That's pretty much how our day went yesterday. While I played computer technician for the day, Ruth did some leaves.

And yes, I did get into the computer system. I did a system restore to a date near the beginning of last season, and doing that reset the access password to whatever it was at that time. And I had found a piece of paper with a few passwords on it, and one of them worked!

Computer problems

Fortunately, it's not our computer! But it's still our problem.

We got our little office cleaned and organized yesterday and plugged in the office computer system. Fired everything up, and of course during the boot process the first screen shows the login, and asks you for the Windows access password.

The big question of the day? What's the password??!!

First day of work, and more pics of our park

Off to a good start yesterday! We met our summer student employee, and that's going to go very well. He was here last year too, so he's pretty familiar with things. Probably a few changes coming up just to do things our way, but it's going to work out fine.

I spent the day checking out the equipment and cleaning up the shop.

April Expenses

Well, April was the last of the expensive months. And again, when you consider that we traveled some of Mexico in the motorhome, spent time in Puerto Vallarta, and flew from there to Houston, Chicago, and Ottawa before driving half way across Canada... we did pretty well!

Whew. When we look back at what we did for the month of April, it was a pretty busy month!

Our home for the next five months

For those of you who don't know, we are working for the next five months as campground managers at Cabri Regional Park in Saskatchewan.

We arrived at the park yesterday!

Today's the day!

We're really excited to be arriving today at Cabri Regional Park where we're going to be spending the next five months.

We arrive in the town of Cabri at noon today where we'll be welcomed by the Chairman of the Board of the park and he's taking us out for lunch before we go to the park. The park itself is located about 20 kms (12 miles) from the town.

Four months of nice weather.

That's all you get up here in the great white north of Canada. June, July, August, and September. Sure, you might get a couple of nice days in May and October, but really there's only four months that you can sort of count on.

Arriving here in April is most certainly too early!

Four states in one day!

Yep, we left Ironwood, Michigan yesterday morning and we drove through Wisconsin and Minnesota and ended up in Grand Forks, North Dakota!

Sounds like a lot, but it was only 370 miles (600 kms). Actually, that is a lot for us! Today will be even more!

Across the top of Michigan

It was almost 10:00am when we headed out from our couchsurfing hosts in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Thanks for having us Sue and Jeff! You're welcome to come stay with us in Saskatchewan at any time!

But on the downside...we woke up to a dusting of snow!!!

$56 a night. For a campsite?

Yesterday, we drove from North Bay, Ontario to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. A fairly long day, but the drive went fine. We stopped at a couple of waterfalls along the way to take some pictures and stretch our legs.

And we were disappointed to learn that we will never be able to camp in Ontario Provincial Parks!

A good first day drive

But it didn't start off perfectly. I was driving Lindsey and the kids to the airport. We left at about 7:30am and her flight was at 9:45am. It takes about an hour to get to the airport, but after 10 minutes, Lindsey says "I forgot my phone!".

So, we turned around and went back to get it.

Road Trip!

Well, we're off.

Up early this morning and I'm taking Lindsey and the kids to the Ottawa airport for their flight back to Nova Scotia. They'll be happy to see hubby and Dad Justin again after a week away!

Getting stuff done

Yesterday, Ruth and Lindsey took the kids into Ottawa, picked up my mother, and went to the Children's Museum at the Canadian Museum of History.

This is the fancy museum on the Quebec side of the river. The one that used to be called The Museum of Man. But that wasn't politically correct, so quite a few years ago it became the Museum of Civilization. Then last year, they spend $25 million dollars re-branding themselves as the Canadian Museum of History.

Yep, $25 million dollars.

We're back on track!

How quickly things turn for the better.

One moment I'm searching for used cars, and a couple of hours later I'm driving the little blue car out of the storage building. It seems we're back on track!

In limbo...

Well, I heard from the car storage guy yesterday afternoon.

Seems we're kind of stuck for the next couple of days. Let me explain the whole story...

Still no little blue car!

Hmm. Nobodies fault but my own. Apparently I should have called in advance, but I figured a lot of other people would have made arrangements to get their cars out of storage this weekend so it would have been easy to simply add me to the list. But what's happened instead is that I'm getting answering machines at three different numbers. They're obviously out of town.

Oh well, all I can do is keep trying.

Seventeen flights in two years

I found a neat website the other day. It keeps track of how many times you've been on an airplane, and gives you a map and various statistics.

I listed all of our flights in the last two years. 17 different flights and 20 different airports!

Getting things sorted.

Well, we've got six days to visit with everyone we want to, and get things sorted out for our drive west and the next five months in Saskatchewan. First thing I'm trying to get done is to get the car out of storage, but so far I'm not getting any answer from the people who need to let me in there!

And of course I have to get it insured, but that's all done online. Then, the license sticker is expired and I need to get the (rip off!) Ontario emissions test done in order to get the new sticker.

We made it, but it wasn't a smooth trip!

We left Rancho Altarose at about 11:40am, only ten minutes later than planned. Kenny, the full time RV resident there, had agreed to drive us and our bags the couple of minutes to town.

We got there just as the bus did! Great timing. However, it was the last time that day that our timing would be great...

Busy travel day ahead of us!

Well, today is the day we leave Mexico. We'll spend the morning getting Sherman all prepared to be left behind. Then a neighbor will drive us the short distance to the nearby town of Valle de Banderas where we'll hop on the local bus to get to Puerto Vallarta airport.

And then, we'll be in three other airports!

Back at the ranch

We puttered around yesterday morning, and just had some coffee and tea and enjoyed the great views of Puerto Vallarta from the apartment. It was probably about 11:00am by the time we went for breakfast.

We didn't need any lunch, that's for sure!

A great day in Puerto Vallarta!

Yesterday morning, we had an offer of a ride in to Puerto Vallarta, so we took advantage of that. We probably wouldn't have gone at all this time around just to visit the city, but we wanted to visit a friend who we haven't seen for a while.

So we left the RV Park just before 8:30am yesterday morning.

I guess I should have clarified...

Quite the response to our post yesterday.

Besides the few people who commented on the post itself, there were ten or so emails with questions related to the idea of RVing in Mexico. I probably should have put more clarification in that blog post, but I didn't think the idea would have attracted that much attention.

Want to RV in Mexico...?

Back in 2007 when we first entertained the idea of driving our motorhome into Mexico, we were definitely nervous. We spoke zero Spanish, and the whole idea just seemed so..well.. foreign!

But we had some help, and we traveled for a while the first two winters with another couple who showed us the ropes. We're thinking now that we might like to show some people "the ropes"!

What a great afternoon!

The day was going along lazily, as most days seem to do here at Altarose Rancho RV Park. But we had mentioned to owner Garry that if he wanted to go for a hike at some point that we'd be wanting to go with him.

But this wasn't just a hike!

What's the rush...?

I read the other day that an RV'er drove from Puerto Vallarta to Vancouver in four days. That's about 4,400 kms (2,700 miles). How can that possibly be enjoyable? And why would you do it? I can't think of a good reason, but that's just us. I guess for some people it's all about the destination.

Having said that, in a couple of weeks we'll be doing our own marathon drive!

Hard to believe

We went for a hike yesterday in the Sierra de Vallejo mountains behind the RV park. We took the dogs with us. They love coming for a walk with us. And we like having them with us!

The area we went to is privately owned land, but it's protected under an umbrella of agencies. One of them is the "Alianza Jaguar" a group that exists for the protection of the jaguar in Mexico.

It's hard to believe that there are wild jaguars living in this tropical forest only 30 kms (18 miles) from Puerto Vallarta!