A nest full of baby birds

Yesterday was hedge trimming day for me, while Ruth and Lindsey and the kids went into Cabri to pick up some plants and flowers. Hedge trimming is a big job, and one that I've never done before.

But I caught on pretty quick and I think the finished product looks great!

I'd rather stay at the park!

Going in to town to do our weekly grocery shop is a pain in the butt! We left at around 11:00am and didn't get back until 5:15pm.

It's a 45 minute drive each way, and we have to make a lot of different stops in town. It doesn't help when the lineups at the checkouts are so long!

They Have Arrived!

Ruth did the three hour drive each way to Saskatoon airport yesterday to pick up our daughter Lindsey and grandkids Cameron and Sadie. Apparently she parked and walked to the terminal and as she entered the terminal, there they were! Perfect timing.

Photo of the Month!

You'll notice that today's header photo dates back to October of 2007. That was the month that we officially vacated our home in Ottawa and took off in our motorhome, Sherman!

For the next several weeks we're going to be featuring our choice of photo of the month as our header photo. We'll be going month by month since the October 2007, so this should continue with a different header photo each day.

Camping Slobs

Pretty uneventful weekend. We met some more of the seasonals who dropped their trailers and fifth wheels off for the summer. And we had two sets of young people show up and do some tenting.

After they left on Sunday morning, I went to tidy up their sites. One was not bad, and just required the normal cleanup. However the other was a mess.

May Expenses

A little higher than we expected, but not by much.

Really, our only expenses for the summer are food and internet. Oh, and of course insurance and a bit of fuel for the little blue car. But we arrived here to empty cupboards so we had some stocking up to do!

One month down...

And four to go.

Not that we're counting. To be quite honest, we're totally enjoying ourselves as managers here at Cabri Regional Park. And, we have lots of visitors to look forward to!

1,000,000 Unique Viewers

Sometime within the next hour, the unique view counter on this blog will cross the 1 million mark!

Even though we've been chronicling our travels since October of 2007, we've only been using this blog platform since June of 2008. So the counters that log our reader statistics only date back to that month.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

No, this isn't the beginning of a ghost story. It really was a dark and stormy night!

We actually had a tornado warning in the area yesterday. We didn't see one, but the conditions sure looked like there could have been one.

Now That's a Tractor!

Camping reservations are coming in at the rate of two a day or so. After the big rush the first couple of days when we began taking reservations on May 5th, things really quieted down. Those who knew what they wanted booked them right away! Now, the weather has been beautiful and people are starting to think about camping.

Looking at our reservations, it's easy to see that our busy time is going to be between June 27th and August 4th.

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!