Stupid. Forgot to put money in the meter!

Took off yesterday morning at 10:30am for the three hour drive to Regina airport with Lindsey and the kids. Uneventful drive, and not the most scenic. The Trans Canada highway is probably the most boring part of Saskatchewan.

We stopped once for lunch at a picnic rest area, and made it to the airport at about 2:15pm with lots of time to spare for their 3:15pm flight.

Off to Regina airport!

The stars were obviously aligned when our daughter was booking her flights here. She picked the exact return date that the motorhome exchange people are coming to pick up Sherman.

So I'm driving to Regina airport this morning to drop off Lindsey and the kids, and then I've got about two hours to waste before Tana and Graham's flight arrives and then I'll bring them back to the park for Sherman.

Sad that we're not going with him!

We worked into the evening yesterday getting Sherman ready to go on his adventure. Our motorhome exchange people arrive Wednesday evening. They'll spent a couple of days here familiarizing themselves with Sherman, and then they'll be off for two months of touring the Rocky Mountains west of here.

We are definitely sad that it's not us going with him!  However, we get to look forward to two months exploring Spain next January and February.

Still using a paper map

I have to admit, I love our GPS system for driving anywhere. I like knowing all the details, like how far it is to our destination, and our average speed, and how far it is to the next turn. And, I really like having the free mapping program on our iPhone that we can use even when we're offline. I also like checking things out on google maps online, and using the streetview version for details.

But really...we also love traveling with a good old fashioned paper map!

5 Jobs For People Who Love To Travel

Most of us, probably once in our lives, dreamed of how it would be nice if you could have a job that also let you travel to different parts of the world. While some dream about it, others actually make such dreams come true and leave everything behind to pursue their dreams.

If you want to belong to the last group, and you have always dreamed of traveling the world and earning money for it, below we and travel enthusiasts from Travel Ticker are going to share a list of five best jobs you can try out as well. Who knows, maybe thanks to these jobs you will never in your life hate Mondays ever again!

Do you know your family history?

My father's family lineage came to Canada from Yorkshire, England as part of the Yorkshire migration to Nova Scotia that took place between 1772 and 1775. I was lucky, in that most of that family history has been passed from generation to generation including dates and occupations.

That history has been traced all the way back to Stephen Read who was born in 1734 in Yorkshire, England. He went on to become a Colonel in the British Army prior to moving to Nova Scotia in the 1770's.

They're back...and they're hungry!

Up until Thursday I hadn't seen any mosquitos. Ruth says that she had seen one or two. But I'll tell you, by Thursday morning it seemed as if all the eggs had hatched all at once!

Remind me again...why didn't Noah squash at least one those two mosquitoes??

The spooky house...

Every time grandson Cameron drives by an old abandoned house, he calls it a "spooky" house. Well, there's an old abandoned farm house on the road towards the park and we've driven by it several times while Cameron has been here.

He said that he wanted to see the inside, so yesterday, we stopped by for a visit!

Warranty claim update...

Ruth and Lindsey took the kids in to Swift Current yesterday to do the weekly shopping. While there, Lindsey and the kids went to the local swimming pool and had some fun in the water for an hour while Ruth went and did a few errands on her own.

She stopped in at the Salvation Army thrift store to see if they had a decent used pot for the house here at the park, but couldn't find anything worthwhile. However, while she was there, she did find something worthwhile!

May Expenses

Wow, another month bites the dust. May has come and gone, just like that. And, we're already 1/5th of the way through our time here this season! Not that anybody is counting...ha ha.

Expenses wise, we spent quite a lot of money! But a big chunk of it won't get expensed right away. We bought the plane tickets for our fall flight to Romania, but they will only get included in our expenses once we take the flight. We find it gives a truer picture of how much we spend on a trip when all the bills for that trip are in the month that we actually do the trip.

(Note: The following figures are in Canadian dollars. For U.S. dollar equivalent, you can subtract about 25%.)

Warranty problems

It's no good buying a product with a warranty if it breaks and then the manufacturer makes it too difficult to make a claim.

Such is the case with my camera bag. The bag is made by a subsidiary (Ape Case) of a company called Norazza...a company with it's world headquarters and distribution center located in Buffalo, New York.

A little dirt never hurt anyone...

The lake level has begun to rise...but the long term forecast doesn't look good. It's unlikely that people will be able to use our boat launch this year, and we probably won't have a swimming area either.

But that doesn't stop kids from having fun! Our grandkids proved yesterday that mud can be as much fun as water!

Nice to have a chef in the house!

Rainy start to the day yesterday as it had rained overnight, and then it poured for an hour or so in the morning before drizzling for a few hours after that. The rain guage says we had about 3/4 of an inch.

So that translated into a really quiet day here at the park, and maybe only four or five of our seasonal campers had showed up for the weekend knowing that rain was in the forecast. Today is supposed to be sunny, but rain is forecast again for tomorrow.

Camping the road less travelled...

An appropriate title for an article written about us by RV West Magazine. You can find it at the following link...

http://www.rvwest.com/article/journeys/camping_the_road_less_travelled

It's kind of fun reading about our story from another perspective. Looking back on the fact that we've been living a "different" lifestyle compared to most people our age for the last nine years or so, we wouldn't give it up for anything.

Getting Sherman ready for another motorhome adventure!

We're slowly getting all of the little things done to Sherman to get him ready for our motorhome exchange. Tana and Graham have arrived in Canada, but they've gone to Vancouver first and they're taking an Alaska cruise prior to coming here to pick up the motorhome on June 8th.

We got the new tires last week, and I made a new cutting board to fit the sink properly.

Grandkids for two weeks!

That's a bit of a long drive doing all the way to Regina and back in one day. From here to the airport was 309 kms (192 miles) one way.

I filled up with gas in Swift Current, and then filled up again at the same station on the way back. Figured out that the little blue car got 38 mpg keeping the cruise control right at 100 km/h (62 mph).

Off to the airport!

I love going to the airport. One way or the other, it means that somebody is traveling! Either we're going on another trip, or in this case...we're picking somebody up!

Our daughter Lindsey and grandchildren Cameron (5) and Sadie (2 1/2) arrive today for a two week visit. So I'm heading to Regina airport fairly early this morning, and it's a three hour drive each way.

Boondocking across Canada

One of our facebook fans asked about the possibilities of boondocking in Canada. Well, we've been all the way from coast to coast in our motorhome, and have never had a problem finding somewhere free to overnight.

Although Canada doesn't have the same type of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) opportunities that the U.S. does, Canada really does have much more open land available for similar use than the U.S.. The problem is that so much of it is further north.

C'mon up to Canada!

I was reading on a facebook RV forum the other day, and somebody was asking questions about driving from the U.S. to Alaska. Of course to do that, you have to cross the Canadian border. You should have seen some of the answers and comments. Yikes! These people had obviously never been out of their own country. And it occurred to me that a lot more Canadians cross into the U.S. than the other way around.

More than 75 % of the total Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Special visitors coming this week!

Late start to the blog post this morning. Woke up, and noticed right away that the water wasn't running, so had to go out and fix that up first! Not an easy fix, and I had to recruit one of the young fellas around here to go out into the muddy water and straighten out the intake pipe that had been blown around by the storm last night.

Pretty sure we've got it anchored securely enough now!

I always wanted one of these!

Sherman got some new tires the other day, and I'm a bit of a stickler for tire pressure, so when we're traveling with the motorhome I check the tire pressure at least once a week. When we first set out with the motorhome eight and a half years ago, I had bought a good quality foot pump at a decent price.

And occasionally, I used it on the motorhome tires.

I hate the sight of blood. Especially my own!

At our campground, the water comes directly from the lake to supply the individual campsites and the washroom buildings. Normally, we've got it all hooked up and running by now. But this year the water level is so low, and last week when it rained, it turned the shoreline to thick mud. So we had to wait for it to dry up again before we could get close enough to the water to put the intake in.

And, we were waiting for a rebuilt pump to be ready. Well, yesterday was the day.

New boots for Sherman

The last time Sherman had four new rear tires installed was in October, 2010...so about five and a half years ago. Those four rear Goodyear tires have never come off since. Never had a flat, or any problems with them. Except now, they had 56,000 kms (35,000 miles) on them.

If it were just me driving it, I probably would have waited until next year to replace them. But, we want the other party of our motorhome exchange agreement to have worry free motoring, so we are making sure that Sherman is in tip top shape for them!

An interesting visitor to the park!

Around noon yesterday, a couple of ladies came into the park and explained that they were waiting for someone who was canoeing from upriver. They thought that maybe he was only an hour or two away.

And, the canoeist had a GPS tracking unit with him, so we got them on line and figured out where he was on the river. It didn't look like he was too far away.

Does anybody make their own salad dressing??

Perfect weather we're having here at the park. High of 20C (68F) yesterday and no wind. This makes leaf blowing, raking, and cleanup a lot easier. In fact, we were enjoying being outside so much that we worked until just after 6:30pm!

And, we had our first two seasonal trailers show up. A little early, but they had both called in advance and asked. One of them was a huge fifth wheel, so they wanted to get in ahead of everyone else so that they had some maneuvering room, and it was a good thing they did.

That's a lot of RVs!

I see in the news that the North American RV industry is on track to produce a record 400,000 RVs this year. Wow...that's a lot of RV's!

I would guess that this high demand is a direct result of the baby boom generation retiring. That demographic group of people (now aged 52 to 70) making it's way through time creates great opportunity for economic impact to the sector that lies in it's path. But, the industry itself also says that younger families are also affecting sales, as is the RV rental industry.

And now I have two!

Clean up continues here at the park. We're definitely ahead of where we were last year at this time, although the rain on Monday and Tuesday was a small set back. Still, we'll be ready for campers next weekend.

Only thing that hasn't come together yet is our water. Even with the rain, the lake level has only risen about a half a foot in the last two weeks, and even though it will continue to rise it won't likely come to a decent level for another month yet.

Good news for international travelers!

It was announced the other day that Google Translate would be available offline for the iPhone platform starting immediately. For those of us who travel to countries where they don't speak English, this is fantastic news!

In fact, I already went to the "app store" and downloaded the necessary files.

I was wrong!

So, we had two solid days of rain on Monday and Tuesday. In fact, our rain gauge outside says that we got two and a half inches, so that was a much needed soaking for our grass.

The only problem with that much rain is that the roads around here turn to mud. They're like concrete when they're dry, but they're like mush when they're wet!

How to find great boondocking campsites

We were asked several times over the winter how we find great boondocking campsites. And it's not a short explanation, so we put off answering the question until we had time to write a complete blog post about it.

Boondocking. To us, the term means camping away from it all without any services. As in "out in the boondocks". It does not mean parking overnight at Walmart. That is most certainly not boondocking. It's simply parking overnight at Walmart.

Booked!

A steady rain fell throughout the day yesterday. Great for our grass, and great for the local farmers, many of whom had just finished seeding. And we had just had a fire ban instituted, so there's no reason that won't be removed. Raining again today, but it's supposed to clear up by Wednesday morning.

We don't take many days off while we're here at the park. There's always something that needs doing. But when it rains like that, it's an indoor kind of a day!

Planning for next winter!

We know that we are going to be in southern Spain completing our motorhome exchange deal in January and February of 2017. And that we plan to visit Morocco and Algeria in March and April of 2017.

And, we plan to be in Ottawa with our families for much of October and also at Christmas of this year.

But we still have approximately two months of travel to fill up between October 25 or so and Christmas.

A moose on the loose!

I spent yesterday morning hooking up the line to get some water to the park. It's about 200 yards worth of 2" tubing, so I had to splice a few of them together to get that distance. Got that much done, and today I'll hopefully get it up and running. We want to get some water on the grass (and to the bathrooms), although they are actually calling for a half an inch of rain tomorrow, so hopefully they're right.

We had a few visitors yesterday! Wendy and Phil are long time RV'ers and blog readers who live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and they came to visit for the weekend. They didn't bring their RV though, so they're couchsurfing with us.

Spring cleanup is a little easier this year...

It's been a few days since we've given you an update on our activities here at the park. Canada's May long weekend is the typical time of year for most campgrounds to open, and so we're in full "clean up" mode getting the park ready for it's May 20th opening.

And, quite a few things have made our job a little easier so far this year compared to last year!

A neat product, but...

As wireless technology continues to improve, manufacturers are coming out with some innovative products. Over the last couple of years, one of the neat things is wireless tire pressure monitoring systems.

I'm a stickler for checking my tire pressure, both on the motorhome and the car. It's important to have the proper tire pressure, and I learned from my years in the automotive business that many people don't check their tire pressure often enough. With the proper pressure, your tires last longer, you get better gas mileage and ride quality, and it's safer.

April Expenses

April was a pretty expensive month for us, but mostly because of the amount of fuel we used getting from Southern California up to Canada.

We spent a total of $2,523 CAD ($1,892 USD) for the month.

How much do we spend on a winter away?

This post was going to be our April expense report. But I figured it would be much more useful to detail how much we spent, and on what...during our entire 7 months away. (I'll do a separate post about April later today.)

Our regular readers know what we did all winter, but for the benefit of anybody new here, let me refresh your memories with the highlights...

These will be great for travel in the motorhome...

Well, the muscles got their second work out of the season yesterday as we cleaned up most of the fallen branches from the day use area. It does seem to be going a little faster than last year though because there aren't as many leaves around.

Although we get a lot of leg and aerobic exercise from the hiking we do over the winter, our upper body muscles don't get much exercise at all over the winter. Before RV'ing came into our lives we both used to do a lot of gym workouts, and even had a nice home gym at our house. Ruth even worked at a gym for quite a while.

And then there were two...

Ruth mostly worked on the house yesterday. The rain gutters needed cleaning, so she actually got up on the roof and did that. There's not much of a slope, so not really dangerous...you just have to be careful. And she trimmed back some branches while up there.

And, she cleaned all of the windows. They tend to only get done once a year, so they needed it!

Another neat gadget

There is nobody around who hasn't at some point needed to have their car battery boosted. Not that long ago, it used to be that you needed a good quality set of booster cables. Then, they came out with those portable booster battery packs, but they were fairly big and heavy.

Now, with the new lithium battery technology, a very small battery packs a powerful punch.

Back at the park!

So, we're back at Cabri Regional Park. This will be our third summer here as park managers. The first year that we arrived there were no leaves on the trees. Last year, things were a little greener. But this year, spring has arrived early.

In fact, it looks like we're heading straight in to summer and might be bypassing spring completely!

The Wildlife of Wales

There are fewer things more beautiful than the British countryside on a summer’s day, when the flora and fauna is in full bloom and the natural wildlife it at its most vibrant.

If you’re planning on taking a walk on the wild side this summer, North Wales is a good place to start a staycation safari.

8,000 miles later...

We arrived back at Cabri Regional Park yesterday evening. What a long four or five days that was! But we made it, safe and sound. And, we arrived to better weather than we've seen since we left Utah.

I figured out that we drove approximately 8,000 miles (12,800 kms) since the time we left Cabri last October 5th.

Into Montana

Filled up again yesterday morning in Lovell, Wyoming, this time at $1.97 per gallon ($0.68 per litre CAD). One more fillup today, and we'll enter Canada full of cheap American gas. Stopped at the Lovell Information Center to use their free wifi and have our breakfast.

A bit of a late start today, as we didn't get on the road until just before 10:00am.

All the way through Wyoming in one day

Long driving day for us yesterday as we managed to put 356 miles (570 kms) on the odometer. We drove from the bottom of Wyoming up to the top! I think that's the most mileage Sherman has ever done in one day!

And through a wide variety of scenic vistas.

We sure do meet a lot of good people

Woke up to a dusting of snow this morning, and read the road reports for conditions north of here...which were not good! So we decided to stay put for the day.

We had heat, and food, and internet...so we were fine to sit and wait it out.

Around 11:00am, there was a knock on the door.

Hiking with Kevin and Ruth

Okay, so we had some free time today and a half decent internet connection. So I uploaded a five minute video for you from one of our recent hiking excursions.

Now, youtube has changed the way they display videos and normally you won't see it at the best quality. You may need to click the little "settings" wheel down in the bottom right corner of the video screen and change the quality to 720p so that you can see it in decent quality.

Stranded in Baggs, Wyoming!

On the road at 9:00am yesterday morning, with a plan to make it to either Craig, Colorado, or Baggs, Wyoming. Or, somewhere in between.

The first order of business was to make it through the mountain pass on Colorado highway 139 heading north. The weather was good, so no chance of problems at higher elevations. And it turned out the road was fine.

Well, that was a nice morning stroll!

We got up early yesterday morning and drove the 13 miles to the Little Wild Horse Canyon trailhead. Had some breakfast, and then hit the trail right at 9:00am. This is a busy hike, and it was a Sunday so we wanted to be among the first on the trail.

Kevin, in Little Wild Horse Canyon.

We had planned on leaving early anyhow...

I have an aunt and uncle who have spent a lot of time camping and hiking in Utah, and they offered some suggestions about some hikes in the area. So yesterday, we first stopped at a short hike in Capitol Reef National Park, but then we drove through the park and out the eastern side of it.

Ruth, out for a short hike in Capitol Reef National Park Saturday morning.