The little black car

A couple of months ago I saw a car rental deal, and I booked it. Originally, the plan had been to rent a car and drive down through Toronto to Pelee Island and visit our friends Heinz and Uli. There are some other people we could have visited along the way, as well as Ruth's sister and her husband.

But as the date drew closer, we simply didn't feel like doing the drive.

Pinterest?

It's a lot of work to run a daily blog like we do. We still enjoy doing it so we'll keep at it for a while yet! But between writing the blog, answering comments, posting to facebook and answering emails related to the blog...it's quite time consuming. Then, there's a raft of other social media possibilities that are expected of you and so far we've tried to avoid them because they simply take up more time.

Can't bring ourselves to "tweet" on a regular basis, so other than an automated tweet once a day when we post the blog, we don't use twitter. Facebook has worked well for us though. We get a lot of readers through Facebook. But one that we've always wanted to try is Pinterest because we've read that other travel bloggers have had a lot of success with it.

Starting our 10th year

It was nine years ago on Saturday that we drove our new (to us) motorhome Sherman to North Bay, Ontario on his first major trip. So yesterday marked the start of our tenth year since we embarked on an alternative lifestyle that doesn't involve so much commitment to work.

We were only 45 years old when we decided to "semi-retire" and devote ourselves to a life of frugal living and frugal travel that doesn't involve owning very much stuff.

Roast beef dinner and a campfire

So, I'm with a group of my male friends up at a beautiful cottage for the weekend located in between Smiths Falls and Kingston, Ontario. It was looking to be a nice day, and so 8 out of the 10 of us decided to go for a hike.

We went to the nearby Rock Dunder hiking trail. It's a very popular trail, and of course on a nice fall Saturday it was pretty busy.

Good start to the weekend.

Met up with my friends yesterday afternoon at a beautiful cottage at Whitefish Lake, Ontario. I parked the car, walked in the front door about 3:30pm, and the place was quiet.

Nobody around.

This old motorhome burned to the ground...

We went out for another nice walk yesterday. It had rained a bit in the morning, but we waited until it was less than a drizzle, and we were fine. There are a lot of snowmobile trails in a nearby bush area, and at this time of year it's great for going for a hike.

We try and keep up a fast pace, despite the fact that there were quite a few picture taking opportunities. It's a really pretty area!

Where are we now?

A year ago, our daughter and her husband bought a house in the village of Osgoode, Ontario.

The village is located 37 kms (23 miles) south of downtown Ottawa, the capitol city of Canada. The greater Osgoode area has a population of about 2,500 people, although legally it is now part of the the city of Ottawa.

The trees are in their prime fall colors...

Ruth went for a short walk with her dad yesterday morning, and then later on in the morning she and I went for a fast paced walk around "the rabbit path". No idea why it's called that, because it's simply a walk around the block on the country roads out here.

But, we did 5.2 kms (3.1 miles) in 52 minutes. Not bad to get the blood pumping!

Three weeks to go

Only three weeks until we arrive in Bucharest, Romania. So I figured we had better start looking for somewhere to stay. Our first choice is always to stay with a local when arriving in a new country, so I started searching the profiles on the couchsurfing website.

There are quite a few choices in Bucharest, Romania. In fact, there are over 16,000 profiles registered for the city. But, we narrow things down quickly because we prefer a private room in a non smoking household within walking distance to the city center. Still, that left us with 23 possibilities.

Thanksgiving Monday

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Canadian readers. We hope you're enjoying your long weekend! Today, we're going back up to Ruth's dad's house and we're going to stay there with him for a couple of days.

Yesterday, we had my family visit for Sunday brunch at our daughter Lindsey's house. Grandson Cameron came with me to pick up our son Alex who had taken the bus out to this end of the city.