Lots to talk about with friends...

We're having great weather here for our visit to Ottawa. Highs of between 24C to 28C (75F to 82F) for the week! We'll take it. The kids may be back in school, but it's still summer for a little while yet.

We're only here until Saturday, and it's been an abnormally short visit to Ottawa since we spent so much time in Nova Scotia. But we've been busy every day seeing friends or family, and sometimes both friends and family.

How we travel long term with carry on luggage only

We belong to a facebook group called Senior Nomads. One of the discussions that often arises is how people travel long term using only carry on luggage. And there are lots of people who manage to do it, but there are still lots of people who travel with what we would consider to be too much stuff.

But of course it's a personal choice, and a lot depends on your travel style. Many people travel long term and stay for a month or more at each location. This means they are not often having to lug all of their stuff around. But when they do have to move, most of them will readily admit that it's a difficult and frustrating thing to do.

Working at McDonald's?

We're not doing anything super exciting, so I've been taking a bit of a break from the daily blog writing. Don't worry though... we will get back to our regular routine of travel in a week or so!

I also haven't been taking many photos. We're just kind of taking it easy and visiting some family and friends here in Ottawa. But there are a few I'd like to show you...

Mexico this winter?

Yesterday we said goodbye to Lindsey and family in Nova Scotia. 

Our flight from Halifax to Ottawa was uneventful. It's only a short flight, about an hour and forty five minutes but we were on an older Bombardier 400 turboprop with 76 seats. Its really not the most comfortable airplane, and it's noisy.

September is here!

Wow, here we are at the start of September. August feels like it just flew by, and September will likely feel the same for us. We have lots of fun stuff planned for September. 

And, our time here in Nova Scotia is up. We've had lots of fun with daughter Lindsey and her family. The grandkids kept us busy. In fact yesterday we went to really cool swimming hole.

August Expenses

As we expected it to be, August was an expensive month. 

We spent $4,729 CAD ($3,602 USD) for the month. And we had predicted that it would be a $4,000 month, but it came in slightly higher than that. 

We started the month near Max's home base of Dulmen, Germany and ended it near Halifax, Nova Scotia. And in between, we were in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Cabri, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, Alberta!

A fun day at Atlantic Splash Adventure

It was granddaughter Sadie's 9th birthday on Monday, so we packed a lunch and drove over to Halifax to the Atlantic Splash Adventure amusement park about 50 minutes away.

The weather for this type of activity was perfect. Sunny, with highs about 26C (79F). Even I went on the waterslides a couple of times, and I'm not much of a water person!

This kept the grandkids busy for a few hours

Ruth and I took the grandkids for the day to give Lindsey and Justin some free time to get the house set up the way they want. We packed a lunch at set off to the Ross Farm Museum.

This was our third visit to Ross Farm. We first came here in May 2011 when we were here for grandson Cameron's birth. That visit was just Ruth and I with our dog Whiskey when we had our motorhome Sherman. 

The highest tides in the world

Yesterday, Ruth and I took a drive up to Hall's Harbour. It's just a tiny fishing village on the north shore of Nova Scotia on the Bay of Fundy.

The Bay of Fundy hosts the highest tides in the world, and they are most evident at Hall's Harbour because of the way the docks are designed. 

The fog lifted, and we had a great hike to Cape Split

Our daughter Lindsey and her friend Tina arrived about 9pm on Wednesday night. At 16 hours, a long drive for them from Ottawa but they both said they felt it went by fairly quickly.

Tina is only staying two nights then she is flying back to Ottawa Friday afternoon. She really only came to keep Lindsey company on the drive. But she still wanted to see some of the area, so we decided to go do the popular Cape Split Trail.

Fun with foreign exchange

Nothing special going on. We're just hanging out in Greenwich, Nova Scotia waiting for our daughter to arrive. She's driving here from Ottawa today. It's a long (15 hours) drive to do in one day, but she's coming with a friend of hers, so they are sharing the driving.

Yesterday we drove to the nearby town of Berwick with granddaughter Sadie. Grandson Cameron went to visit with his other grandfather for the night. 

I think if we lived here I'd buy a season pass!

We were trying to find something different to do with the grandkids. We looked into whale watching, but most of the tours leave from the area west of Digby and it's too long of a drive to do there and back the same day. We also looked at go karts, but the only facility is near Halifax and it's closed for renovations.

Until we came across this...

Trail closed

Son in law Justin took the kids to his sisters place yesterday after lunch, so we had some peace and quiet around the house. It was a warm afternoon, but later in the day we decided to go for a walk on the popular ravine trail in nearby Kentville.

We were surprised when we got there that there was nobody around. 

Off to the beach

We've got some summer weather on the go here in Nova Scotia this weekend. Highs of around 28C (82F) with blue skies and sunshine. 

So yesterday, we took the grandkids to the beach!

I found another great option for travel medical and trip insurance

I've been a big proponent of Heymondo travel insurance for the last couple of years, but that company has recently changed their program so that the plan that we want isn't available to our age group. So I've been shopping around.

They make this stuff so complicated and time consuming to figure out. You have to read through all of the options and then the fine print to know what you're covered for and what you're not. I've spent a lot of time on this, and here's what I found...