Boulevard Casino

Saturday December 1st...9:15pm

The Walmart in Burnaby is open from 7am to 11pm every day. So when it got close to 11pm last night, I went into the store and asked at the customer service if it was normal practice for RV's to park overnight at this particular lot. Because there were signs put up by the shopping mall
people saying "3 hour maximum" and "no overnight parking"...and we didn't want to get hassled in the middle of the night. It turns out that they were really good...the Walmart manager phoned the mall security people and told them Sherman would be parked overnight and noted our license plate number. We even moved to a better spot because the shoppers had just about all left by then.

In the morning, I decided I would buy 2 of the Walmart house brand RV deep cycle batteries. We had to pick up our rental car this morning before noon and it was about a 2 ½ km walk from the Walmart. So I went into the store around 8am and bought 2 batteries. Including tax the bill came to $236. But they have an unconditional 1 year warranty that will be honored at any Walmart in North America, and a 3 year pro-rated warranty. So I spend the next hour and a half or so in the Walmart parking lot changing Sherman's house batteries. So these are not the best batteries I could have bought...you can easily spend $195 each for better ones. But as it turns out, our old ones were 7 years old, and were probably pretty much worn out when we bought Sherman. So we had no idea how much better things are with decent batteries!

Walked over to the Enterprise car rental and picked up a 2007 Nissan Sentra. It's already got 40,000 km's on it, so it's pretty much worn out as far as rental cars go...but it'll be fine for a few days. (We are paying $91 taxes included for 4 days, so can't complain) Drove back to Walmart and picked up Whiskey and the old house batteries. Drove around looking for a better spot for Sherman for the next couple of days. Went to the Boulevard Casino and asked if they were "RV friendly". Had to wait and speak with the manager of security, and he guided us towards a spot where we are approved for 2 days! Good thing, because free RV parking seems pretty hard to come by in greater Vancouver. He recommended that we get Sherman over here well before suppertime because Jay Leno is playing in their theatre tonight and it's a sold out show...so the parking lot will be full. So we went back to Walmart and brought Sherman to the Casino.

We then took the car and drove closer to the border crossing to find a spot for Sherman on Tuesday night. It'll be more convenient for Ruth and her brother, Colin, to get across the border early Wednesday morning from a spot near the crossing. Sure enough, we found a grocery store parking lot that is regularly used by truckers overnight, so we think that will be suitable.

There is a snowstorm raging outside. This has been getting worse and worse as the day went on. We found out they're calling for 10-20 cm's and windchill to minus 10...(so much for global warming!) This is NOT what we signed up for! However, I also notice that they are calling for plus 12 and rain on Monday and Tuesday.

Just came back from losing $5 playing the 2 cent slot machines. Had it up to $7.80 at one point, but lost it all, dammit...lol.

Total Nights Sleeping in the RV... 48...

December Fuel $ 46.36

December Grocery $ 54.03

December Overnight Costs $ 0