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!