She just brought her minivan with her to visit us though, and she's staying in our spare bedroom.
And, another visitor showed up yesterday!
Doug is a long time blog reader who we met for the first time two and a half years ago at the long term boondocking area near the California/Arizona border. He's a full time RVer who retired at age 37! He's about the same age us us now. He was in Montana anyhow, and decided to do the extra drive up here to visit Saskatchewan for the first time!
And, he brought gifts!
Because he was coming up from the states, he asked if there was anything we needed from Amazon that he could bring up here. And there was! We were looking for a new daypack, and I had seen a very popular and highly rated one on Amazon. It was on sale for $17 USD and if you want to buy it on Amazon here in Canada, it costs $60 CAD!
It folds up like this and is extremely lightweight.
When you unfold it, it becomes this!
The regular price is $20 or so, but it does occasionally come on sale. Lots of different colors available.
We like it so much we're going to buy another one when we go south in November.
And another item he brought for us was a new solar charge controller for Sherman. This one came from eBay. There is a wide variety of charge controllers available at a wide variety of prices and the one that we have been using for the last 8 years was a pretty basic unit and the display has begin acting up. Doug is an electrical engineer and has had good luck with an inexpensive Chinese unit that he recommended. It's fully programmable and I'm looking forward to see if we can use it to put some extra life into our 8 year old Trojan batteries that I feel have never been properly charged in the entire life.
30 amp fully programmable charge controller for $30 USD!
So, we'll bring it back to Sherman and get it installed in October. Odds are good we will buy fresh batteries in November anyhow, but I am curious to see what the proper charging parameters will do for our old batteries.
And he brought us some cheese. We love Cabot Extra Sharp cheese, and at $8.50 USD at Walmart for a two pound block he brought us two of them. It's from Vermont and can't be bought in Canada.
And so we had everybody over for dinner last night, including our summer employee Kevin who had his last workday yesterday. It's just Ruth and I for the rest of the season.
Doug, Wendy, Kevin, me, and Ruth.
In other news, we finally got our old rotten front porch torn down. It was a good day to do the job because it was a little cooler out.
Before.
After.
We'll plant some grass seed and get it looking a little better before the end of the season.
Big sky Saskatchewan.
Another beautiful day today... hope everyone is enjoying their summer!
Nothing better than friends visiting, especially if they are bearing gifts:))
ReplyDeleteWe love having people/friends come and visit us, with or without gifts even when we bought the gifts and they the delivery service. :-)
DeleteLove that backpack what a great idea!
ReplyDeleteSo far we are impressed with the backpack. It seems a little small if we are going on a long day hike though so we are probably going to buy one more so that we will each have one for our hikes.
DeleteLove the gifts and pictures of prairie....big, beautiful, endless skies.
ReplyDeleteWendy also brought a couple of bottles of wine which we all enjoyed as well! We are lucky to have good friends. :-)
DeleteYes, prairie skies are beautiful and big.
A nice thick cement pad would look pretty good where the old rotten porch was. When the park board gets around to replacing the old modular housing, the new housing would easily fit right in.
ReplyDeleteA concrete pad would be nice but chances are that when they replace this trailer it will be relocated to a different area and then the hopes are to possibly put in a mini-putt course in this space.
DeleteFor some reason the pictures of the house didn't work altho' I got people picture!
ReplyDeleteProbably if you refresh your page or try again you will bring the pictures up.
DeleteSummer visitors are the best! I have a little something for Sherman I've been working on and it's just about finished. Is there a mailing address where I can send it? Love the last photo of Saskatchewan's "Big Sky"...love the prairies with the deep blue sky above :)
ReplyDeleteHi Lori, thank you for making a little something for Sherman, that is so kind of you. You can send Kevin an email at [email protected] then he can send you the address to our daughter's, which is where Sherman is right now.
DeleteYes, that is a beautiful picture of our Saskatchewan sky. The prairies never let us down with these amazing sky pictures.
My oh my, y'all are sure having some wonderful fun. Lots of friends and new toys. lol
ReplyDeleteYour summer "home" looks so much better without that porch!
We are having a wonderful time and we have had quite a few friends/relatives/blog readers come through the campground this year, we are very lucky indeed! :-)
DeleteOnce we get some grass growing where the old deck was it will look even better.
Who says no one visits Saskatchewan?
ReplyDeleteAnd we still say that! Even though we have had lots of visitors, most still haven't visited any of the other areas in Saskatchewan, they have just stopped by to see us which isn't a bad thing! ;-)
DeleteSo nice to have friends visit and especially with wonderful gifts. nice to get that old birch out of the way, looking good.
ReplyDeleteIt is wonderful having all these visitors come and visit us, we have been enjoying all the company.
DeleteThat old deck needed to come down and yes, and once we get some grass growing it will look even better. :-)
I have been studying up on Chinese MPPT charge controllers lately. Like you say the prices have dropped a lot lately!
ReplyDeleteOnce Kevin gets it installed and working, I am sure he will let you know what he thinks of it but that will have to wait until the end of September, beginning of October.
DeleteBeautiful Saskatchewan photo! Why are items often SO much more expensive in Canada than the US? I dont understand it!
ReplyDeleteThank you Natasha, it is a pretty picture of our Saskatchewan sky.
DeleteWe wonder the same thing! We can't for the life of us figure out why things are that much more expensive here, even once you take that exchange rate into consideration. We keep saying that we are being ripped off here in Canada!
Are you sure that was Doug and not Santa Claus? Christmas came early for you! :c)
ReplyDeleteWe paid for the "gifts" so Doug was actually more like the FedEx/DHL guy than Santa but opening up the boxes was definitely like Christmas! :-)
DeleteFirst off, love your header picture. I know that spot :) The house looks great without the porch. Your new charge controller really looks top drawer. Wow, what a day!
ReplyDeleteFigured you would have recognized this location!
DeleteKevin can't wait to get back to Ottawa now so he can get it installed and start playing with it. He will definitely do a blog post on it and report on what he thinks of it.