Igor is legal for the road!

Monday morning, we were out the door at 8:30am headed for the "Service Ontario" location nearest us. This is where the provincial government does any business related to vehicle and driver licenses, among other things. It opens at 9:00am.

I had tried to get an appointment online, but the next available one was the second week of August. 

So we figured we would get there before they open, and we were prepared for a long wait.

Lots of other people had the same idea!

When they unlocked the doors, you file in and take a number. We were number 97, and they were at 72. But they had five service counters open, and things actually moved along fairly quickly.

What we needed was a trip permit. Because we are Nova Scotia residents, and had bought Igor in Ontario, we knew that we needed a trip permit to drive him to another province. This way, they don't actually give you new license plates... just a sticker that goes on the windshield. Then we would get the new license plates in Nova Scotia when we register him there.

In order to get the trip permit, we had activated the insurance last Friday. It was fairly cheap, at $377 CAD ($272 USD) for a full year. That's liability only. I guess that statistically, motorhomes don't get driven very often, so the insurance is reasonable. This covers us in all of Canada and the U.S., but we will need a separate policy once Igor gets to Mexico in November.

Legally, we were supposed to transfer the Ontario registration to our name within six days of the deal. We were well past that date because we had trouble actually getting the insurance, and I was hoping that wasn't going to be a problem. But with Igor sitting in the driveway and not being driven, the odds of being fined for that type of infraction were pretty much zero. And it wasn't an issue for the girl issuing the permit either.

We had an Ontario safety certificate that was done the day we bought him. But it turns out it wasn't necessary, and we will need to get a Nova Scotia one done before the ten day trip permit expires.

The girl was pleasant to deal with, and we were out of there around 10:00am Not bad at all. Cost was $23 CAD ($16.60 USD) for the ten day permit.

So, Igor is legal for the road and ready to go, other than getting his interior all packed up and organized for the trip.

We still needed to buy some necessities though. We headed to IKEA because that is where we had bought a lot of items when we had outfitted Max in Europe.

Ruth, doing some shopping in IKEA.

Then it was off to Dollarama where we picked up two suitable coffee mugs!

Back at Igor, I had one more major job to complete... the installation of the power inverter. I had already installed the lithium batteries, but hadn't hooked them up. And it's been too hot to be crawling around underneath where I have to run some cables for the DC to DC charger, so that can wait until we're in Nova Scotia. But the inverter was important so that we'll be able to keep our laptops charged while we're on the trip east. So I got the batteries all wired up, and the inverter installed. 

Because the DC to DC charger isn't installed, and the solar panels are also not going to be installed until we get there, the two lithium batteries have no way of being charged unless we are plugged into shore power somewhere, and we don't plan on paying to stay at any campgrounds. So I am really curious how the batteries stand up to four days of use without being charged. I'm pretty aware of our electricity needs while in the motorhome, so I think we'll be fine.

One more sleep, and we are off!

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Nice price drop on the popular RV Levelmate Pro. Don't forget to clip the extra 10% off coupon!

And in Canada...

Nice deal on this Countertop Ice Maker.