Happy Birthday, Canada!

Canada's 147th birthday today, and of course it's a national holiday across the country. It was on this date in 1867 that the British North American Act combined the colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the then Province of Canada (the lower sections of modern day Ontario and Quebec) to become the country of Canada.

British Columbia and Prince Edward Island joined Canada by 1873, with Saskatchewan and Alberta being created in 1905. Newfoundland joined the party in 1949.

It was an odd weekend...

The weekend went pretty smoothly actually. But what made it odd was a bit of lack of people. Our daily campsites were pretty much sold out, and those people were camping and having fun. But a lot of the regular campers from our seasonal sites weren't there!

And the weekend is not really over yet because today is a sort of a holiday. Actually, the holiday (Canada Day) is tomorrow...July 1st. But because it takes place on a Tuesday, many people across the country will have taken today off work as well as tomorrow.

My Photo of the Loch Ness Monster!

I saw some photos the other day that made me want to return to Scotland. We were there once, for a week way back in May of 1987. Holy cow, that's more than 25 years ago!

A lot of the photos I was looking at were from Scotland's Isle of Skye. I have some history there, and it's always been on our list of places we want to see. Can't really remember why we didn't go there back in 1987, but we had an 8 month old daughter at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it.

And so it begins...

A pretty good start to our busy summer season here at the campground. We had everything ready to go, or at least we thought we did. Turns out that we missed a couple of things.

Nothing serious, but it did cause a little bit of aggravation.

Enough visitors for a dinner party!

And we didn't even have to cook!

So... a nice little class B unit pulled in yesterday, and I'm outside talking to Sharon, the lady who runs our canteen. The couple in the class B park, and start wandering over towards us. He's got a bottle of wine in his hand. "Are you Kevin?" the guy asks.

Even more visitors!

Apparently being only 45 minutes off the Trans Canada highway means that we're a lot more accessible to travelers.

We've been here less than two months and we have already received our seventh set of visitors!

Two more days of peace and quiet

And then the fun begins.

It's going to be very busy here between June 27th and August 4th. Actually, we're sort of looking forward to it. The campground is pretty much ready for the hoards of people, and the water level has risen to the point where the boaters will be able to use  the lake.

How to explore Etosha National Park

For some of you, this will be a look at some of the many pictures we didn't get to show you while we were there in November of 2013. For others, wanting to go to Namibia themselves, this will be primer on how best to explore the park, and the things we learned that we could have done better.

First of all, Namibia's Etosha National Park is huge.

Have you got a gun?!

So the water is definitely rising. But not as much as they said it might. Actually, I think they were just a day or two off. It really only started coming up fast yesterday morning, and it did rise about a foot yesterday. It also came up quite a bit overnight.

I took a couple of photos on Saturday morning and again just now.

It wasn't meant to be...

I came across another fantastic airfare yesterday morning. It meant changing our (very loose) plans again, so we hummed and hawed about it for over an hour, despite knowing that it was a great deal.

Eventually, we decided to book it.

Very strange!

Man it is a small world sometimes, isn't it? Do you remember the strange coincidence we told you about when we were in South Africa? That was just simply weird. It still leaves us shaking our heads.

Well we learned of another strange coincidence yesterday.

All we need is a rocking chair...

Despite the fact that we have very few campers at the park, there's still a lot to do to keep us busy. Fortunately, I think we're now at the point where we're doing things that we want to do rather than things that we have to do.

Oh. Scratch that. I just remembered that I've got a loose toilet to fix. Don't really want to do that, but I have to!

Long day yesterday

Was up at 4:30am yesterday morning to take Lindsey and the kids to Regina airport for their flight back to Nova Scotia.

We've been getting a lot of rain the last few days and the hill leading out of the campground gets pretty muddy. I was a little worried about the ability of the little blue car and it's driver to get us up the hill!

What motivates you to travel?

We want to know what motivates you to travel and how do you like to travel?

Everyone has a different reason to travel and enjoys traveling in a different way. No way is the wrong way if it is the right way for you.

Starting to turn people away

We had quite a few phone calls and emails yesterday from people wanting a campsite for the long weekend. But most of them want a full hookups campsite and we're pretty much sold out. There are a few tenting sites remaining, and a couple of 15 amp electric and water sites with no sewer hookups.

The Canadian July long weekend is a little goofy this year.