Made it to Seoul, South Korea!

Wow. That was a long day.

But everything went without a hitch. The plane was only a few minutes late leaving, and it was a smooth eleven hour flight.

The time zone thing is different though!

Made it to Seattle!

Our flight from Calgary was an hour and a half late leaving because of a light bulb that wouldn't light! Some kind of a safety thing, so it's all good...but at least they didn't board us first. So we had an extra bit of time sitting around Calgary airport.

But some people had tight connections in Seattle and they weren't happy!

Made it to Calgary!

Liz came and picked us up right at 9:45am this morning in Cabri. She was heading into Swift Current anyhow and so we hitched a ride. We had a 45 minute drive to the Greyhound bus terminal, and then we waited for our 11:35am departure for Calgary.

The bus arrived and then the delays started.

What do we pack for a two month trip?

What a busy day we had yesterday getting ready to leave the park. I spent most of the morning helping the guy who comes in to blow out the waterlines. He has a huge diesel powered compressor that we hook up to the various lines and have to go around opening all of the valves until all of the water is out of them. Inevitably I'm still expecting there will be some freezing damage to repair in the spring, but you can only do the best you can do. Then in the afternoon I changed the oil in all of the vehicles and equipment so that it would be all fresh and ready to go next spring.

Meanwhile Ruth was cleaning up the house trailer, and sorting and storing things in there. Once we got everything done, it was time to pack!

September Expenses

A bit of an expensive month!

But, that's partly because we paid for a lot of our November airfare this month, which means that pretty much all of our winter travel is bought and paid for which means that all you'll see for the coming months is our living expenses. Really curious to see how that works out in South Korea!

One more sleep and we're outta here!

We're down to our final day at the park.

We'll sleep here tonight, and then tomorrow morning will be spent winterizing and tidying up the house trailer that we've been living in for the last five months. Oh, and packing! Then, because we won't have any running water after the trailer is winterized, we'll spend Tuesday night at a motel in the nearby town of Cabri.

And then Wednesday morning...we're off!

How to rust proof your car.

Yes, this blog is supposed to be about travel, but we like to mix things up a little and pass on helpful hints from our day to day life as well. Like how to clean your stove and this post about how to inexpensively and effectively rustproof your car.

For those who don't know, I spent 20 years working in the auto body and paint industry. I was a professional painter, and a licensed collision repair technician. There's a reason the little blue car doesn't have any rust on it. I do my own rustproofing.

The little blue car hits a milestone

We bought the little blue car just over eight years ago. It's the only car we've ever owned that we bought brand new. At the time, I was doing some contract work with GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corporation) and they offered us a deal at $500 over dealer invoicing and 0% financing over four years. I think it came to around $13,000 plus tax.

Couldn't turn it down!

Nine flights for under $1,000

I mentioned yesterday that we booked our final flights for this year. It'll be our first time flying with Virgin America for our trip from Seattle to San Francisco on November 4th. Paid $84 each for that flight. Great deal.

So just for fun, I added up what our upcoming flights cost us. Turns out that we're going to be on nine different airplanes over the next two months or so!

Feel like we're getting behind on things!

Having taken Tuesday to explore, and Wednesday to go into town and do one final grocery shop I now feel like we're getting a little behind on things. Both here at the park, and to do with finalizing our upcoming travel.

But, I just finished reserving the last flight...so we're totally booked now!

The Great Sandhills of Saskatchewan

We had heard of this little known ecological area about 80 kms (50 miles) from the park and it was one of the local areas that we wanted to visit at some point before we left here. We haven't had much time to explore, so we purposely took a day off yesterday and went to see the Great Sandhills of Saskatchewan!

8 things to research before visiting a new country

As our regular readers know, we're only just over a week away from our Korea trip! And a lot of our free time has been spent online, researching many different things regarding travel to a new country. We kind of share the fact finding, in that Ruth is pretty much in charge of playing tour guide, while I figure out the money and logistics. But there are quite a few minor details that we also want to know, and so we've made a list of what we investigate before undertaking travel to a new country.

Who wants to go camping??!

You can come here. The weather is to die for, and we have lots of empty sites. In fact, they're almost all empty!

That's because technically, we're closed. But if anybody showed up unannounced, we wouldn't turn them away...and they'd have the park to themselves. Peace and quiet, and did I mention the perfect weather?

Half a million Won

The Canadian banks are finally making it easier to obtain a little bit of foreign cash before you travel. We're headed for South Korea, and from the research I've done it's not always easy to get some local cash using an ATM in South Korea. You have to look for ATM's that specifically display a logo that says "Global ATM".

And apparently they're not that common outside of Seoul and the tourist areas.

Laptop shopping

So as I was panicking a little yesterday when I didn't know if my laptop was going to be salvageable, I spent some time laptop shopping online. I really didn't want to buy one yet though. It's tough to find a great deal on one in Canada, and especially tough if you don't have a lot of time to look and wait for a great deal.