Happy Independence Day from up here in Canada!

Today, Canada is most certainly the apartment above the house having a big party as our American friends down below celebrate their day of independence.

It was actually on July 2, 1776 that congress voted to approve a resolution declaring the United States independent from Great Britain.

On July 3rd, John Adams (later to become President) wrote this to his wife...

What's with the F word?

Is it only us? It seems to me that the use of obscenities, swearing, and expletives has become more commonplace. Almost to the point of where it has no shock value anymore.

Almost.

Sometimes, I'm still shocked. Not by the use of the word itself, but by how much people don't care if they use it.

Invited to Algeria

There are friendly people the world over. It's all in your own attitude as to whether or not you get to meet them.

We've been following a fellow travel blogger, Johnny Ward, a young man from Ireland. He's on a mission to visit every country in the world and is currently in South Sudan. Not exactly a country that many people have on their destination bucket list!

Happy Canada Day - East to West

Happy Canada Day!

Yes, today is a national holiday for those of us up here in the Great White North.

We've been all across Canada. Several times, actually. So we have lots of photos that were taken in Canada. (We've never been to the northern territories). It's tough to choose, but today we're going to show you ten of our favorite pictures of Canada...one from each of the ten Canadian provinces...

Thick with forest fire smoke!

A fairly quiet Monday yesterday as people went back to work for a day or two. Not sure what to expect for tomorrow though as it's the July 1st Canada Day holiday taking place right in the middle of the week. We do have quite a few reservations for people coming in between today and tomorrow, and the weather is supposed to be decent.

That's if  the sun can make it's way through the smoke!

Leather jacket giveaway, starting today!

We've partnered with Motorcycle House to give away a prize credit valued at up to $200. You can use this credit to buy anything on their website...even a men's or lady's leather jacket!

Motorcycle House has been online since 2007. They started out the same year that we did! They sell over 500 different styles of motorcycle jackets.

Three cheques and a gift card!

Our mail gets delivered in town, so we only pick it up once every couple of weeks. Yesterday, the girl who picks it up for us came out to the park, so she brought our mail with her. We don't normally get too much mail (remind me again why they still have mail?) but yesterday brought a windfall!

We opened things up, and ended up with three cheques and a gift card.

It's not fair to the rest of the park!

Got everybody checked in yesterday afternoon on the first of our busy summer weekends. It was a hot one. Once again, we saw the outdoor thermometer touch 34C (93F), and it's forecast to do that again today and tomorrow and Monday. Summer is here!

Glad we have air conditioning in the house when it's like this.

$10 free...from Amazon.com

I was just alerted to an oddball special that Amazon.com has going on right now.

Simply buy yourself a $50 gift card using your Amazon.com account, and Amazon will send you a $10 promo code valid until August 15th.

I just bought one for myself. Pretty hard to go wrong!

Leather Jacket Giveaway!

We're excited to bring you another contest giveaway. When we're sitting here in one place for a while, it's nice to be able to liven things up a little by giving away free stuff to our readers.

And this time, I think it's our biggest giveaway yet. We've partnered with Motorcycle House to give one of our readers a leather jacket valued up to $200!

I just about jumped out of my skin!

We have a few snakes slithering around here at the park, and especially now that things have warmed up a little bit they have come out of hiding and are enjoying the sunshine. They're just bull snakes, and they're not poisonous but they can grow up to eight feet in length.

And I don't mind snakes, but when they surprise you, it's still a bit of a shock!

You shouldn't be afraid to use the campground bathroom!

This weekend is the start of our six week busy season here at the park. We've been busy doing some improvements. Two of our newer bathrooms needed painting, so we did one last week when our son Alex was here to help, and Ruth and I have been doing the other one this week.

Our main bathroom has been under renovation for the past six weeks. How can it take that long? Because the construction guys that were hired don't put in more than about 4 hours per day, and that's when they show up to begin with!

We're hosting another giveaway!

It's been a long time since we have hosted a giveaway. Actually, we're hosting two more giveaways. It never rains, it pours! But I'm not telling you about the second one yet. I expect we'll get to that one later this week.

So first up, we're giving away two books.

Colombia's Lost City

Doing some research for our six weeks in Colombia this coming November, and I came across a hiking trip that we've decided we want to do. Only problem is...it's not cheap.

But I think it's one of those things that is worth it.

Happy Ruth!

She had been totally missing her Tilley hat and we hadn't heard back from them as to whether or not her old hat was repairable. So we were surprised when a package arrived yesterday. Apparently, the day they received her old hat, they inspected it right away and immediately sent out a new one.

Now that's good customer service!