We survived!

Well, we made it through the busy August long weekend here in Canada. The campground was sold out, and had been booked that way since the end of June. Today is the holiday Monday and so a lot of people will be leaving throughout the day.

Fortunately, we had great weather and it sure looks like everybody enjoyed their time despite things being a little bit crowded.

Sherman's roof

Sherman (our motorhome) is 20 years old this summer.

That means that the rubber membrane roof material that keeps the water out is also 20 years old, and near the end of it's useful life. In fact, even the Dicor company that makes  the roofing material says that their roof membrane is guaranteed for 10 years, but will likely last 20 years.

So that leaves two options if we want to keep Sherman healthy.

July Expenses

We did pretty much all of our necessary shopping in one month! Most of the items that we bought won't even get used until September or October, but it was going to have to be bought anyhow and we got some good deals.

So, grand total of expenses for the month of July... $1,685. (Keep in mind that these are Canadian dollars. For the U.S. equivalent you can subtract almost 25%!).

We don't often comment on news items

But the recent killing of Zimbabwe's Cecil the lion by an American trophy hunter has us wanting to give our own perspective on the incident.

First of all, the research I've done shows that there are approximately 3,000 lions in Zimbabwe. The country issues between 50 and 70 trophy hunting permits per year to hunt a lion. The lions are almost all located on public and private nature preserves.

Want to know how easy it is to hunt a lion?

Just about done with forums.

I used to sign up on various discussion forums, but I simply don't have the patience for wading through the useless posts and the lack of moderation. Drives me crazy, so for the most part I just avoid them now. I have tried two facebook groups recently, but I'm pretty much done with them now too.

Some of the discussion just makes you shake your head. Check this out...

Our top 10 blog posts

I noticed that yesterday was our 2,600th blog post. Almost eight years of our life, detailed for all to see. There sure is some interesting stuff in there. When I looked back at some of the early blog posts, I almost removed some of the stuff...things that I wouldn't write about today. But, they are part of the past and they reflect what I was thinking at the time so they can remain there.

The following are our 10 favorite posts, not necessarily yours, nor necessarily the most popular.

One more busy weekend to go

And then the worst is over.

The Canadian August long weekend is the busiest weekend of the year for us here at the park. This year, it's this coming Friday July 31st through Monday August 3. For those dates we've been sold out since the end of June, however there has been the odd cancellation due to harvest coming a little early this year. But when somebody cancels, the vacancy is usually filled the same day.

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro...?

Came across an airfare this morning from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro. Around $350 USD return for each of us. Definitely a good price, but not a great price. I think if it was a great price, and the Canadian dollar exchange rate was just a little better then we might have booked it.

But going to "Carnival in Rio" does have a certain ring to it, doesn't it?

Traveler finances

Those of you who never leave your home country don't need to worry about this as much, however for budget world travelers it totally makes sense to keep an eye on what the currency markets are doing.

And they are doing some interesting things lately.

Sculptures from our travels

First off, today is the last day to enter our current contest. For those of you who love (or want to try!) boondocking, this is for you...

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2015/07/for-our-rving-readers.html

Ruth mentioned the other day that we have a lot of pictures of statues and sculptures. So we thought we would show you some of the more interesting ones. Plus, I don't expect we've ever posted them here before. I tend to put up more landscape type photos here and skip over the artistic ones.

So, here are some photos you've likely never seen here before...

It was better than Christmas!

We've been doing a lot of online shopping recently and I had waited until all of the packages had been received at the local post office so that I only had to make one trip into town to pick them all up.

Man, there were a lot of packages!

Top countries in the world for RV camping

Although it's pretty much a given that the United States of America is at the top of the list as far as the easiest country in the world for RV camping, it is most certainly not the only place where RV'ing is popular and a worthwhile way to explore.

So we came up with a list of countries that we think would be the top places where you can enjoy RV travel. And why!

Tilley sold, but the quality will remain...

It was announced last week that Tilley Endurables was sold to a UK investment firm for an undisclosed sum. The founder Alex Tilley was wanting to retire and at age 77 who could blame him?!

Too bad he couldn't have found a Canadian buyer, but at least it sounds like the company and it's production will remain essentially Canadian.

Booked another flight!

We finish our contract here in Saskatchewan on September 30, and the very next day we'll be in Ottawa, Ontario!

Yes, we'll still be driving the motorhome down to Mexico City area in time for our flight to Colombia at the end of October. It'll just be a slightly more rushed drive.

Here's the plan...

For our RV'ing readers!

Our regular readers know that our style of RV'ing is different than most. If you're new here, I'll explain. We love camping with our motorhome, and we love it even more when it's free. Usually, camping for free means that you are not hooked up to any services, and you need to rely on your own self sufficiency...sometimes for days on end. And ideally, without another RV in sight.

To us, this is the definition of the term "boondocking".