If It Were My Home...

We're quickly realizing that six weeks in Colombia will not be long enough. Just the same as when we spent four weeks in South Korea, and South Korea is a lot smaller than Colombia.

I came across an interesting website the other day that compares various statistics from all the different countries in the world. Interesting stuff!

And the winner is...

Our latest contest was to win a one year membership to Boondockers Welcome, and yesterday evening we did the draw to find out who the winner was.

And we're happy to announce that it's our friend Renate Hoven. No offense to those of you who aren't regular readers, but we really do like it when one of our friends wins!

C*ck of the rock

I was doing some more research for our upcoming Colombia trip and I had read that Colombia has the largest bird list of any country in the world. You'll remember that we were impressed with some of the birds we spotted and photographed during our South Africa and Namibia trip and we're now looking forward to seeing some more interesting and colorful birds in Colombia.

There are over 1,850 different species of birds in Colombia!

Visitors!

We haven't had many visitors this summer. In fact, other than when our son came for a surprise visit in June, we haven't had any visitors.

So we were happy to hear that some fellow Mexican RV travelers were coming to say hello!

Ruth's doctor's appointment

It had been quite a few years since our last "annual" physical checkup.  Personally, I think that these annual physical checkups are a total waste of the system's resources, but I understand that is just my opinion. Others think differently, and that is apparent from the different provinces health care plans.

In Canada, even though we have "free" or "universal" health care, the program is administered by the provinces and each province does things quite differently.

The best beer in the world

The other day, I was thinking that it's been a while since I've had a beer. A long while. About three months actually.

And I think that's probably the longest I've gone without a beer or three since I was about 18 years old!

Another update from Volkan and Heather- Reporting from Sweden

Back in May, you had all enjoyed a guest post from our friends Volkan and Heather who were visiting United Arab Emirates.  Here is a link to that post...

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2015/05/whats-it-like-to-visit-middle-eastern.html

Now, our traveling friends are in Sweden and they've sent another interesting update for you all to read!

Power outage

Up until the last two weeks or so we had been having an exceptionally dry summer, however that has changed! We had a couple of inches of rain at the end of July, and the last day has been cloudy with thunderstorms on and off and we have woken up to rain again this morning.

Won't have to water the grass or the flowers for a few days! But, it is supposed to be a nice weekend.

Another RV'er giveaway!

When we travel, we like staying with people who are local to the area. That's why we're members of the couchsurfing community for when we are traveling without the motorhome. So when we heard that there was a similar website for people out exploring with their RV, we signed up right away!

And now, the good folks over at Boondockers Welcome have offered us the opportunity to give away one free annual membership so that you too can have a free place to overnight and meet some great local RV people in your travels throughout Canada and the United States!

Straight south!

Took a rare blogging day off yesterday.

I was looking at the map again...I must be getting itchy to get on the road! We'll be heading for Moose Jaw when we leave here, and then pretty much straight south from there. At least this way it'll be easy to choose a route that we've never done before.

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...