Planning for next winter!

We know that we are going to be in southern Spain completing our motorhome exchange deal in January and February of 2017. And that we plan to visit Morocco and Algeria in March and April of 2017.

And, we plan to be in Ottawa with our families for much of October and also at Christmas of this year.

But we still have approximately two months of travel to fill up between October 25 or so and Christmas.

A moose on the loose!

I spent yesterday morning hooking up the line to get some water to the park. It's about 200 yards worth of 2" tubing, so I had to splice a few of them together to get that distance. Got that much done, and today I'll hopefully get it up and running. We want to get some water on the grass (and to the bathrooms), although they are actually calling for a half an inch of rain tomorrow, so hopefully they're right.

We had a few visitors yesterday! Wendy and Phil are long time RV'ers and blog readers who live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and they came to visit for the weekend. They didn't bring their RV though, so they're couchsurfing with us.

Spring cleanup is a little easier this year...

It's been a few days since we've given you an update on our activities here at the park. Canada's May long weekend is the typical time of year for most campgrounds to open, and so we're in full "clean up" mode getting the park ready for it's May 20th opening.

And, quite a few things have made our job a little easier so far this year compared to last year!

A neat product, but...

As wireless technology continues to improve, manufacturers are coming out with some innovative products. Over the last couple of years, one of the neat things is wireless tire pressure monitoring systems.

I'm a stickler for checking my tire pressure, both on the motorhome and the car. It's important to have the proper tire pressure, and I learned from my years in the automotive business that many people don't check their tire pressure often enough. With the proper pressure, your tires last longer, you get better gas mileage and ride quality, and it's safer.

April Expenses

April was a pretty expensive month for us, but mostly because of the amount of fuel we used getting from Southern California up to Canada.

We spent a total of $2,523 CAD ($1,892 USD) for the month.

How much do we spend on a winter away?

This post was going to be our April expense report. But I figured it would be much more useful to detail how much we spent, and on what...during our entire 7 months away. (I'll do a separate post about April later today.)

Our regular readers know what we did all winter, but for the benefit of anybody new here, let me refresh your memories with the highlights...

These will be great for travel in the motorhome...

Well, the muscles got their second work out of the season yesterday as we cleaned up most of the fallen branches from the day use area. It does seem to be going a little faster than last year though because there aren't as many leaves around.

Although we get a lot of leg and aerobic exercise from the hiking we do over the winter, our upper body muscles don't get much exercise at all over the winter. Before RV'ing came into our lives we both used to do a lot of gym workouts, and even had a nice home gym at our house. Ruth even worked at a gym for quite a while.

And then there were two...

Ruth mostly worked on the house yesterday. The rain gutters needed cleaning, so she actually got up on the roof and did that. There's not much of a slope, so not really dangerous...you just have to be careful. And she trimmed back some branches while up there.

And, she cleaned all of the windows. They tend to only get done once a year, so they needed it!

Another neat gadget

There is nobody around who hasn't at some point needed to have their car battery boosted. Not that long ago, it used to be that you needed a good quality set of booster cables. Then, they came out with those portable booster battery packs, but they were fairly big and heavy.

Now, with the new lithium battery technology, a very small battery packs a powerful punch.

Back at the park!

So, we're back at Cabri Regional Park. This will be our third summer here as park managers. The first year that we arrived there were no leaves on the trees. Last year, things were a little greener. But this year, spring has arrived early.

In fact, it looks like we're heading straight in to summer and might be bypassing spring completely!

The Wildlife of Wales

There are fewer things more beautiful than the British countryside on a summer’s day, when the flora and fauna is in full bloom and the natural wildlife it at its most vibrant.

If you’re planning on taking a walk on the wild side this summer, North Wales is a good place to start a staycation safari.

8,000 miles later...

We arrived back at Cabri Regional Park yesterday evening. What a long four or five days that was! But we made it, safe and sound. And, we arrived to better weather than we've seen since we left Utah.

I figured out that we drove approximately 8,000 miles (12,800 kms) since the time we left Cabri last October 5th.

Into Montana

Filled up again yesterday morning in Lovell, Wyoming, this time at $1.97 per gallon ($0.68 per litre CAD). One more fillup today, and we'll enter Canada full of cheap American gas. Stopped at the Lovell Information Center to use their free wifi and have our breakfast.

A bit of a late start today, as we didn't get on the road until just before 10:00am.

All the way through Wyoming in one day

Long driving day for us yesterday as we managed to put 356 miles (570 kms) on the odometer. We drove from the bottom of Wyoming up to the top! I think that's the most mileage Sherman has ever done in one day!

And through a wide variety of scenic vistas.

We sure do meet a lot of good people

Woke up to a dusting of snow this morning, and read the road reports for conditions north of here...which were not good! So we decided to stay put for the day.

We had heat, and food, and internet...so we were fine to sit and wait it out.

Around 11:00am, there was a knock on the door.