Camping the road less travelled...

An appropriate title for an article written about us by RV West Magazine. You can find it at the following link...

http://www.rvwest.com/article/journeys/camping_the_road_less_travelled

It's kind of fun reading about our story from another perspective. Looking back on the fact that we've been living a "different" lifestyle compared to most people our age for the last nine years or so, we wouldn't give it up for anything.

Getting Sherman ready for another motorhome adventure!

We're slowly getting all of the little things done to Sherman to get him ready for our motorhome exchange. Tana and Graham have arrived in Canada, but they've gone to Vancouver first and they're taking an Alaska cruise prior to coming here to pick up the motorhome on June 8th.

We got the new tires last week, and I made a new cutting board to fit the sink properly.

Grandkids for two weeks!

That's a bit of a long drive doing all the way to Regina and back in one day. From here to the airport was 309 kms (192 miles) one way.

I filled up with gas in Swift Current, and then filled up again at the same station on the way back. Figured out that the little blue car got 38 mpg keeping the cruise control right at 100 km/h (62 mph).

Off to the airport!

I love going to the airport. One way or the other, it means that somebody is traveling! Either we're going on another trip, or in this case...we're picking somebody up!

Our daughter Lindsey and grandchildren Cameron (5) and Sadie (2 1/2) arrive today for a two week visit. So I'm heading to Regina airport fairly early this morning, and it's a three hour drive each way.

Boondocking across Canada

One of our facebook fans asked about the possibilities of boondocking in Canada. Well, we've been all the way from coast to coast in our motorhome, and have never had a problem finding somewhere free to overnight.

Although Canada doesn't have the same type of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) opportunities that the U.S. does, Canada really does have much more open land available for similar use than the U.S.. The problem is that so much of it is further north.

C'mon up to Canada!

I was reading on a facebook RV forum the other day, and somebody was asking questions about driving from the U.S. to Alaska. Of course to do that, you have to cross the Canadian border. You should have seen some of the answers and comments. Yikes! These people had obviously never been out of their own country. And it occurred to me that a lot more Canadians cross into the U.S. than the other way around.

More than 75 % of the total Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Special visitors coming this week!

Late start to the blog post this morning. Woke up, and noticed right away that the water wasn't running, so had to go out and fix that up first! Not an easy fix, and I had to recruit one of the young fellas around here to go out into the muddy water and straighten out the intake pipe that had been blown around by the storm last night.

Pretty sure we've got it anchored securely enough now!

I always wanted one of these!

Sherman got some new tires the other day, and I'm a bit of a stickler for tire pressure, so when we're traveling with the motorhome I check the tire pressure at least once a week. When we first set out with the motorhome eight and a half years ago, I had bought a good quality foot pump at a decent price.

And occasionally, I used it on the motorhome tires.

I hate the sight of blood. Especially my own!

At our campground, the water comes directly from the lake to supply the individual campsites and the washroom buildings. Normally, we've got it all hooked up and running by now. But this year the water level is so low, and last week when it rained, it turned the shoreline to thick mud. So we had to wait for it to dry up again before we could get close enough to the water to put the intake in.

And, we were waiting for a rebuilt pump to be ready. Well, yesterday was the day.

New boots for Sherman

The last time Sherman had four new rear tires installed was in October, 2010...so about five and a half years ago. Those four rear Goodyear tires have never come off since. Never had a flat, or any problems with them. Except now, they had 56,000 kms (35,000 miles) on them.

If it were just me driving it, I probably would have waited until next year to replace them. But, we want the other party of our motorhome exchange agreement to have worry free motoring, so we are making sure that Sherman is in tip top shape for them!

An interesting visitor to the park!

Around noon yesterday, a couple of ladies came into the park and explained that they were waiting for someone who was canoeing from upriver. They thought that maybe he was only an hour or two away.

And, the canoeist had a GPS tracking unit with him, so we got them on line and figured out where he was on the river. It didn't look like he was too far away.

Does anybody make their own salad dressing??

Perfect weather we're having here at the park. High of 20C (68F) yesterday and no wind. This makes leaf blowing, raking, and cleanup a lot easier. In fact, we were enjoying being outside so much that we worked until just after 6:30pm!

And, we had our first two seasonal trailers show up. A little early, but they had both called in advance and asked. One of them was a huge fifth wheel, so they wanted to get in ahead of everyone else so that they had some maneuvering room, and it was a good thing they did.

That's a lot of RVs!

I see in the news that the North American RV industry is on track to produce a record 400,000 RVs this year. Wow...that's a lot of RV's!

I would guess that this high demand is a direct result of the baby boom generation retiring. That demographic group of people (now aged 52 to 70) making it's way through time creates great opportunity for economic impact to the sector that lies in it's path. But, the industry itself also says that younger families are also affecting sales, as is the RV rental industry.

And now I have two!

Clean up continues here at the park. We're definitely ahead of where we were last year at this time, although the rain on Monday and Tuesday was a small set back. Still, we'll be ready for campers next weekend.

Only thing that hasn't come together yet is our water. Even with the rain, the lake level has only risen about a half a foot in the last two weeks, and even though it will continue to rise it won't likely come to a decent level for another month yet.

Good news for international travelers!

It was announced the other day that Google Translate would be available offline for the iPhone platform starting immediately. For those of us who travel to countries where they don't speak English, this is fantastic news!

In fact, I already went to the "app store" and downloaded the necessary files.