May Expenses

Wow, another month bites the dust. May has come and gone, just like that. And, we're already 1/5th of the way through our time here this season! Not that anybody is counting...ha ha.

Expenses wise, we spent quite a lot of money! But a big chunk of it won't get expensed right away. We bought the plane tickets for our fall flight to Romania, but they will only get included in our expenses once we take the flight. We find it gives a truer picture of how much we spend on a trip when all the bills for that trip are in the month that we actually do the trip.

(Note: The following figures are in Canadian dollars. For U.S. dollar equivalent, you can subtract about 25%.)

Warranty problems

It's no good buying a product with a warranty if it breaks and then the manufacturer makes it too difficult to make a claim.

Such is the case with my camera bag. The bag is made by a subsidiary (Ape Case) of a company called Norazza...a company with it's world headquarters and distribution center located in Buffalo, New York.

A little dirt never hurt anyone...

The lake level has begun to rise...but the long term forecast doesn't look good. It's unlikely that people will be able to use our boat launch this year, and we probably won't have a swimming area either.

But that doesn't stop kids from having fun! Our grandkids proved yesterday that mud can be as much fun as water!

Nice to have a chef in the house!

Rainy start to the day yesterday as it had rained overnight, and then it poured for an hour or so in the morning before drizzling for a few hours after that. The rain guage says we had about 3/4 of an inch.

So that translated into a really quiet day here at the park, and maybe only four or five of our seasonal campers had showed up for the weekend knowing that rain was in the forecast. Today is supposed to be sunny, but rain is forecast again for tomorrow.

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.