It's just the two of us now...

Our seasonal employee Valine had her last day of work on Sunday. Things start to quiet down here around this time of year and so she was scheduled to be finished now.

We also had two different gate staff helping through the busier period, but neither one of them lasted very long. Let's just say they didn't need the money very badly. At $12.60 an hour, you'd think it would be easy to find a teenager committed to the job, but apparently that's not the case.

And so it's just the two of us now to run the park for the rest of the season. That's what we've done the last two years, so we know that it's not a problem.

We want our money back!

Very often when you buy fruit in the grocery store, you don't know what you're getting. Oranges, cantaloupe, watermelon, and pineapple are all fruits that we have bought where you don't know until you get it home to eat it if it's any good on the inside.

And we're not putting up with it any more.

We bought a kayak!

Ever since we started RV'ing, we've always wanted a kayak. But we didn't want one of the hard sided ones because it would be too difficult to carry around. And the good quality blow up ones are like $400 or $500 and because we weren't sure how much we would use it, it was hard to justify spending that kind of money.

But yesterday, I spotted a deal. And when I showed it to Ruth, we both looked at each other and said "buy it"!!

Finally got the mosquitoes under control

Because of all the rain we've been having here at the park, the mosquitoes have been really bad. There was one week in July where you pretty much couldn't go outside without slathering on the bug spray. But I think we've finally got them under control with our new heavy duty mosquito fogging machine.

It took me a while to figure out the proper formulation to use for the chemicals, and the right settings on the machine. But now, it seems to work perfectly and is very effective at doing the job.

A few minor things going bad

Got into the motorhome yesterday to check out some of the problems our motorhome exchange guests had. They had very few problems actually. Sherman behaved himself while he was in their care! The major things were the inverters. The big one had gone bad a couple of weeks ago, and then the small one stopped working the day before they brought him back to us.

But yesterday, the small one turned on right away. As soon as I pressed the "On" button!

That is a lot of firewood!

We go through a lot of firewood here at the park. Of course it's not really camping if you don't have a campfire going, is it? At least that's what the majority of our campers seem to think.

And so we order a tractor trailer load of firewood once per year. It works out to 22 full cords. And no, you don't get much of a discount for ordering in bulk. $225 per cord, delivered all the way from Prince Albert, about 400 kms (245 miles) north of here.

Things are starting to wind down

It's hard to believe that things are starting to wind down already here at the park. I've got a simple little app on my phone called Dreamdays that counts down the number of days to important events. I don't look at it every day, but it's kind of fun to know that there are only 46 days (give or take a day or two either way) until we leave here.

Oh, and only 83 days until we fly to Romania...and 137 days until Christmas!

Solar Panel Basics

When we were talking about 12 volt battery basics the other day, I had mentioned that it would be pretty easy to write an entire blog post about solar panel basics...so here it is!

We think that there is no better feeling than to be self sufficient for the electricity in your RV. No more having to worry about finding a place to plug in, no worries about whether it's stable source of electricity, and no need to buy surge protectors or voltage regulators.

Guess who is home?

Yep, two months have flown by, and Sherman is now back home with us. Tana and Graham arrived here yesterday afternoon at about 4:30pm. What an adventure they have all had!

They left here June 8th and headed to Drumheller, Alberta and the dinosaur park there. Then, it was off to Banff and Jasper and the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

We didn't understand 12 volt batteries!...Part 3

In part 1, we talked about the basics of the 12 volt electrical system in your RV. In part 2, we talked about the different types of RV batteries. Today in part 3, we are going to talk about how to keep those batteries charged and maintained.

There are four common ways of charging your RV batteries.

We didn't understand 12 volt batteries!...Part 2

In yesterday's blog post we talked about your RV's battery and 12 volt electrical system. We're trying to stick to the basics, and we're trying to explain everything in terms that the average person will understand.

Today, we'll get into the most popular different types of batteries.

We didn't understand 12 volt batteries!

When we first bought our motorhome Sherman nine years ago this month, we didn't realize the importance of the 12 volt battery system. And I bet it wasn't until almost two years later that we fully understood how the 12 volt batteries work, and their limitations in an RV.

For those of you who don't RV, this article will be of little interest. But for those of you who still don't fully understand 12 volt batteries, I'm going to try to explain in basic terms how the battery system works and how you can make yours better.

Ginger tea, rain, and visitors!

Ever since I stopped drinking coffee a couple of years ago, I have struggled to find a hot drink substitute that I like. When we're in Mexico, we buy a nice Mexican hot chocolate called Abuelita made by Nestle. It's also available in the U.S., but we can't seem to get it here in Canada.

So now, I make hot chocolate the old fashioned way with cocoa powder, brown sugar, and milk. But when our daughter Lindsey was here in June, she showed me another hot drink that she liked, and it turns out that  I really like it too. Homemade ginger tea!

New 10 year passports!

We received our new 10 year passports in the mail yesterday. Back in 2013, Canadians were finally given the option of buying either a 5 year passport or a 10 year passport. I can't really figure why anybody would buy the 5 year one now.

Unless you're maybe 90 years old. Then perhaps you want to choose the 5 year!

Scorpion!

I'll bet you didn't now that there are scorpions in Canada. I mean after all, this is the great white north...scorpions couldn't survive up here, could they?

Well, they can and they do.