Rainy afternoon in downtown Ottawa - Canada's capital city

Ottawa is a nice city to visit, and we like heading to downtown when we're here. Our son has an apartment right in the center, and he was going away for the weekend with his girlfriend to her parents so he let us stay at his place for a night.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the nicest afternoon!

Chester the dog

We stuck around Lindsey and Justin's house for the day, with the exception of taking Chester the dog for a nice long walk. Lindsey went with Sadie on a kindergarten school field trip, and of course Justin was working all day. With the kids in school until 2:30pm or so, we had a nice relaxing day with just us and the big dog.

Not always easy dealing with aging parents.

After we saw the grandkids off to school, we hopped in the rental car and drove up to Ruth's father's place. It's a bit of a difficult situation, and one of the reasons that we chose to come here. He has recently made the decision (somewhat against his will) to move to a retirement home. And his doctor has recently taken away his driver's licence at age 83.

Sorry we lied to you!

But we were planning a surprise, and we couldn't let the cat out of the bag!

Yes, as it says above in the "Where are Kevin and Ruth now?" line... we are in Ottawa right now.

We had bought the tickets about three weeks ago and we figured we would surprise the family. So we didn't tell anyone about it. But of course as the day got closer, we had to sort of fib here on the blog!

First day back on the road

We got up at 6:00am. It's not that we had a really far drive planned... in fact, we didn't really have a plan at all, except to head towards Saskatoon. But I just wanted to get going! We still had some things to do and empty the holding tanks and fill with fresh water... that kind of thing.

And, we managed to get out of the park right at 9:00am.... which is the time I sort of had in the back of my mind.

Getting back on the road!

Ruth woke up this morning and said "I'm glad I don't have to pick up another mop or rake!"

Boy, is that a fact. Our two week work stint here at the park is up, and I although we're tired of cleaning up leaves, we're glad we did it. Steve and Jo still have some work to do, but the worst of it is done.

Recharged our Mexico SIM card for use in Canada!

I recharged our Mexico cellular account yesterday. I had let it expire at the end of April because I knew that we didn't need it while we were here at the park. But we'll be hitting the road tomorrow and so I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to recharge it online from here.

It turns out that it was fairly easy to do, but there are a lot of options and some are fairly expensive if you're not careful!

We are boondocking for the next couple of days!

Can you boondock in a developed campground?

Well here at Cabri Park you can!

We've been parked in a full hookup campsite for the last week and a half. And while it's been nice to have our electric heater on to take the chill off in the mornings, and have our fridge plugged into electric, and be able to use the office wifi... we really wanted to be parked in a nicer place.

12,410 days and counting...

On a Saturday afternoon in May of 1984, Ruth and I strolled down the aisle and said "I do"!

We had only known each other since March of 1983... fourteen months. Many people thought it wouldn't last! But here we are, after 34 years of wedded bliss!

Who reads our blog?

Well obviously YOU do!

I find it interesting to follow who is reading what, and where our readers come from. And, to see the continued growth of readership of this blog. Blogger (Google) is the hosting platform I chose ten years ago. I kind of wish I would have chose Wordpress because I've read that there are more options, but I'm not going through the hassle of changing it all now, especially since this is working fine for our needs.

While we were in Mexico, this blog achieved two milestones! Apparently there were a lot of people interested in our Mexico RV Caravan adventures.

Some pics around the park...

Windy day yesterday, but we still managed to get more cleanup done. Two out of five bathrooms are up and running, but they are calling for cool, windy and rainy today so it's not likely we'll get much done today.

I knew we were going to get spoiled with the great weather we had for the first week. Today, they are calling for a high of 11C (52F) and 13C (55F) tomorrow, then back to nice weather on the weekend.

Installed our weBoost Drive 4G-X RV Cell Signal Booster

A bit of a rainy afternoon yesterday so I took a couple of hours and finished the installation of our new weBoost cell signal booster. We don't get a very good signal here at the park, so I was excited to try it out here and see what difference it makes.

Heading up to the wilds of the Yukon and Alaska, we want to be able to share our adventures with you, and there aren't that many cell towers up there. So if this thing works as advertised, we should be able to get much further from a cell tower and still be able to get on the internet.

One week down, one week to go!

Wow, it sure seems odd to be working here at the park and knowing that we're half way through already! Mixed emotions though... we will miss the park this summer.

We had been doing really well on leaf cleanup, until yesterday afternoon when the wind picked up and changed direction. A storm blew in and swirled everything around. Fortunately, the leaves had already been removed and dumped, but even when it's cleaned up more leaves seem to appear out of nowhere!

We know how to deal with mosquitoes...

There have been several comments about the possibility of us encountering mosquitoes on our trip north. Yes, we hate those little bloodsuckers as much as the next person, and we would rather not be in an environment where the mosquito thrives... however we've dealt with them before, and we won't let them win!

So... we're going into this with our eyes open, and we are well prepared!

The plan for the next couple of months

We both belong to a facebook group called RVing To Alaska 2018. The people in that group sure do a lot of planning. We think it's kind of funny because there are some people there asking questions about their possible trip in 2019 and even 2020! I'm afraid we don't put much thought into our trips until it actually gets closer to the date.

And, it is getting closer. We start heading north on May 15th, so I figured I would begin looking at our route, and things to do along the way.