Wearing out our hiking boots

Well, this week flew right on by! It's Friday already, and we haven't got much done yet!

On Wednesday, we went and picked up Ruth's father at "the villa" and took him for a drive. We stopped at Tom Horton's because he loves their coffee. If he had his way, we would have stopped at Dairy Queen too, because "ice cream is good for you" he says. But, we'll save that for another day.

Planning for Mexico

We are returning to Mexico again this coming winter. And like last year, we are taking seven other RV's with us.

But this time, we're mixing things up a little bit. First of all, the trip will be 136 days from the time we cross the border, so we will be in Mexico about 4 1/2 months.

We will have no problem keeping busy during our time here

So we are back in the village of Galetta, staying at Ruth's father's house. He is no longer here though... both physically and mentally he is deteriorating and he is now at an assisted living facility in the nearby town of Arnprior.

We are here until October 13th, so a total of six weeks. Normally, we don't come back to the Ottawa area for such a long time. But Ruth's brother who lives nearby needed a break from looking after their father and so he is taking off in his travel trailer for a much needed vacation down to the U.S..

August Expenses

Considering all the travel we did, it was not a bad month.

We spent a total of $4,310 CAD ($3,223 USD) during the month of August, however we also recorded a profit of $2,345 ($1,754 USD) on the sale of our Australian RV, bringing our net expenses down to $1,965 ($1,470 USD) for the month.

RPC Day 3... Picnic Lunch in the Pines

Day 3 here at Red Pine Camp. Sadie wasn't feeling well in the morning. Probably a combination of two late nights in a row, plus too much candy from the tuck shop the day before!

After breakfast, Cameron was off to Junior Program and we hardly saw him all day. At 8 years old, and with a few different friends to play with, it's not tough to keep him busy around here.

Archery practice at RPC

It was a little chilly in the morning, but it turned into a nice afternoon... sunny, with a high touching 24C (75F). Pretty much perfect! And, they are calling for the same thing today.

The kids are kept busy here. In fact, they are at the age where we don't really see them very often throughout the day. Really, only at meal time, and even then Cameron is usually off sitting at a table with his friends.

Beautiful start to the day at Red Pine Camp

We left Lindsey's house just after lunch and headed up to Red Pine Camp on Golden Lake, Ontario. It's almost a two hour drive from Lindsey's house... 170 kms (105 miles), plus we had some stops to make along the way.

First stop was a UPS store to drop off my camera and have it shipped to the Nikon service center near Toronto.

Off to Red Pine Camp

So we are off to RPC (Red Pine Camp) today. This is a family camp that my parents brought us to. I first attended in 1964! And I worked up there in the summer of 1978. Ruth and I brought our children up to that camp, and our children brought their children.

Now, Ruth and I are bringing our grandchildren up there for the first time and giving Lindsey and Justin a break.

Visiting with family

Although we love traveling full time, it is always nice to come back to Ottawa once or twice per year.

We purposely made it back here before August 28th because it's granddaughter Sadie's 6th birthday today, and we have never been with her on her birthday!

And school starts next Tuesday with Sadie entering grade 1, and her older brother Cameron (age 8) is starting grade 3.

That was a lot of flying!

Wow.

That was a lot of flying over the past 9 days. In fact, we were in 7 different airports and on 6 different airplanes!

But, we are now at our daughter's house just south of Ottawa, and looking forward to seeing all of our Ottawa area family and friends over the next six weeks.

What did our Australia RV trip cost?

Yesterday, I received the insurance refund for the original flights that we had booked to Australia. If you remember, back in May Ruth was ill with a painful kidney infection and we ended up cancelling the original flights that we had booked.

So, the cancellation insurance did in fact cover all of our expenses for the part of the trip that we cancelled. It was also processed fairly quickly, but we didn't get the payment until we arrived back in Canada to pick up our mail.

A nice day at the park

We slept in a little bit again. Not letting all that travel and time change stuff affect us though. Other than not getting up until 8:30am, we have kept to our regular schedule and feel no ill effects of jet lag.

Planned on going for a morning hike, but it was almost noon by the time we got out to do it!

Back at Cabri Regional Park

Last blog post we were in Minneapolis airport waiting for our flight to Saskatoon. The two and a half hour flight went fine, and we arrived on schedule at 9:00pm.

Had to be the fastest ever processing through Canadian immigration and customs. I think from the time we left the plane, went through immigration, picked up our bags, and made it to the lobby was maybe ten minutes! Welcome back to Canada!

Heading back to Canada

Our 5 hour overnight flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles went without a hitch. It's funny how, after doing a 17 hour flight from San Francisco to Singapore and a 9 hour flight from Sydney to Honolulu... a 5 hour flight is nothing!

Hardly slept at all though. Sometimes I can nap, but this time I just couldn't doze off. Ended up watching the original American Graffiti movie. 1974, I think it was made?

Waikiki Beach and Honolulu

We had to get on the road by 7:30am this morning in order to return our rental car which was due back by 8:45am.

You would think that an hour and fifteen minutes would be lots of time to drive 20 miles (32 kms), but it almost wasn't.