We are back in Canada

Well that was a long day! But overall, everything happened according to plan and we are back at Ruth's father's old house in the village of Galetta near Canada's capital city of Ottawa.

Last we left you, we were at Frankfurt airport waiting to board our flight to Toronto. What a circus that was!

Not entirely stress free, but it all worked out okay

We dropped off Max at the dealer at about 10:00am Thursday morning and walked the two kms to the Dulmen train station. We travel light and we each had a small backpack and a rolling carry on suitcase. And even the carry on bags were half empty! They will be full when we return though.

Dulmen has only a small station and tickets are purchased only at a machine. There is nobody to talk to. We were concerned because I had read that morning that we were in the middle of a two day railroad engineers strike and only 25% of the normal trains were running.

We almost screwed up

We had our PCR test appointment in Winterswijk, Netherlands at 11:00am, so we got on the road early and headed for the huge Obelink camping gear store just outside Winterswijk. The store doesn't open until 9:15am, and we got there before it opened, so at the time Max was the first rig there.

At 10:00am, we set off for the 3 km walk to the downtown test center. By that time, there were quite a few other vans that had joined Max.

Getting ready to go

Apparently some people are having problems getting their email notifications from this blog. A couple of months ago, Google dropped that service from this platform, so I had to sign up to another provider. I chose follow.it and if you were previously signed up to receive email notifications, then that should have continued because I imported all the email addresses from the old program. 

If you're not receiving them, all I can suggest is to go to the follow.it website and login using the email address you signed up for and double check your settings.

Highest we've been for a while!

And no, we didn't smoke anything!

Yesterday, we made our way to the town of Schapdetten to a really great overnight spot in a green space separating farmers fields. And located only a short walk to the Baumberge Forest.

Wandering around Sendenhorst

Just a quiet day yesterday. We said goodbye to friends Dave and Bonnie, and hope to see them at some point when we return this winter.

We only drove about 18 kms (11 miles) to our next location at the town of Sendenhorst (pop 13,000). We weren't there for any particular reason, but they had a free motorhome overnight parking area with dump station so it was convenient.

Propane, water, electricity!

Propane is a common headache for motorhome travelers in Europe. The reason is that there are no agreed upon standards between the countries for propane tanks or fittings. Here, they are not called propane tanks, they are called "gas bottles".

I'll use our situation here in Germany as an example. 

Always fun to meet up with our traveling friends!

On Friday, we did what we think was our longest daily drive since we've had Max. It was about 80 kms (50 miles) to get back down to the town of Telgte to meet up with friends Dave and Bonnie!

We arranged a meeting spot at a municipal parking lot in Telgte that has specific sites for motorhomes, with coin operated electricity and water available. 

Seven more sleeps

One week from today, we arrive back in Canada. We aren't necessarily looking forward to actually being in Canada, but we're always excited about the travel itself and it's been ten months since we have seen family and friends located there.

Yesterday, I did more planning for the trip. Yes, the hotel in Dusseldorf is booked. The flights are booked. Our car rental when we arrive is booked. But one more thing needed to be looked after.

We ended up at a great spot

A few days ago we had mentioned to each other that it's been really different for us the last month or so not being on a schedule of any kind. I guess to a certain extent it's been like that all winter, but at that time we were booking week long Airbnb stays at most locations and it's a different feeling when you're in a motorhome and it's easy to just pack up and move on when you want to without any limitations.

And most of the time, it's been really quite easy to find free overnight spots. We were a little worried that with RV sales and use at record highs due to Covid, it would be difficult in the middle of summer. 

From plan A to plan B to plan C...

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Yesterday was another interesting day, but it's the first time that our overnight choices didn't really pan out. From plan A to plan B to plan C!

How to build a cruise ship. Visit to the Meyer-Werft shipyard!

Well that was an interesting day!

A few days ago, I had been searching for possible future overnight spots and came across one listing that said you could overnight in your motorhome and visit the cruise ship factory. That piqued my interest, so I did some more research.

The next thing you know, I'm online booking us two tickets at €12 ($17.75 CAD, $14.25 USD) per person to do the Monday 1:00pm self guided tour!

We are back in Germany

Netherlands was interesting and we're glad we went, but it's not a country that "wowed" us. We plan to return one spring in a future year in order to see the city of Amsterdam and the tulips. Otherwise, we would not purposely return there to spend any length of time.

It rained again yesterday morning and we didn't leave the little campground until almost 2:00pm. We then headed for the border, and the German town of Rhede.

All we could do was shrug our shoulders and laugh!

Last night I posted our first full month of expenses traveling Europe in Max the motorhome. You can view it here if you haven't seen it yet.

Things are a little damp here in Northern Netherlands! It has been raining every day for the past several with a few sunny breaks in between the downpours. We spent the morning inside the motorhome waiting for a period when the rain looked like it was going to stop long enough for us to get a walk in.

Touring Europe can be expensive. But not if you have your own motorhome!

And we've been looking forward to showing you just how inexpensive it can be to tour Europe in a motorhome.

July of 2021 is the first of many months for us touring Europe in the years ahead. So, here's our expense report for the first month of our extended European RV touring.

We spent a total of $1,523 CAD ($1,220 USD, €1,029) in the month of July.