Our route in Mexico this winter

We're sure excited about our return to Mexico this coming winter. I know, it's still over 4 months away and we've got a lot of stuff to show you in the meantime, including 19 days in Barbados and a six week RV trip through the U.S. to the Mexican border.

But what can I say? We're most excited about our return to Mexico!

A few decent wildlife photos around the park...

It was our friend Doug's last day here yesterday, and he wanted to take us out for lunch. There's a nice little cafe in the town of Cabri called "House of Heart" with good old fashioned home cooking. We've been there before, and it's a great little spot.

Fortunately, the park is pretty quiet during the week, so we were able to take an hour and a half and go in to town.

Back in business

When the pump when down yesterday morning, it was pouring rain. This is actually a good thing (not the timing, but the rain!) because the park has been under a fire ban for over a month now, and the steady morning rain was enough for the ban to be removed.

So the campers will now be happy that they can have campfires again!

Well, I was all set to do a blog post...

When someone called and said the water pump is down. I ran out (in the pouring rain) to see if it was something simple... but it's not.

What we chose for a new solar charge controller...

I showed you in our last post that our friend Doug had brought a new charge controller up from the states for Sherman's solar charging system. I wanted to expand on that a little bit and explain why I wanted a new one and why it is different from the one we had before.

Charge controllers are rated by the number of amps they can process to the batteries. In our case, we have 240 watts of solar panels that produce about 15.0 amps under ideal conditions.

Lots of news!

On Tuesday, our friend Wendy arrived from Moose Jaw to visit for a couple of days. She and her husband were full time RVers for 22 years until he passed away 10 years ago. Now, she has a class B van that she takes on trips, but lives in an apartment in Moose Jaw.

She just brought her minivan with her to visit us though, and she's staying in our spare bedroom.

And, another visitor showed up yesterday!

A pretty successful weekend

Well, our last busy weekend of the season is over. Sure, there will be a few people around the park for the next couple of weekends, but we won't be sold out again this year like we were last weekend!

Plus, harvest is starting a little early this year because of the dry June and July. So most of our local clientele are out working the fields for the next month or so.

You just have to give your head a shake

Here in the province of Saskatchewan, they have a great recycling program where almost all empty drink containers have a deposit on them. Juice boxes, all bottles and cans... virtually any kind of drink container. This way, none of it is tossed out the window of a car, and what is tossed out the window is soon picked up by someone who collects them for the deposit money.

Of course we collect a lot of those containers here at the park, and many people who camp here "donate" their recycling for the park to be able to collect the deposit.

Busy weekend coming up

Well, you may not hear from us much this weekend. The park is sold out, as it is every August long weekend up here in Canada. It's actually been sold out for almost three weeks now, and I'm still fielding about ten phone calls a day from people looking for a campsite.

We had about a half an inch of rain on Tuesday, but it wasn't enough to remove our fire ban which is instituted by the RM (Rural Municipality) that governs the area.

Google Assistant

In some ways, I am fairly familiar with computers and high tech stuff. In other ways, we're definitely a little behind the times.

For example, we didn't own a "smart" phone until our son donated his old iPhone 4s to us just over two years ago. And of course the iPhone 4s was ahead of it's time when it came out in 2011... but by mid 2015, the time we started using it, technology had already surpassed it.

July Expenses

Well here we are on the last day of July! Tomorrow, we'll be able to say "next month we're outta here!"...lol.

And we're not planning on spending any money today, so we might as well give you our July expense report.

It was a good July for us! We only spend $675 in total, and that included buying a brand new laptop! Wow!

RV'ing in Newfoundland!

Canada's newest province is Newfoundland and Labrador. Often, the province is simply called Newfoundland although Labrador is part of the mainland and Newfoundland itself is an island. In fact, 92% of the provinces population live on the island of Newfoundland while 8% live in Labrador.

The entire area has a population of 528,000 people.

Parched

Last Sunday, the park was packed. It was a beautiful hot sunny day, with hardly any wind... perfect weather for getting the boat out on the lake... and that's exactly what people did. It was a zoo... hardly any parking spots and you almost couldn't make your way through the number of trucks and boat trailers that were parked out front.

Even at 9:00pm Sunday night when the concession usually closes, there was still a lineup of people trying to buy ice cream!

But by Monday, things had quieted right down. And yesterday was dead, despite the beautiful weather!

RV Caravan trip to Mexico

Most of our regular readers will remember when we led an RV caravan group in Mexico for the month of February in 2016. That was a kind of a test run for us to be able to decide if we wanted to lead a longer caravan.

And, we did end up making a commitment to lead one this coming winter. I was talking with the organizer yesterday, and it turns out that you can still come with us if you like!

Drive to the Arctic Ocean

We have some campers visiting the park who are from Whitehorse, Yukon Territories. We had spoken on the phone when they made their reservations here, and I had mentioned how we wanted to drive up there in the motorhome someday.

She had offered to bring some tourist info down with them, and they were here this weekend.

Nova Scotia

One of our favorite provinces in Canada is Nova Scotia. We've spent a fair bit of time there because our daughter and her husband Justin lived there for about 7 years and our grandson Cameron was born in Nova Scotia!

And Nova Scotia is a fantastic province to explore in the motorhome. Fabulous little coves and fishing villages, and easy boondocking.

Visitors, and a project almost finished...

Had an email a couple of weeks ago from blog reader Nancy and her husband Larry, a couple from Washington state who were coming through the area and wanted to stop in and say hi. Of course! We love getting visitors here at the park.

So Nancy and Larry arrived with their big diesel pusher motorhome... certainly one of the bigger rigs we've ever seen here...

Prince Edward Island

I had tried to get our profile of Canada's different provinces and territories finished by Canada's 150th birthday celebration on July 1st, but it just didn't happen. Oh well... we're just going to continue and get it finished anyhow!

So next up is Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province.

What's the least money you would have to spend to get a usable motorhome...?

I don't know what I was thinking that made me go on the kijiji website (similar to Craigslist, but here in Canada) looking at cheap motorhomes the other day. But it got us thinking... how little could you spend on an RV that would take you to South America?

Ever since we went to Colombia, we've thought about driving from Canada to the southernmost tip of Argentina and Tierra del Fuego National Park.

It almost seems too cheap...

When we go back to Ottawa at the end of September we'll need some transportation. So I've been checking the car rental prices, and came across a website that looks like it's going to pay off.

I had found a pretty good deal through Thrifty Car Rental. Including taxes, it was going to be $396 CAD ($315 USD) for three weeks. Not bad, and I booked it.

It feels like a long weekend!

When I ordered a new laptop on Amazon Prime Day last Tuesday, the shipment said it would arrive on Monday the 17th. But I got the arrival notification on Friday morning so I headed in to the post office to pick it up before the weekend.

I've been using my old laptop as the office computer here since May, and it was getting to be a pain bringing it between the house and the office every time I wanted to do something.

We're past the half way point...

We're now into the second half of our summer work season. Yesterday was the official half way point. The next month will go by fairly quickly because the park is busy, and then things will start to quiet down as summer harvest will start in mid August and a lot of our clientele will be hard at work.

September typically drags for me, but we've got a few projects on the go here to keep us occupied during the last month of the season.

Bought a new laptop!

Yesterday was Amazon Prime Day and like many of you I was in the market for a great deal. My current laptop is only about two and a half years old, but it was a cheap ($248 USD, $311 CAD) laptop when I bought it and the processing power isn't very good. It still works fine, but I was on the lookout for something that can keep up with today's technology a little better.

So when I saw that one was coming on sale for Prime Day up here in Canada, I made a point of getting up at 4:00am to buy it!

Ruth's brother's new trailer...

Pretty busy weekend here at the park. Not sold out, but busier than we expected it would be based on the reservations that came in May and June. Lots of last minute people calling to see if we have availability because the weather has been so good.

And, there are NO mosquitoes. Well, perhaps one or two. But compared to last year, there are none.

A project on the go...

A little project on the go here at the park. When things are busy, I can't go too far from the office area because I know it won't be long before my pager goes off telling me that there is someone waiting at the office. So Ruth had delegated me to do one of her landscaping projects nearby.

We had ordered a pallet of patio stones and they needed to be installed outside our main bathroom.

Surprise visitors!

We didn't have anybody scheduled to arrive here at the park yesterday, but of course we do get the occasionally unexpected arrival. And, of course they usually arrive right as we're sitting down to supper!

So yesterday as Ruth was putting supper on the table, I just happened to notice through the kitchen window that a trailer was driving up. So I headed out the door to meet them at the office.

Things are going pretty good so far...

Well, July 1st long weekend came and went and we're enjoying some beautiful hot summer weather here at the park this week... and into the foreseeable future!

Oh, I haven't mentioned our workcampers lately. Barry and Jeannie showed up here in mid June with their motorhome. They were readers of this blog, and applied to come and work with us when we advertised the opportunity last fall.