Pelee Island visit?

We've been wanting to visit Pelee Island for a long time. But Pelee Island is located in the most southern part of Lake Erie, and the access point to the ferry is located in Ontario, just southeast of Detroit.

And we don't make it down that way very often.

We are now carless, for the first time ever!

So now that the little blue car is gone, we have to get by with being carless. It's a little strange saying that we don't own a car. No car, no television, no microwave. I guess we are strange!

Being carless means that when we want that type of transportation, we will have to rent, borrow, or taxi!

The little blue car is gone!

We had not had any response to the advertisements I had been doing. It seemed that everybody around here wants a pickup truck or SUV or some kind of large vehicle. You just don't see many small cars on the road out here in the countryside in Saskatchewan.

But I knew the price was fair, and that someone would come along eventually.

Cancelled our campground reservation!

I should have known better than to make a campground reservation four months in advance. But, here I was trying to be proactive so that we weren't left without a spot. Not a big deal, because I think we only lose $10 or so... plus, I think the caravan company is going to cover our new spot.

It's a bit of a story, but here's what happened...

Day trip to Grasslands National Park

We took a day off yesterday! Nothing going on at the park, with the exception of a few more seasonal trailers pulling out, and it was looking like the last day of nice summer weather for a while. So we decided to drive down to Grasslands National Park on the border of Saskatchewan and Montana, and do some exploring!

Boy, did it ever feel good to get out on the road and see some different scenery for a change!

Two weeks today

And we're outta here. And still no bites on the little blue car. Strange. I guess everybody in this area wants a big gas guzzling pickup truck! Oh well, if it doesn't sell we'll store it for the winter and re-evaluate next May. Maybe this is a sign that we shouldn't be selling it anyhow!

A few more trailers disappeared over the weekend.

Foreign exchange transaction fees

The Canadian dollar (CAD) has been finally gaining strength versus most other world currencies. Of course this makes our travels outside of Canada cheaper, and a strong dollar is better for the country as a whole.  And, the U.S. dollar (USD) has been weakening versus most other world currencies, after an abnormally long period of strength.

For our personal situation, it pretty much evens out because our blog and Amazon income is mostly paid to us in U.S. dollars.

So far, Barbados has been spared

The last major hurricane to do any damage in Barbados was in 1995. And there have only been five major hurricane events to affect Barbados in total in the last 100 years.

Records show that in the 1600s, four hurricanes devastated Barbados, in the 1700s five systems directly affected Barbados, two causing devastation, and in the 1800s there were 17 hurricanes. Sure makes you wonder what kind of climate change was going on in the 1800's! I don't think they have all this stuff figured out yet.

Pretirement

I guess in a couple of weeks Ruth and I will be pretired. Once again. We pretired at this time 10 years ago in 2007 when we were on our first planned two year motorhome excursion.

Then, we pretired again between 2011 and 2013.

Most people retire. And I suppose we will eventually, but for now, we will be pretired.

Never heard that term before? Either had I until the other day.

We made a campground reservation!

We started RV'ing almost ten years ago. We've put 70,000 miles (112,000 kms) on our motorhome during that time. And now, for only the second time ever...we actually made a reservation at a campground!

We meet up with our Mexico caravan group at Lake Casa Blanca State Park in Laredo, Texas before crossing the border into Mexico on January 7th.

Chilly mornings and more blog reading visitors!

Woke up yesterday morning and the temperature was only 5C (41F). It was nice and bright and sunny but it was chilly, and there was a mist coming off the lake. Really pretty. But, you could sure tell that it felt like September in Canada. Funny enough, it's supposed to warm up by Friday with highs above 30C (86F) again!

It was chilly again this morning though, with some area reporting frost although we didn't see any here at the park.

Useful items to take on your travels

Travelling has become something that people do both as a hobby but also as an actual career these days, as the websites and blogs devoted to travel that have sprung up during the digital era have acted as an inspiration to many.

Of course, while most people think of exotic locations and adventure, bag packing is a necessary chore that must be completed before all that, but if you know what to pack it will make this process quicker and less stressful.

Winding things down here at the park

Well, our last long weekend of the summer is over. Labor Day weekend is normally pretty quiet around here, but it was slightly busier than normal this year. The weather was fantastic... warm and sunny all weekend. And fairly calm too, which made for great boating weather. Well, calm with the exception of a major windstorm that went through on Saturday night.

But, like any long weekend around here, it was not entirely glitch free!

Can't wait to get on the road again! But first need to fix some things...

Wow, thanks for the fantastic response to yesterday's post. It will be an adventure, won't it?? We think Sherman is up for the challenge, but he has not been used nearly enough the last couple of years. The last time we drove him was our trip from Saskatchewan to Ottawa at the end of last September. And while that was a good trip, he did have some minor mechanical issues along the way. Most of them were sorted out when I changed spark plugs and plug wires last fall. But there were some other things I noticed as well.

By the time we arrive in Ottawa, he will have been sitting for a full year!

A two year North American full time motorhome adventure!

Our motorhome Sherman, at age 21 is starting to show some signs of wear and tear. We think that he's still got lots of life left in him yet though! And with less than 100,000 miles on the chassis, we still believe that he's got enough motivation in him to take us on a two year North American motorhome adventure!

And so this is the plan...

August Expenses

Well, it was another cheap month. Exactly the way we planned it. Although, groceries were a bit higher due to the fact that we had five grocery shopping days during the month of August. And our friend Doug brought us a couple of Amazon packages up from the U.S..

But otherwise, it was a darn cheap month!

The little blue car is for sale!

As much as we don't want to sell it, we don't see the point of keeping it. We simply don't think we need a car for the foreseeable future. We will be living and traveling in the motorhome, and if we do ever need a car we will rent one as necessary.

If we didn't have to pay, we would just keep it in storage. But long term storage at $500 a year or so doesn't make sense for a $3,000 car!

A tough decision to make...

This was our fourth summer in a row managing the park. And we spent the summer of 2013 managing Sturgeon Lake Regional Park in northern Saskatchewan. So we haven't had a summer off since 2012.

We've decided we need a summer off, so we're taking a break.

It only lasted two weeks...

When our friend Doug was here earlier this month, he helped me install the new water pump assembly after the motor burned out in the other one. This is the second time this summer that a motor has burned out, and it's never happened before in the four years we've been here. Strange.

The pump itself breaks down regularly, but never as often as it has this year. Yesterday, it broke down again!

Activity at the park, and a special birthday!

Do you remember last year when one of our young great horned owls was electrocuted? You can read about it here. At the time, we had contacted the power company to see if they could put some kind of shield on the wiring to prevent it from happening again. They said that they would put it on their "to do" list, but I guess it wasn't a priority and it never got done.

But I kept on asking, and when one of their reps was out here on another matter two months ago, I brought it up with them again.

This time we got some action, and they went over and above what we expected!

Bugs!

We've been really lucky this summer with regards to mosquitoes. Especially compared to last summer when we were swarmed by the little buggers every time we stepped out the door. It was so bad last year that you almost couldn't go outside without having bug spray on.

It must be related to how much rain we get. Last year, it rained almost every second day. This year, we've hardly had any rain at all. In fact, we bought a new rain gauge for the park over two weeks ago and haven't had a chance to use it yet!

Movie tracking apps

We don't watch television, but we do watch movies. So when we're traveling both by air and in the motorhome, we always have a selection of movies on the laptop. But sometimes when I'm looking for movies to watch I can't remember if we've seen it or not!

I finally downloaded a movie watching app onto the smartphone. Not to watch movies with... but to keep track of the movies we've watched.

Another mouse problem!

Ruth had gone to Swift Current with the little blue car to do groceries on Wednesday and when she came back she said that she thought she might have hit a bird and asked if I could have a look under the front end. Well, I did not see any evidence of a bird strike.

However, I did notice something that didn't look quite right!

More blog reading visitors

We don't have many reservations at this time of year. In fact, I checked back in the blog to see what I was saying at this time last year and the year before... and it's the same thing. Still, we have a few campers who are enjoying the park when it is quiet. And although we don't have many reservations, we do get a few campers who show up unannounced.

Like Jim and Judy from British Columbia.

Retracing our route in Spain

I've been wanting to do this post for a while, so I finally sat down and did some mapping. More for our own records than anything else, but perhaps somebody thinking about RV'ing in southern Spain will also get some benefit from it.

And now that things are starting to slow down at the park, we're going to try to get back into our regular daily postings even though we still won't be actually traveling for another month or so.

Things are winding down...

There is still just over a month (actually 34 days, but who's counting!) to go for us here at the park this year, but things do seem to be winding down. The park is pretty empty this week, despite the nice weather.

That's typical for this time of year though. When harvest begins, most of the local clientele are back at work. And the Labor Day long weekend coming up is the last hurrah for the summer season but it will depend on the weather.

The day we met Sherman

I almost forgot! It was ten years ago today that we met Sherman.

On Sunday, August 19, 2007 we drove from Ottawa and crossed the United States border down to a little town near Albany, New York. About a five hour drive each way.

About two and a half weeks prior to that, we had made the rash decision to sell our house, quit our jobs, and buy a motorhome to travel North America for a couple of years!