We are off to London to visit the King

Our vacation to Canada is over, and it's time to get back to our normal life. For most people, that sentence means heading back home and going back to work! But for us, it means heading to a different country, and returning to our life of full time travel.

So, this evening we get on a flight from Montreal to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam we have a six hour wait for our 45 minute connecting flight to London City Airport.

Back to the old neighborhood

We headed to the Ottawa suburb of Orleans yesterday afternoon. This is where we lived and brought up our family for about 18 years from 1989 to 2007. We actually lived at three different places during that time, but the most recent and longest one was the house we bought and owned from 1993 to 2007.

But first, we made a stop at the bank.

Bought some tickets to the theater

We had more visitors over for lunch yesterday, but before they came we wanted to get out and do our power walk for the day. They've got one road on our route blocked off for new culvert, so we decided to take a different route for a change. 

But I didn't plan it in advance, we just sort of took off.

Lots to talk about with friends...

We're having great weather here for our visit to Ottawa. Highs of between 24C to 28C (75F to 82F) for the week! We'll take it. The kids may be back in school, but it's still summer for a little while yet.

We're only here until Saturday, and it's been an abnormally short visit to Ottawa since we spent so much time in Nova Scotia. But we've been busy every day seeing friends or family, and sometimes both friends and family.

How we travel long term with carry on luggage only

We belong to a facebook group called Senior Nomads. One of the discussions that often arises is how people travel long term using only carry on luggage. And there are lots of people who manage to do it, but there are still lots of people who travel with what we would consider to be too much stuff.

But of course it's a personal choice, and a lot depends on your travel style. Many people travel long term and stay for a month or more at each location. This means they are not often having to lug all of their stuff around. But when they do have to move, most of them will readily admit that it's a difficult and frustrating thing to do.

Working at McDonald's?

We're not doing anything super exciting, so I've been taking a bit of a break from the daily blog writing. Don't worry though... we will get back to our regular routine of travel in a week or so!

I also haven't been taking many photos. We're just kind of taking it easy and visiting some family and friends here in Ottawa. But there are a few I'd like to show you...

Mexico this winter?

Yesterday we said goodbye to Lindsey and family in Nova Scotia. 

Our flight from Halifax to Ottawa was uneventful. It's only a short flight, about an hour and forty five minutes but we were on an older Bombardier 400 turboprop with 76 seats. Its really not the most comfortable airplane, and it's noisy.

September is here!

Wow, here we are at the start of September. August feels like it just flew by, and September will likely feel the same for us. We have lots of fun stuff planned for September. 

And, our time here in Nova Scotia is up. We've had lots of fun with daughter Lindsey and her family. The grandkids kept us busy. In fact yesterday we went to really cool swimming hole.

August Expenses

As we expected it to be, August was an expensive month. 

We spent $4,729 CAD ($3,602 USD) for the month. And we had predicted that it would be a $4,000 month, but it came in slightly higher than that. 

We started the month near Max's home base of Dulmen, Germany and ended it near Halifax, Nova Scotia. And in between, we were in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Cabri, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, Alberta!

A fun day at Atlantic Splash Adventure

It was granddaughter Sadie's 9th birthday on Monday, so we packed a lunch and drove over to Halifax to the Atlantic Splash Adventure amusement park about 50 minutes away.

The weather for this type of activity was perfect. Sunny, with highs about 26C (79F). Even I went on the waterslides a couple of times, and I'm not much of a water person!

This kept the grandkids busy for a few hours

Ruth and I took the grandkids for the day to give Lindsey and Justin some free time to get the house set up the way they want. We packed a lunch at set off to the Ross Farm Museum.

This was our third visit to Ross Farm. We first came here in May 2011 when we were here for grandson Cameron's birth. That visit was just Ruth and I with our dog Whiskey when we had our motorhome Sherman. 

The highest tides in the world

Yesterday, Ruth and I took a drive up to Hall's Harbour. It's just a tiny fishing village on the north shore of Nova Scotia on the Bay of Fundy.

The Bay of Fundy hosts the highest tides in the world, and they are most evident at Hall's Harbour because of the way the docks are designed. 

The fog lifted, and we had a great hike to Cape Split

Our daughter Lindsey and her friend Tina arrived about 9pm on Wednesday night. At 16 hours, a long drive for them from Ottawa but they both said they felt it went by fairly quickly.

Tina is only staying two nights then she is flying back to Ottawa Friday afternoon. She really only came to keep Lindsey company on the drive. But she still wanted to see some of the area, so we decided to go do the popular Cape Split Trail.

Fun with foreign exchange

Nothing special going on. We're just hanging out in Greenwich, Nova Scotia waiting for our daughter to arrive. She's driving here from Ottawa today. It's a long (15 hours) drive to do in one day, but she's coming with a friend of hers, so they are sharing the driving.

Yesterday we drove to the nearby town of Berwick with granddaughter Sadie. Grandson Cameron went to visit with his other grandfather for the night. 

I think if we lived here I'd buy a season pass!

We were trying to find something different to do with the grandkids. We looked into whale watching, but most of the tours leave from the area west of Digby and it's too long of a drive to do there and back the same day. We also looked at go karts, but the only facility is near Halifax and it's closed for renovations.

Until we came across this...

Trail closed

Son in law Justin took the kids to his sisters place yesterday after lunch, so we had some peace and quiet around the house. It was a warm afternoon, but later in the day we decided to go for a walk on the popular ravine trail in nearby Kentville.

We were surprised when we got there that there was nobody around. 

Off to the beach

We've got some summer weather on the go here in Nova Scotia this weekend. Highs of around 28C (82F) with blue skies and sunshine. 

So yesterday, we took the grandkids to the beach!

I found another great option for travel medical and trip insurance

I've been a big proponent of Heymondo travel insurance for the last couple of years, but that company has recently changed their program so that the plan that we want isn't available to our age group. So I've been shopping around.

They make this stuff so complicated and time consuming to figure out. You have to read through all of the options and then the fine print to know what you're covered for and what you're not. I've spent a lot of time on this, and here's what I found...

Having fun with the grandkids

Took the grandkids to the park yesterday. While we love traveling, we also miss them and are happy to see them. Hopefully this winter they'll be able to visit us wherever we happen to be so that our time apart won't be so long. 

It had been ten months since we last saw them!

Made it to Nova Scotia

Well so far, we've been impressed with the punctuality of our flights. We've been on five different airplanes in the last ten days, and other than our Amsterdam to Montreal flight which was delayed by about an hour, the rest have all been pretty much right on time.

Even our connection flights through Toronto's Pearson Airport went really well yesterday. 

Made it to Ottawa

But we're not staying. 

Writing this at Ottawa airport as an overnight connection. We flew in from Calgary last night, arriving at just after midnight, and our connecting flight to Toronto leaves at 6:45am this morning. Then we have another connecting flight to Halifax later this morning.

Another beautiful drive through the Canadian Rocky Mountains

The boys were all up early, and we had decided to go out for breakfast before we left Jasper. We went back to the same restaurant we had dinner at on Saturday night. Dinner had been overall good, and the reviews said that breakfast was good as well.

Unfortunately, the breakfast was not the same experience. Very average, and our waitress wasn't very good. And at $21.50 CAD ($16.70 USD) for a very average coffee, bacon, eggs, home fries, and toast, it was definitely overpriced. 

3 Excellent Reasons to Have a Destination Event

Everyone enjoys events. Whether it is a birthday, wedding, a get-together of friends, or a company affair, events are celebrations and a chance to enjoy in the company of other guests. An event is even more unique and fun when held in a different location, away from the usual venues. A destination event is something most people look forward to with eager anticipation, an opportunity to experience something new, relax, and have fun.

Fun times in Jasper with the guys

Just to give you some background, I worked at a summer family camp when I was 16 years old in 1978. There was a group of about ten of us guys who worked at that same camp who got along really well, and we were close friends back in the day. 

We have kept in touch over the years, and have attended each others weddings and kept in touch through family events and children and sometimes divorce. 

Drive to Jasper with the guys.

I got on the road at 9'00am with the boys for the drive to Jasper. It's just over five hours from Calgary to Jasper taking the route through the mountains on the Icefields Parkway.

Absolutely spectacular scenery, and of course I love the mountains to begin with. Only one problem... I was doing the driving, so I wasn't taking pictures along the way, so don't have too many to share. 

An interesting stop in the town of Vulcan, Alberta

We had a great breakfast with Barry and Jeannie, then headed towards Calgary. There were three different routes we could have taken, and they were all about the same distance and time. However, one of the routes held a small attraction... at the town of Vulcan, Alberta.

Anybody who knows anything about the old Star Trek television series knows that one of the lead characters, Mr. Spock, was from the planet Vulcan. Well, the town of Vulcan, Alberta has capitalized on its name and made a small tourist attraction based on the tv series.

Back to Alberta

We had a nice three day visit to the park, and the perfect weather continued yesterday for our drive to Alberta. We were off to the town of Taber where friends Barry and Jeannie had moved to. They had been in our Mexico RV caravan tour in the winter of 2018-2019.

We got going about 11:00am for the three hour drive.