Category: Personal

Day 2778

A few days on a farm

We have taken a needed break, on our last blog we were at the Walmart in Welland ON, we have moved to a Harvest Host Cato Lavender Farm just a few miles east of Welland technically back in Niagara Falls. The first night is on our membership but the next two nights were $10.00 each, the parking spot is beside their drive way and is not totally flat but not bad, the google street view made the drive way look very narrow but when we got here it was not a difficult spot to get to at all. The weather has been bright and sunny but the overnights are still cold and where has been a cold breeze, enough to make a sweatshirt necessary.

Saturday we made a drive to our seasonal site, it doesn’t open until the 15th but we just needed to see how wet it was after all the rain, and as we suspected it was very wet in spots. We have a dry weekend and the owners were hopeful that it will dry out enough by Monday that they can move a number of trailers onto their sites. The park is on the Grand River and some of the park is on a flood plane so each fall they have to move a number of trailers to higher ground and then every spring they have to place them all back in their sites. We met Bob their as they are moving into the park as well, there was some confusion about the sites and there may be a better site available for us, but nothing firm yet, we may be able to get a temporary site for a week or so if it doesn’t dry up, we will check on Tuesday. We even had time to stop for some Lake Erie Perch and chips just 5 km (3 miles) from our summer home!

We met the hosts and wandered through the property, they have been here five years (moved from the big city) they have 17 acres of property and grow many different crops. their back yard is almost park like and is surrounded by mature trees and was home to a variety of birds, Miss Laurie got a chance to scratch her gardening itch and weeded and cleaned the Lavender row, it kept her busy most of Sunday. I spent time Sunday repairing the foot rest on the co-pilot seat that quit working at the start of our trip, I need a few pieces of hardware and some grease that I will pick up tomorrow and I can reinstall the motor.

I have also been playing with our onboard electrical, as stupid as this will sound I actually plugged the coach into itself. So let me try to explain this as simple as I can, I switched our 3000 watt hybrid invertor to “Invert Only” which means that it is running only off of battery power which is charged by the solar panels. Next I ran an extension cord from a regular 120 volt reciprocal that was powered by the invertor. Then I used a “dog bone” to change the 50 amp plug of the coach to a regular 15 amp plug then plugged it into the extension cord. Because our coach is a 50 amp rig it uses two legs of power, our invertor only controls one leg and if we are not plugged into shore power then the second leg normally has no power. But by using this extension cord I was able to energize the second leg, the second leg powers an air-conditioner unit, the electric water heater, the washer/dryer, and used to power the old fridge unit when on shore power. So all we have running on it today is the water heater and the ice maker on the fridge, so today I power the water heater to temperature and maintained it, I also heard the ice maker punching out cubes, over night I have switched the water heater off, but will se how it effects the batteries overnight powering the ice maker.

Monday afternoon, and I have completed the repairs on the c0-pilot foot rest, it needed what I used to refer to as a Varsol overhaul, the mechanical device was just packed with 27 year old grease and dirt, and to say it was more of a binding agent then a lubricant would be a fair statement. The mechanical unit was riveted together so I had to drill out the rivets and disassemble the unit to be able to remove all the old lubricant, used a petroleum distillate to clean all the surfaces, reassembled the unit replaced the rivets with nuts & bolts, reinstalled the motor assembly. I operated the foot rest a number of times to confirm its operation and I also adjusted the swivel lock on the seat as well, a total success in my books, but the inspector has not given me any feedback yet.

It is Tuesday morning and we have to leave this wonderful Harvest Host spot, today we see if we can get into our seasonal site or whether we are heading to a Boondocker’s Welcome spot for a few nights. I’m awake too early this morning, a call of nature and there seems to be a lot of road noise this morning, either way I’m awake and up at 6:00 am, we had a number of windows open overnight because of the warmth yesterday and it stayed warm overnight. But I think the noise is worse today because the air is heavy, there are clouds, and that’s all I got, but when Laurie got up she said the same thing. Our departure time is 10:00 am this morning we are going to Welland to the treatment plant to hopefully dump our tanks then will drive by our seasonal park to see if we can get in, and if not we have a reservation for the rest of the week.

Breakfast this morning was eggs, toast, ketchup (French’s) and a cup of fresh perked coffee, we watched a little of the American news, always entertaining what happens south of the border. At 9:45 we fired up Thunder and after a few moments of warm up we headed down the road back toward Welland, we pulled into the treatment plant on River Road in Welland and we told that they do not allow RV’s to dump here anymore and that we would have to drive to Niagara Falls to dump there. I thanked them and headed toward Dunnville to see if by chance we could sneak in before the forecast rain. We were meet by the owners and showed a spot that we could use for the season if it was ok as our site was still too wet, we decided it would be perfect and proceeded to make a run to get parked. We are in our site, we are stuck in our site for now but it is a nicer site that the original, we only have a neighbour on one side and while two spots further from the water it is a higher drier site so we are in for the season.

That’s where I’m going to close this blog out stay tuned for a report on out new site and how the Victoria Day celebrations were.

Day 2775

Some time in limbo…

We are back to our home Province, and we for the first time in many years do not have somewhere to be and something to do, And while that is well and good we both know that we need something to do and we both have things that we want and need to do but we need to get settled to accomplish many of them, so for the next few days we are just literally kicking around the Niagara region bouncing between harvest host spots and parking lots.

And rather than bore you all to death with our day to day dribble, I may only post when something special happens, oh I still have some blogs to catch up on.

Lets just say it is cold as hell this morning the coach is 10ºC (50ºF), i mean it was chilly yesterday and we got no sun so I used my mattress warmer when I went to bed, I’m up too early 5:45 this morning, I slipped on my housecoat and sat down at my laptop. By 6:30 the sun was peaking over the trees, and by 7:30 we were harvesting power and the coach was warming up. I just lite the stove and started the coffee perk and soon Miss Laurie was peeking from the bedroom. Our battery bank hasn’t been fully charged for a week but if we get as much sunshine as they have forecast we will get there today.

Breakfast was fresh perked coffee along with a Danish as we are only moving a few kilometers today. I’m going to get propane for Thunder today, I haven’t filled the tank for more than a year, since I replaced the cooling unit with a 12 volt system the only appliance using propane is the two burner stove. I have been pricing propane across the continent and the price in the States was $3.999, at truck stops that are easy to get to, some places were as low as $3.199, but were difficult to get a 40′ coach into. Our tank is a 100 lb tank which holds 75 liters (20 gallons) and today I had it topped off with 65.4 liters (17.3 gallons) and my cost was $65.00 cdn which calculates to $2.70 US per gallon. While I got propane Miss Laurie found a laundromat to wash clothes, we met up at the Walmart lot in Welland ON.

Lunch was a grilled chicken wrap, with a side of Fritos, the day is still cool 16ºC (61ºF) but it has been bright and we have reached 100% on the battery bank, I have spent the day updating our resumes as Miss Laurie is going to try to find a parttime job this summer, myself I’m not really working hard at working this summer but remain open to any possibilities.

The photo below is of tonight’s sunset over the blue sign store, there has been more traffic here than I would have imagined but I suspect it will drop off shortly. Dinner was hamburgers which is a Friday night tradition, we are going to catch up with our YouTube peeps tonight and will turn in sometime after dark.

Today’s numbers: run time 0:46 hours, travelled 47.3 kilometers (29.4 miles) consumed 15.1 liters (4 gallons) of diesel fuel we averaged 53.1 kmph (33 mph) fuel consumption 32 liters / 100 km (7.3 mpg) cold start warm ups are tough on short distance days. But on the bright side our solar array has harvested 532 amp / hrs of power or almost 6.4 kilowatts of solar power and as I prepare to call it a day our battery bank is @ 91%.