Sadly we are leaving Bob and Irina’s today and heading to St. Catharines to Gino and Marlese’s auto body shop, for a few repairs and a visit. But this means a moving day again although not far the preparations are the same whether 20 miles or 200 miles, I have a number of little stops, propane fill up, top off diesel, dump our tanks, as it will be a week or so before they get dumped again. This is when we have to switch to conserving our water usage as we prepare to start our trip south. So the chances to dump or take on potable water become fewer and further apart as you will see as we head to Arizona.

The repair on Thunder is at the very bottom of the entrance door as the aluminum is corroding, and we have some clear coating peeling in spots so we need to address both, and if not repairing each now at least have a plan to fix in the near future. As for the rust on the Sport-Trac there is a rust hole at the left rear of the cab that we need to correct before it gets too far advanced, my expectations are two or three days each so out of the shop by Friday and then depending on weather will determine when we head south but I suspect most likely by the weekend we will cross the boarder.

Just a short move today 24 miles (38 kms) but it took me about an hour and a half, topped up the propane, then topped off the diesel tank, then off to Grimsby waste water management to dump the holding tanks (for free) and all of that equals about 16 miles per hour…any way we are at the body shop and the bottom the entrance door is underway. They sanded and applied an epoxy to stop the corrosion of the aluminum, tomorrow we remove the door for sanding and painting, and reinstall tomorrow afternoon, and we are good to go. The Sport-Trac will not get fixed till spring and there is a small repair piece that we will purchase to do the repair then a little welding, and a little paint and should be like new. We will just clean it, add a little rust paint, and then add some oil to stop the rust for now.

We are settled in for the night at the auto body shop, pretty level spot, 15 amp connection, and going out for dinner with Gino and Marlese this evening. Now the one main concern for us being held up on a crossing was me getting glasses, well the eye doctors office called today and cancelled both of our appointments…and can’t get us back in till November 22nd…so I guess I’m looking for a new optometrist, like I booked the appointments two months ago and the best they can offer is 4 weeks down the road…thanks but no thanks. Has not been a good year for me dealing with doctors. So it looks like we should be crossing by the weekend unless something else comes up…just saying

Day 756

A blustery, overcast day with a high of only 13ºC or 56ºF, we had some rain overnight, but today is Sunday and the Bills are on one of the four stations that I can get with the over the air TV antenna. The satellite dish is up but I decided because we are going to be in the body shop this week, there wasn’t any sense of starting it until we are out, ya I know my Scottish is showing again, I just can’t help myself.

Well the Bills looked like the Bills of old getting kicked around by the Eagles, but as a long time Bills fan this is just normal. It has been a lazy Sunday for me, Miss Laurie on the other hand went for a walk with Irena, they took the dog to the dog park and then hiked a bit of the Bruce trail. Then they came back and spent the afternoon painting, Irena is an artist and whether oil or water, her work is amazing, she also teaches a number of classes and a few private students (so ya she is that kind of good). Miss Laurie is pretty good to, this is one of the pass times that she is hoping to enjoy this winter, in Arizona between hikes and cocktails. My day was not nearly as productive but I think we all need days like that, I got to watch some NFL football, and just kick back on a comfortable seat for the afternoon.

In an effort to comply with boarder requirements we barbecued some honey garlic sausage from the freezer, for dinner as that was just one less thing that the boarder staff would not have to take if they checked, not that they often do, but if they did we would answer honestly and they would confiscate any meat products that we have. I know to a lot of RV’rs find the Canadian boarder to be a deterrent to their travel, there are many mysteries which aren’t really a mystery at all if you just do a little research. You just need to find out what items are restricted, and leave them behind, as with any boarder there are some items that can’t cross and if you do some checking there is always a reason and it works going both ways as each country has their own restrictions. The two that catch us when traveling south are meat and citrus, neither are allowed to cross into the US and are so easy to forget, like that lime you slice up for your cocktail is a serious no no at the boarded.

It has not been a real good solar day as we only pulled in 20 amp hours of power today so the 15 amp line from Bob’s we managed to overloaded and kick off the breaker at about 10pm, with the inverter trying to charge the batteries and me running the space heater, so as we turn in for the night, we’re thinking it could be a cool night in the coach. This is one of the reasons that an inverter upgrade is in our near future, as the new inverters let us control the maximum load that we would draw from a shore power connection, as an example the 15 amp line from Bob’s house I could set it to draw no more than 10 amps (so no chance of overloading the circuit) and if another load would put us over the 10 amp mark the inverter would automatically add power from the batteries to cover the load. This feature will also be great when we are connected to a metered electrical outlet as a lot of parks charge separate for the amount of electrical that is used, so we could use our solar to reduce our costs. Again it’s showing a little isn’t it…sorry.

Day 755