Well it’s 6:30 on Friday morning, and I am just going to make a coffee, like every thing we do as full timers there is a process to having a morning coffee. We perk our coffee every morning in an old Pyrex glass perk on our propane fuelled stove. A quick check of the gauge on the propane tank shows 3/4 full, and with some wonderment I remember it was filled back in April after returning to Canada, it’s now July the 12th, pretty good but only two things run off the propane tank the stove top and the refrigerator if we are not on shore power.

It was been a routine work week so far, the grass has finally slowed down its growth, so the lawns looked much better, no wind rows of grass after mowing. I pulled the blades off the mower and sharpened them on Wednesday so they seem to be cutting the grass as opposed to beating it into submission. I also replaced a couple of boards on one of the benches on the walk way from the beach, age had got the better of them, I loving refer to it as the old fart bench…for obvious reasons…the youngsters have no problem hiking up the hill but some of us just like to sit and enjoy a little quiet time and catch our breath…just saying

For some reason yesterday, I kind of lost the will to work, the day before had been quite warm and I just needed a breather day. So while I completed a number of tasks they were on the lighter side. Today after pool opening, will be mid-week pump outs, Laurie and I find this somewhat entertaining as boondockers we have learned to conserve and ration most things in our life. And so many people here have no concept of water conservation a couple will fill a 40 gallon black tank in four days. Any way where was I, oh ya making coffee, filtered water from our Berkey, a couple scoops of Folgers, and about fifteen minutes later fresh perked coffee and an aroma through the whole coach of coffee.

I also just sliced a couple of pieces of bread for some toast, Laurie makes us bread with the bread maker that we got a little over a year ago, it’s pretty close to made from scratch and now that we have Canadian flour again, I know what do you mean Canadian flour well a crazy as it sounds American flour does not work well in the bread maker, I don’t know why, we we told that by John and Lynn in Why but now fully understand it just doesn’t make good bread. So a fresh loaf of bread is becoming a almost weekly event, so a couple slices of toast with butter, a large mug of fresh perked coffee…ok now bring on the weekend warriors!

Laurie has been trying to secure a site for December in Arizona, we normally don’t book anything when we go west but we have missed our Why Arizona friends so much. We spent December 2017 in Why and made such great friends there, we follow some on Facebook but many don’t use that app so we only hear about so of the things happening through third parties and as great as that is, it’s not like talking directly to them or being there, we still have not heard back with a confirmation so we may just end up boondocking in the area to visit…time will tell.

As crazy as it will sound I have already started to plan and prepare for our dry camping adventures this winter and some testing has brought to light that our old Heart 2000 watt inverter is starting to weaken, and while I would have preferred to exchange it in Quartzsite this winter I may have to do it this summer, the problem with that is sourcing the items and getting them shipped is expensive partly because of the whole Trump border tariff thing as well as our tax rate. So I’m working on the logistics, and while there would be a couple of inverters sitting on a shelf in Quartzsite in Goderich not so much.

Well it’s 6:30 Friday afternoon and the flow of people into the park started about noon and is still going strong, the day is cool when you are out of the sun, but the skies are clear and the low for tonight is about 14 or 60 degrees a little chilly for the middle of July but so far only one day that has required air conditioner because of humidity so it has been very comfortable, there was rain around this week but we managed to stay clear of it this week and the weekend is looking very nice as well…

Not often in life that you make a truly great decision, but the purchase of our Berkey has been one of those life changing decisions.

Wow that’s a pretty bold statement! But yet a true statement, we try to drink a lot of water and we use to buy huge cases of bottled water, which are heavy to carry, hard to store in a coach , and we found we always had partial bottles of water left everywhere. Sound familiar? To add to the problem, recycling (which we believe is a necessity) is not easy on the road, and we had so many plastic water bottles it was just wrong to throw them in the garbage….then I started reading the labels and found that most bottled water is just from some municipalities water tap anyway, and some them contain a significant quantity of sodium….so we needed a solution.

October 2017 we purchased our Big Berkey. After much research I found the benefit to filtering our water and using reusable water bottles would be multi fold, first and foremost our water always tastes the same, couldn’t say the same thing about bottled water or about municipal water supplies. When you purchase your Berkey you buy it according to you water consumption, it has to keep the filters full and wet to provide the best quickest supply of water, we opted for a two – double filter system and it is expandable to four – double filter system. The Berkey consists of two compartments stacked on top of one another, the top compartment has filters attached a purification filter on top which is attached to a chemical removing filter which hangs into the bottom compartment which acts as a reservoir for the purified water. Proper sizing will have you filling the upper reservoir at least once a day

While the Berkey is reasonably large it fits perfectly on the counter, and under the cabinets while traveling, it has a rubber around the base so it does not slide and I have unintentionally tested it for movement on a few occasions. And while taking up residence on the corner of the table while parked I could not see us not having a Berkey in our lives no matter where we are. The filters are expensive but last for a number of months and are now just part of our life, we filter all drinking and cooking water through the Berkey and if I could figure out how to have it feed the ice maker I would.