Tag: camping

Day 2800

June 3rd 2025

Well another 10 days have passed since my last blog, and a lot of things have happened over this period. On last writing I was headed out to Bob’s 60th birthday celebration our site was still very wet after the more than 8 cm (3″) of rain our site doesn’t have a gravel road and we need to drive from the main entrance around the washrooms and up a grass knoll to our site, and if we didn’t have four wheel drive I’m not sure we could get to our coach. There are improvements in the weather but not as much as we would like, as it is still cold and damp.

Saturday: Bob’s 60th birthday celebration, Miss Laurie has offered to help Irina prepare for the event, the exact number of guests is a moving target but they are planning for 50 people. It is a cold overcast day and we did drive through some rain on our way to their home. They live in a subdivision in Beamsville and while they have a large lot the home is not fifty guest comfortable and with it being too cold to be out side it made for a lot of milling in and out of the house. And as with most parties there was just too much food with cold cuts, salads, charcuterie boards of cheese and pickles, then add burgers and sausages on the grill, plus soda, beer and Alex their son was preparing mixed cocktails to order. It was a busy place for the afternoon, we had a chance to catch up with people that we had not seen for years, and did not get back to the coach till dark.

Sunday: Today was the Buchanan gathering in Oxford Center the cross roads where I grew up, there was a community hall, a two room public school and a general store, add a dozen homes a few farms a couple of churches not enough to even make village statis. And as great as it would have been to see everyone I was just not up to it, too much time on my feet the day before so I had to pass. In fact I never made it out of my pajamas, there was some sunshine today but still not warm enough to spend any time outside, Miss Laurie painted a seahorse while I watched the Indy-500 on FOX Entertainment (the purveyor of alternate facts). It was a good race, and other than being delayed a few time for light rain seemed to have limited crashes and no injuries although there were some crazy pit stop issues fires, stall outs, and even a crash. We finished off the day with some YouTube videos.

Monday: Memorial Day for our American family and I woke to sunshine, oh don’t get me wrong it was still cold this morning but at least it has the appearance of being warmer. 8ºC (47ºF) so I have the electric heater on again this morning to take the chill off of the coach, but it is amazing how just how much better the sunshine make the day feel. There is actually no rain in todays forecast and no one here at then park will be upset by that. Today is lawn cutting day it is also the day I had picked to top of the fresh water tank, not a big deal but I have to unroll my 100 foot hose to add water then roll it up so that I don’t end up with a shorter hose. 151 liters (40 gallons) and my hose is intact, I did a little weed whacking around the coach and shuffled some items to make the mowers task a wee bit easier. Miss Laurie has decided to help with the park gardens, I know your all surprised to hear that, and I spent most of the day in a zero gravity chair listening to an audio book. We finished the evening with the American Music Awards before hitting the hay shortly after ten.

Tuesday: I woke to some sunshine filtering through the maple trees in front of our coach, but it was a short lived joy as the sky soon became overcast, and as the electric heater removed the chill of the morning it became apparent that this will not be a good solar day. Today I have nothing planned for the day other than finishing off another James Patterson novel, Miss Laurie has located a supply of rhubarb so I suspect a rhubarb crisp in my near future. I walked through the park today and it has dried out a lot, when Miss Laurie returned in Ruby she was able to park Ruby on our site again. I have settled into an anti-gravity chair listening to “Slow Horses” an audio novel by Mick Herron, I like the audio’s during the summer while relaxing in the sunshine, this morning I just finished reading “Holmes, Margaret & Poe” by Brian Sitts & James Patterson and I have just started reading “A Box of Frogs” by Josh Hellyer who is a Canadian author and other than finishing my many series by various American authors I’m making an effort to read more Canadian.

Well the rhubarb crisp was excellent, as you all knew it would be, and after watching the news and the throne speech being read by King Charles, and whether you are a supporter of the British Monarchy or not it was another sign of Canadian unity. And it was done in true Canadian subtility, which itself is so Canadian. We finished the evening watching our YouTube peeps and are thrilled to see that Paul & Lorena from TME have received their new engine for their motorhome and could even be back on the road as I’m writing this blog, they have been broken down for over two month now in La Paz Mexico, we watched a video on Buc-ee’s by Long Long Honeymoon that was well done when trying to explain a Buc-ee’s which for anyone that has been to one knows is almost beyond explanation.

Wednesday: No sunshine this morning we are overcast again today and preparing the next weather event that is passing through this afternoon till early Thursday. Toasted bacon and tomato sandwich for breakfast today, out heater kicked on for less than an hour this morning which means although it is not sunny at least it is warming up, although there is another cold front on its way. We have appointments booked early in June with our optometrist as we believe we both need new prescriptions for our glasses which has slowed my book consumption, but as my reading has been curtailed I have been messing around with some AI, using both ChatGPT and C0-Pilot, which is proved to be enlightening, I have always done research on many things whether a purchase or information for this blog, and I have found that AI gives unbiased opinions on most topics.

I just had my hearing tested by an audiologist and have been recommended hearing aids, and while still debating the purchase I have been using AI to discover all the different options available. One of the questions I asked the Doctor was why so many people with hearing aids never wear them? You know it is true, how often has someone said let me get my hearing aids? I have tinnitus quite bad, in fact so much that it is effecting my ability to hear sounds in certain ranges of tones, and I have been messing around with my Air pods which while I was in the US I was able to program as hearing aids (an option not available here in Canada as we can not buy over the counter hearing aids like in the US), I have found them good in picking up voices but depending on the option I pick can also pick up too much back ground noise. I don’t remember any one warning how much fun aging was going to be.

Thursday: Mister Sam was trying to get us up this morning, he has many tricks, some work well, some not quite so well. this morning he was in the bathroom pulling a cabinet door open and letting it slam back onto the latch. He sat and did this for at least half a dozen times before giving up, the next thing I knew he was in the bed walking around our heads, this was the final straw and I decided to give in and get him his morning treats. No sunshine this morning in fact it is rainy and cold, I have an appointment with my Gastroenterologist in St. Catharines at 9:45 and now have a colonoscopy appointment for next week, no issues just due according to age and time.

The afternoon had some spotty sunshine but not enough to make much solar power, I read through the four pages of instruction on the preparation for my procedure next week. We had some pot pies for dinner before binging on Chicago Med till bed time.

Friday: The day the weekend warriors arrive, it started out a little warmer and even had some sunshine, there is lots of fluff flying around today, pollen from something, almost had the look of poplar tree but was too small. Today is CLAM day, we are setting up our Quick-Set Pavilion shelter today, it has been a while as we did not use it for over a year. It received some damage in a torrential storm at LHR and one of the doorway fiberglass poles got broken, I have ordered a new pole, also a new fly cover with a support pole from the CLAM website in the States, of course they will not ship to Canada so I will have it shipped to our Niagara Falls address and pick it up there. Miss Laurie attached the floor and Mister Sam gave his approval as we spent some time it the CLAM after lunch. A quick run to the local Canadian Tire to retrieve some new rubber bungee straps to secure the clam tie downs.

Saturday: Ok this whole overcast, cloudy, cold weather is getting old, it is the last day of May and we are running our electric heater, this crap has to end! Now that I’m feeling better after that wee rant lets try to ignore that the high for today is only 15ºC (59ºF), not inviting at all, we are on the Grand River and there is nobody boating because the weather sucks. So today will be another indoor day, I will watch the Memorial tournament from Ohio and Miss Laurie is planning on painting a couple of pictures. Bob & Irina stopped over for a visit we had to sit inside which is fine but we prefer to spend our time outside.

Dinner tonight as some Costco barbequed chicken reheated in our air fried when it makes the chicken skin crispy (my favorite) served with pasta salad and finished off with rhubarb crisp a wee bit of whip cream as we settled in to watch our friends Paul and Lorena do a live broadcast from La Paz Mexico. Paul & Lorena have been broken down for two months and are just now ready to head out on their summer adventures back in the States, as usual their hour long broadcast ran almost two hours, which seems to fly by as we are able to comment and ask questions as they broadcast, we finished the evening with an episode of Chicago Med our most recent show we are binging.

Sunday: The first day of June and while the forecast temperature is not far off of yesterdays temperature there is suppose to be some sunshine today. Breakfast of fried eggs and toast as we watched our favorite Sunday morning programs. Miss Laurie is planning on painting today and I’m going to watch the final round of the Memorial tournament, it is just too crappy to spend much time outside although I did walk down to the river and through the park before returning to the warmth of the coach. Miss Laurie made some bruschetta for lunch and it was excellent, I followed up with some potato chips with chili pepper dip from New Mexico, it destroys me that I can only get it in New Mexico as it is excellent. Here are a couple of Miss Laurie’s latest creations:

We finished off the day with Quesada’s for dinner, watching the the news, 60 minutes, and catching up with some YouTube videos, our regular Sunday evening routine, we are watching a younger couple of full timers that were touring the Baja of Mexico which is an area we love and hope to revisit this winter instead of wintering in Arizona. This is mainly because of the attitude of the American current administration, we just figure no sense of going where we are not wanted or appreciated, the Mexicans will be glad to take our Canadian dollars.

Monday: Today again we woke to cold temperatures although there is a promise that the day will be warm, but for now the electric heater is on. I’m going to top off the freshwater tank today a weekly task that I have chosen to do on Mondays no reason other than not wanting to have to complete it during the weekend. I’m also going to start Thunder to build some air pressure to allow me to relevel the coach, we have settled enough that the step is sitting on the ground again and needs to be raised but I have to get more blocks under the rear jacks to keep us level. Breakfast was a bagel this morning because we are going to the Mandarin for lunch, for you who don’t know the Mandarin is a Chinese buffet restaurant chain in southern Ontario which is very popular and always has excellent selection which causes to eat too much.

We are meeting Mary & Julie there for lunch and we Miss Laurie has chosen the restaurant in London for a meeting point, we haven’t seem Mary & Julie since October and Miss Laurie left some planters with them to retrieve this spring so that is part of the task today. Lunch was excellent as usual and it was great to catch up with the girls, Julie lost her mom over the winter and that is always a tough experience. The trip to London took us a couple of hours, and through many construction zones, we are finding there are no direct routes from Dunnville to pretty much any where and that is both a curse and a blessing. We made it back to the coach by 5:30 and there will be no need for any dinner tonight so we settled in I watched the news, some YouTubers, then the American Ninja before calling it a day.

Tuesday: I slept in this morning till 7:30 which is good for me, today is the start of my preparation for my procedure tomorrow so nothing but fluids, and colon cleansing procedures. So as I sip my black fresh perked coffee looking forward (NOT) to a day of multiple trips to the washroom, editing this blog which falls on our 2800th day as full time RVers!

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.