We met these folk in 50 Point this morning. They shipped their “car” from Germany to Halifax and began stage one of their north american trip. Today they are off to see Niagara Falls. From there they will work their way accross Canada, then north to Alaska, back down the west coast to Palm Springs by mid November. There they will store their RV and return to Germany. Next year they plan to return to their RV in Palm Springs and then travel Mexico and Guatemala.
So what’s with the change in color you ask? I am just green with envy, that’s all.

We have now lived in the Hamilton area, the “City of Waterfalls”  for 10 years. I’m embarrassed to say we have seen maybe three or four of 126 of them. We travel 10′s of thousands of miles, all over North America to seek natural attractions of interest, but can’t do 20 miles to see some of the local ones. Shame on Us.

I didn’t even know there were a lot of falls we should see until last spring. We were parked next to Chris’ motorhome (you’ll see a picture of it when you click on the link) for a few days. This year I promised myself we would right this wrong.

Yesterday we headed out to see us some falls. Instead we got lost. As in completely lost. So lost in fact, we couldn’t even find the divorce lawyer we suddenly both needed to speak to. It was not a pretty sight. Fortunately we were close to home so I didn’t have too far to crawl.

We’re all better now. By tomorrow maybe we’ll be joking about it.

OK, next time we will plan our day. We will print a map and we will hold it right side up  and what ever happens we will remain civil to each other. We’ll take the money we were going to spend on the divorce lawyer and have a nice lunch everyday for the rest of our lives (or until we forget the map which ever comes first).

Meanwhile, way over on the other side of the internet, today we talk about our favorite iPhone or in our case, Android apps we love for RV’ing.

Come on over, we can compare lists.

New Shoes

Last week came the good news that I was 12 months cancer free  and we were very  happy.

Then we note that the cancer may be gone but in its place we have grown bellies.

So, we have the chat: We should ixNay the ellybay (we talk in pig latin so we don’t alarm the dogs). We need to get back into shape.

We go to the Nike Store and buy shoes.

Monday we run. Just 3 or 4 kilometers but we do run.

Popular wisdom says that you give your body a break by alternating the muscle groups, so you run one day, bike or something the next. You know; kind of like Ale one day, Lager the next. Or Red one day, White the next.

But no, we throw wisdom to the wind and we run on day 2. Now on day 3 we (especially me) whine and complain. My legs hurt. Today we wear walking shoes.

Tomorrow we run.

We came home from a weekend in Toronto Sunday afternoon and look what was sitting on our step awaiting our arrival. We’re not sure who gave us this amazing gift, although we have our suspicions, and we did get the connection.

Last weekend when I dumped our black water tank our sewer backed up (that’s not a pretty sight) and even though I cleaned it all up, it took a couple of days to get someone from the park out to fix it. On their first fix-it attempt they sent a kid out with what appeared to be an old recycled coat hanger. When that didn’t work he left in a huff proof positive that a university education aint all it’s cracked up to be  and returned 20 minutes later with a toilet plunger. Needless to say he was really ticked when that didn’t work either. I can imagine his frustration; all those years of school, all those hours of study and all those kegs of beer are still no match for some little Doom-a-jiggy stuck 6 feet down in a sewer pipe.

When 24 hours later nothing had changed Marilyn again called the office, this time they sent in a real professional plumber, he had a real plumber’s crack ( a nice one so I’ve been told), emergency lights on his truck and all, and the job was finally done right. Once we told our neighbors our tale of our over-flow of waste we have been the “butt” of a lot of plumber and or sewage (sewage is the polite term for shitty) jokes.

For our never-ending effort to entertain our neighbors someone obviously bought us a gift.

Looking at this Hillbilly  aka Red Neck bird feeder reminds me of the time we met the Borsage’s in a park in Mississippi.

Notice the picture in the background of this high quality literary work? You see the whole thing in this post. The picture is over 10 years old and one of my favorites. The beach is called Bahai El Coyote (Coyote Bay) and is south of Mulege on the Sea Of Cortez in the state of Baja Sur, Mexico.
We spent one night here in the spring of 2002, while on our way back from a winter in Cabo San Lucas.
Many of the RV’s you see had been dry camping here for the past 4 or 5 months. Every day a local farmer came through selling produce, and once a week or so a couple of the guys would get together and make a run into Mulege, probably 20 miles up the road to pick up beer and other, much less important supplies. Spear guns were all they needed to catch enough fish for dinner.

I hope to go back there someday, although this time I would like to count the length of our stay in the area by weeks, not days.

After working my little heiny off for the past week I am now off until next Thursday. I think I could be on to something. It feels like I may have found the sweet spot!

Before you ask, business is just fine. Their sales are up again this year over last and based on my week at work, it looks like I’ll be back sipping the premium beer just like before. I get an interesting perspective, stepping in and stepping out like that. And I enjoy doing what I do. What do I do you ask? I talk to interesting people all day, often about RV’s. And here’s the neat part; for that Sicard RV  puts money in our bank account.  Which is kind of handy because believe it or not our investments haven’t done quite what they were supposed to over the past few years.

Anyway, it’s an interesting business and so far I’m glad I’m back.

Oh: and you are thinking about a new RV, please come and see (maybe you should call first to make sure I’m there). I really need the commissions. The Canadian prices of premium beer are just brutal.

Thank you for the read.

Our neighbors and good friends had a fire in their RV refrigerator the other day. Fortunately they were home and caught it before it did any major damage to their coach.
I’ve been meaning to write a piece on RV fridges and fires for a long time. 80 % of RV fires start at the refrigerator so looking after your RV fridge becomes an extremely important task. It won’t guarantee you never have a fire, but it will cut down the percentage.
You can read the  whole story right here, then please pass the word on to all your RV’ing friends.

the Black plastic cowboy hat

It’s a whole new experience learning to wear a fine Stetson-like hat like the one you see on the handsome professional male model above. Taking the corners wide is a must and lower entrances are definetely a no-no. You better keep at least one hand free at all times because you certainly know it when you step out into a stong wind. On the positive side though it does keep some of the sun out of your eyes and may even have some value for keeping the rain off your glasses.

Contrary to popular opinion though all the girls don’t automatically go wild when they see a rogue in a black plastic cowboy hat. Admittedly a few did, but I had to throw them back, they certainly weren’t keepers. I’m thinking that maybe if I had a real black cowboy hat, not a plastic one, the results might be better. Or maybe it’s time I just faced it; Maybe the years have taken away my youthful rogue-ish charm.
What am I thinking? It is the plastic.

In my last post I was whining about the weather. Mother Nature had snuck in when we least expected and served up hopefully one last dose of winter winds and temperatures, just so we all would remember who is really in charge. OK Mom, I surrender. You make the rules.
Yesterday we are out for a walk around 50 Point, where as you can see, spring is underway. Every year in late April they begin putting all the boats in the water, making sure they are all in and ready to go before the May two-four long weekend.
Come late September, early October, they lift them all out of the water to prepare for the oncoming winter.
Further along on our walk, Marilyn comments that these trees look just like spurts of water out of fountains;

water fountains

Someday’s we are walking fools!

Later in the day we head up to another local conservation area to enjoy the now gorgeous day. This park is noted as a great bird watching area, and there are dozens of people watching the sky, all with fancy looking binoculars and cameras in hand, ready to capture each exciting bird sighting.
As we walk through the park we see many hawks enjoying the thermals as they make their way north for the summer.
Here’s a recent count;

After years of procrastination, I’ve now been working hard on RVQuestions.net and am starting to see some results. Daily hits are now in the many hundreds  so I’m thinking that makes it time to get some advertising on there. Last night I did that. Notice the first random ad that google puts up? Now you know what my plans are for the weekend.

My buddy George calls them Awsome. I call everyday Amazing. Today is one of those days you need to search for the awsome and send out a whole search party for the amazing because you aren’t going to find it in the weather.. The forecast calls for near freezing cold, strong winds, rain, and snow and ice pellets. But not to worry, as the day progresses it’s only supposed to get colder.

Sounds like the perfect afternoon to curl up with a good book. Coincidentally, for all of us who enjoy reading our books on our Kindles or Kobo’s or IPads or Tablets or even our smart phones Nina over at Wheeling It has done some research and come up with some ways to get thousands of free titles, no matter what device you use to read for nada, and that’s spanish for “nothing” as in “free”. Interested? Well just point your browser over to here .

Mean while over at RV Questions we tell a “could have been” scary story about blowing a tire  a couple of weeks ago. Key words. “could have been” other key words would be “thank goodness”. Anyway read the story.