Wednesday April 11, 2018

OK, Let's Shoot that Groundhog!

We are back in the cold north, we arrived back on April 28, and since then it's been snowing and even some freezing rain is expected. The rest of the trip back after Columbus was uneventful and we breezed through customs at the border.

We did about 11,750 Km. on the trip, a bit less than last year, we hung around Borrego more.

This is what Murdoch has been looking at outside the window:

We look forward to some real spring and the chance to have a couple of barbies!


Sunday March 25, 2018

In Columbus Indiana

We are now on Eastern time here in Columbus, we got here a few hours ago.

We are glad we waited in Bowling Green, as we came north the snow accumulations increased and we saw some some tire tracks that headed towards the ditch and the median on the interstate. The campground attendant here indicated that he had to turn off the water overnight and he was plowing the snow after we arrived.

They must have got the 6 inches forecast.

This is what the reception area looked like:

Our site (sorry about my finger in the picture!)

The person in the site last night must have had to remove the snow from the slides before retracting them!

Off to Fort Wayne tomorrow!


 

Friday March 23, 2018

Waiting out the Weather

We had planned to leave for Columbus Indiana this morning, but we had a look at the weather there. There is a winter storm watch issued calling for up to 6 inches of snow and "some ice" (which may mean freezing rain) overnight and tomorrow. As a result, we are "day-to-day", we booked the campsite here for tonight and it's on hold if we need it tomorrow night. The campsite in Columbus only has water and electric and we would prefer not to have snow on the roof or slides. It's comfortable here in Bowling Green and if we get bored we can head out for a meal (or Al can hit the Corvette Museum!).

It warmed up yesterday and we got some outside time on the patio, Murdoch enjoyed it:


 

Wednesday March 21, 2018

Shivering in Bowling Green!

Today is our second in Bowling Green Kentucky at the KOA. We arrived yesterday and the ladies on the desk warned us about the inch of snow they were expecting. It didn't happen, we got a few flurries but it's been around freezing since. As a precaution we are running off the fresh water tank overnight as we don't want a frozen water hose. The forecast calls for below freezing temps tonight so the hose will be stowed again.

The propane levels are being watched closely, as at these temps we normally run through a 30 lb. tank in under a week, Al checked the tank today and found this:

You probably can't see it, but there is a quarter inch of ice in the bottom of the tank, the evaporation of the liquid causes the high humidity in the air to freeze instead of just condensing to liquid.

We remember our return here last year, we were in shorts sitting in the lawn chairs, what a change!

Before we got here we spent 2 nights in Natchez Trace and 2 nights in Village Creek state park in Wynne, both stops were OK but cool and rainy. It's been tough for the locals used to a great spring, but we are fortunate to have dodged any tornado activity that has happened in the south.

We are here for another 2 nights, after that we do one night stops before we get home early next week. Looks like we may have to do a quick winterizing of the camper when we get there!


Thursday March 15, 2018

And the Battle Goes On!

It's been a little tough on this return trip. The folks at Mt Pleasant commented that the park had been partially flooded with hail, the grass was still very wet when we stayed there. Today we rolled into DeGray Lake state park and found it was closed due to flooding, enough water that the water overflowed the spillway at the dam. We ran into a great warden at the entrance who phoned the Core of Engineers campground close by, they were open and had sites on a first come-first served basis. We really lucked out as the pictures show, we have a 50 amp electric and water site compared to 30 amp at DeGray, and it's a great site. What's better, we have TV (thanks to the trees that haven't sprouted leaves yet), and some cell connectivity.

Some pictures:

Our Site:

The view down the road:

Suzette and Murdoch returning from a walk:

A closer view of the lake, you can't see but it is still substantially flooded:

A one night stop, off to Wynne tomorrow.


Wednesday March 14, 2018

First "Real Fire" of the Year!

We are in the Mt Pleasant Texas KOA, this is our second day here. As usual, we survived the trek across Dallas /Fort Worth and we relaxed after that yesterday. We shopped today and are preparing to hit Arkansas tomorrow. Actually, yesterday was our first wood fire of the year, today is our second!

In California wood fires are generally banned, we rented a propane fire when the grand kids came down, but you can't beat real wood:

It's cool by our standards, but almost 20C during the day, Suzette is in short sleeves:

We have a patio site at about $40 per day, but with our points the second day was only $20!

Off to Arkansas tomorrow!


Sunday March 11, 2018

Another New RV Park

We are in West Texas, and fighting the March break busy time. We decided to reserve at Tra-Park RV park here in Pecos Texas as the state park in Monahans was busy and we wanted to be sure that we got a site for the night. It's an escapees park but there isn't a senior citizen in the park (except for us!).

We are one of the few non-oilfield workers in the park. Pecos has got very busy over the years we've been down here with the fracking (it's almost "west Midland") and it's reflected by the slow internet speeds and congestion. When Al filled up the truck with gas and looked for a fast food place, Dairy Queen was the only option but it had at least 50 vehicles in the parking lot!

A couple of pictures:

Old trailers, tightly packed

This is the double site next to us

As a comparison, we were in Van Horn Texas for the past two nights, a great view of the mountains from our site which was on the end of a row:


Monday March 5, 2018

On the Road and a new RV (and dog!) Park

We left Borrego Springs on March 2nd, a day later than planned due to truck repairs. The truck required a new 4WD selector switch to complete the repair of the 4WD problem, it's still not fully repaired as the garage indicated that there is still a resistance to going into 4WD high. There are no codes and the truck is in 2WD and will stay there until we get home and to a Ford dealer, sounds like a transfer case problem.

We spent 2 nights at the Palms in Yuma, it's a step up from the "beer drinking" camp ground that Fortuna de Oro was, but it's not up to the Springs standard (although it is much cheaper!)

A couple of pictures:

The campground is a bit junky, lots of junk around the permanent sites

Our site had a light pole "conveniently" placed to make parking easy!

Another look at our "unimproved" site:

A look at the other sites:

The place is gated with good security but it is also close to the airport, lots of noise. Still, for Yuma it isn't a bad stop. Since we have a night still untaken (they don't give refunds) we will be back here in the fall.

We got into Tucson yesterday and we will spend 3 more nights here before heading east.


Saturday February 24, 2018

CamAm Golf tournament

The annual golf tournament started yesterday and continues today. We were concerned about the reduced amount of Canadians at the park this year but there was a good turnout.

A few pictures:

 

This is Regan, the Canadian mascot who hails from Saskatchewan, he's a gentle giant!

The Canadians preparing for the parade:

We would be remiss not to show some American folks, this is the parade leader aka The Statue of Liberty:

Brandy, the golf pro on the left with our friend Linda:

We are starting to think about our move to Yuma on March 1, but we are waiting for a part to arrive to repair the Ford, we may have to stay a couple more days if the part doesn't solve the problem.


Saturday February 17, 2018

Hummer Feeder Reload

Al replenished the Hummer feeders for probably the last time this winter, the food should last until we take them down before we leave on March 1. These guys are aggressive, they buzzed Al when he was taking the feeders down.

After the refill, a few pictures were taken from a distance. These guys are carnivores but the supply of bugs isn't plentiful and it's been cool over the past couple of days.

They tried to hide on the back side of the feeder:

Another guy tried to get into the act as well. Some fed from the feeder:

Just over a week until we hit Yuma on our way back north!


Sunday February 11, 2018

More Fun!

We have been enjoying our stay here in the Springs.

We went out into the desert with Suzette's dog park friends and other friends from the resort. This time Al took the truck, and we now have some "desert pin striping" on the duallie fenders! There is also a problem with the 4WD, it's stuck between 2 and 4WD, it's in 2WD but the dash says it's in 4WD and it tries to shift and can't. We will see if some of the local experts here can fix it. Not a major issue, but it would be good to get it fixed before we head for home.

Here are a couple of pictures from the desert excursion:

Suzette is doing a two hand "salute" (that's my wine in her other hand), we seem to enjoy the food and beverages more than the full moon!

We had Sam and Nicole and the grand kids over for a week last week, we really had a good time and the kids enjoyed some great weather, sun and 30C temperatures during the day.

A few pictures (mostly taken by Sam and the grand kids!):

A visit to the desert sculptures is mandatory!

We found a few sculptures that none of us has seen before:

Murdoch was really good to the grand kids, he was even a pillow for Bennett!

There was a trip to the San Diego Zoo, the grand kids saw lots of animals including the pandas:

Murdoch was also helpful, he's looking at the menu from a local restaurant and making suggestions!


Tuesday January 30, 2018

Blogs are Amazing!

Al needs to do more posts, he's been lazy and very relaxed! No postings for a month. Something happened yesterday afternoon that surprised and pleased us. We were enjoying some wine on the back patio when a couple came over and said "hello Al and Suzette!". We haven't met these folks before, they told us that they read our blog to get information about Mexico and they took some of our advice and stayed in the same RV parks down there (we talked about Mr. Moro RV park and it's excellent restaurant). As usual, we are terrible in remembering names (our apologies!), but we will drop over to their campsite here so we can get them.

Tomorrow night it's a full moon so we are heading into the desert with our dog park friends to get a good view. The next morning there is a full lunar eclipse, and the timing here is such that Murdoch gets up when it's still a complete eclipse, so we get two special events for the price of one. Hopefully the skies will be cloud free.

This morning there were some clouds that made for a beautiful sunrise, it was even better a little earlier when Murdoch had his first walk, but the view was still good!


Sunday December 31, 2017

Preparing for a Happy New Year!

We are getting ready - we went shopping this morning for some last minute provisions (including wine!) and we also look forward to heading over to Mary and Linda's place tomorrow evening to observe the "wolf" moon, the first full moon of the new year, we might even do some "howling" ourselves!

Borrego Springs and the area around is hopping, the desert areas around the town are full of off road folks, enough that yesterday there was a "sand fog" that obscured the hills nearby. We joined the local Facebook group, Borrego Springs 92004 and there was a negative comment about the sand from a local, she was drowned out by other positive comments indicating that this holiday is one of the two busiest of the year and a local business person indicating "the visitors spend more money on the holiday than the locals spend all year", so we we feel very welcome here!

We hope that the clouds don't obscure the moon this evening, today there are some clouds around,  but we had a beautiful sunrise this morning:

The picture would have been better if Al had figured out how to turn off the camera flash (it was before his first coffee!).

We hope to post some great pictures of the wolf moon if the clouds hold off.

Best wishes to everyone, have a Happy New Year!


Tuesday December 26, 2017

And a good time was had by all!

We had a very good Christmas day, quiet, but the turkey was good!

Murdoch had a good time too, he is really enjoying the times at the dog park with his girlfriend Lucy and we are hoping that his twice a day exercise will help him lose a few pounds (we have been "chastised" by our vet for his being about 10 pounds over his ideal weight!)

A couple of dog park pictures:

Preparing for "battle"!

Murdoch getting his ears chewed on!

When Murdoch is not at the dog park, he is "guarding" the campsite. What does he see?

Ah, there it is, Wylie coyote's enemy! Murdoch could probably not catch him either.

We got a beautiful Christmas card from our friends Ed and Karen, very appropriate!


 

Sunday December 24, 2017

Merry Christmas!

A brief post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We are preparing for the feast tomorrow with a small turkey and a quiet Christmas day. The weather is starting to warm up a bit, but we've become somewhat like the locals, long pants and long sleeve shirts, though not as bad  as some of them wearing touques and parkas!

I thought that I would post a picture of our updated RV and our campsite:

Since we are here in the US, a gun is a requirement!

Seriously, we got this image from a member of the Redwood Owners Group. Have a very Merry Christmas!

Al & Suzette (and Murdoch!)


Wednesday December 13, 2017

Christmas is Coming!

Yes, it' getting closer! Our presents have arrived at the grand kids places (except for a delayed shipment, Amazon apologized!). We bought our small turkey breast yesterday and last evening we had a parade of the Road Runner club's folks in golf carts:

This is a "strange" picture of our decorations, the place isn't green but you can see the lights shining on the tree:

Our neighbour's place looks much better!


Thursday December 7, 2017

"Shakin all Over!"

Interesting days here! we are used to an occasional shake, being in earthquake country, but yesterday we got a few additional events. It started yesterday after dark with a number of quakes in the area, most in Julian up the hill but we had a shake here in Borrego Springs as well.

Murdoch reacted to the quakes a few seconds before we felt them. There was no damage and our RV would survive a much stronger quake as it's said that RV's suffer quakes frequently while driving over bad road conditions. Still, it was interesting! The screen shot below may show the quakes yesterday:

https://screenshots.firefox.com/UKZpmCA6P6tk5pBN/earthquaketrack.com

This screenshot may only last 11 days!

Just in case, the picture below should stay:

On top of the quakes, there are fires near LA, and our AT&T phone just issued an alert for a fire in north San Diego county. Fortunately we are not close, although with the high winds our steaks on the barbie will have to be postponed until tomorrow!

It's always interesting around here!


Sunday December 3, 2017

Relaxing and enjoying it!

We are well settled, and the weather has been great, warm days and good sleeping temperatures. Murdoch is finally getting used to Pacific time, he slept in to 6 AM this morning!

A great moon rise yesterday evening:


Thursday November 30, 2017

Lots of Wildlife here!

We are settled in, most of the work required to get us to a comfortable position is now done (and Al is getting lazy!).

We have been awoken each night by the coyotes, they have been very close. Last night we think one of them disturbed some furniture on our neighbour's site by the sound they made and there was a "deposit" left on our site as well. The local newspaper also posted a picture of big horn sheep enjoying a local venue:

The local internet company can be connected via the local cable system in the park, so we signed up and have some high speed internet, this is the first trial of the connection, it's faster than our service back home!

While there isn't a competition here, we felt guilty about not doing a lot of Christmas decorations, so we put in a line of coloured LED's under the RV to give some appearance of Christmas. This is how they looked at dawn this morning We will add some more stuff as December comes. Suzette bought a couple of nice flower plants as well:

People are starting to arrive, two of our friends arrive tomorrow.


Tuesday November 28, 2017

Settled in Borrego Springs

We made it here yesterday and got blown around with the heavy wind gusts, today is calm and warm, but a little cloudy.

Most of the "stuff" is unpacked and even the hummers are already eating from our two bird feeders. We did some initial shopping in town and picked up the gossip about the change in ownership of the RV park here and the adjacent Roadrunner mobile home park, it promises to be a transitional winter. We look forward to hitting some local restaurants. We are trying out the high speed internet service here, it should be active on Thursday.

A couple of initial pictures of the site:


Thursday November 23, 2017.

Thanksgiving in Yuma

We arrived here yesterday and are in Fortuna de Oro, our regular "beer drinking" campground. We wanted to try out The Palms, but it being Thanksgiving here we knew that we could get in to Fortuna. It will be the last time we stop here, the combination of the paperwork burden (including two bundles if you have a dog, and why do they need your drivers license?) when signing in and the crowd isn't pleasant (but it's dirt cheap for seasonals)

The good news is that we can get our site early at the Springs in Borrego on Monday, so we will be off.

We are celebrating the Thanksgiving with a ham and some stuffing made by Cam back home at Paradise farms.

Murdoch has been very quiet here, maybe it's because of the heat, it's 32C outside and both A/C units are on, we love this weather!

An initial couple of pictures:

Yes, definitely laid back!

They still continue to push park model sales starting under $40,000:

Nice views of the foothills:


Tuesday November 21, 2017

Last day in Tucson

We have enjoyed our stay here, we took a patio site to see how we liked it. Not bad, but a little cramped with the additional stuff. It has a fireplace, not sure if we will have a fire tonight or not.

A couple of pictures:

Yes, we are enjoying some wine!

We had a great time with Ron, a retirement buddy from Quebec, and his wife Diane. We reminisced about work and discussed RVing, they are relatively new at it.

We took in a couple of dinners and enjoyed the talk. They left this morning on their run back to Quebec.

Murdoch even got into the picture!


Sunday November 19, 2017

In Tucson Arizona

We have been doing a bit of a speed run this year so we haven't posted a lot. We arrived here at Lazy Days KOA in Tucson a couple of days ago and we welcomed the arrival of Al's retirement buddy Ron and his wife Diane yesterday.

We've relaxed a bit and Murdoch has found a new girlfriend, Shilo, at the dog park, she's a slightly younger Golden and they are having a great time at the park.

We had our first BBQ of the trip, delicious, the bakers were already done:

The KOA has a new restaurant, not run by the KOA, on-site, basic fare but the brisket and ribs were good, and the company was great!

We will enjoy Ron and Diane's company here!


 

 

Thursday November 9, 2017

In Village Creek SP near Wynne Arkansas

We arrived here yesterday after spending 2 days in Natchez Trace state park near Jackson Tennessee. We have got some sunny weather today, we are outside for the first time in a few days.

Murdoch is in his element, there are 4 deer that graze on the grass nearby, Murdoch goes over after they run away and has his nose to the ground smelling the scents of the deer. Al tried to get a picture but the deer are very skittish and they ran. Here is the attempt at taking a long range shot, the remaining deer looks like a tree, in the center of the picture:

Murdoch has "graduated", he's not eating (and pooping!) whole acorns any more, the deer must be keeping him busy.

We got our normal pull through site which is satellite TV friendly and in spite of having only 1 bar on the AT&T hot spot we are on line.

A picture of our normal site:

Al refilled a propane cylinder today in preparation for a cold night tonight, almost freezing! It's still warm by Ontario standards though.


Sunday November 5, 2017

In Bowling Green Kentucky

We are on our second day here, we arrived from Columbus Indiana yesterday. We are loving the weather, it's 26 C and sunny here today, Murdoch is really enjoying being outside.

Up to yesterday he (and we) had indoor days, he really didn't enjoy it as the picture below shows:

Ah, that's better:

We may have another day or two indoor days due to the rain in Tennessee, but the weather person has been wrong before!

You know it's still warm when you hear the crickets chirping first thing in the morning.


Thursday November 2, 2017

On the Road to California Again!

We left home yesterday after we shelled out Halloween treats to the kids (we have plenty left over!). After an uneventful border crossing (the officer complemented Murdoch and admired our RV) we stayed in Monroe Michigan, today we have stopped in Bluffton Indiana at the KOA here.

It warmed up over the day, it's almost 20C here compared to +4C last night. We are looking to some sunny days (real sunny days, not Trudeau's sunny days!) as we head to Bowling Green Kentucky for the weekend.