Our Travel Blog

The usual bright and sunny morning, and the temperature continues to rise. The last few days have been characteristically windy, hopefully that will change shortly.

This morning Lyn resumed uttering unintelligible words as she continued working on the quilt that “looked so simple to make”. While she was doing that, I went outside to start working on the wheel bearing inspection. May main goal was make sure I had the right tools and ability to remove the wheel nuts. Once I found out that I could do that, I checked out how to raise the wheels off the ground. It looks like that will be doable with the 4 ton hydraulic jack I got last week, once I find a block of wood to put between the jack and wheel axle. Once that was done I headed back inside as the wind was dropping the temperature a little more than I liked!

This afternoon we headed north up to Camping World, an RV superstore, about 12 miles away. As usual there just happened to be some geocaches in the area. While we were at the store we looked at some of the mid sized mobile homes. Even those that cost around $200,000 had less living area and comfort than our 5th wheel. Until we win the lottery we’ll be sticking with what we have!

Well, hopefully the cold front has had it’s fun and the warmer weather is returning. The furnace cut in a couple of times last night, but yet again it was a clear sunny morning. As the day went on we got up to the mid 60’s.

We even managed to remember that the clocks changed last night. Because we are so close to the timezone line between EST and CST it means it now gets dark around 5PM and this will continue to get earlier for the next few weeks. This morning Lyn headed over to do some extra laundry while I started work on waxing the trailer. Last time I did this I recall being quite happy with how the wax went on, and more importantly, how it shined up. This time the wax didn’t polish off particularly well. I am wondering whether having left the wax in an outside storage area with the variation in the temperatures over the summer and winter.

After lunch we headed south to find a new walking trail, and of course some geocaches. We had one walk planned out, but it started at the end of a road that ran through a State park camping ground. Unfortunately we found out that there was no parking allowed on that road. We headed out to our hastily invented plan B, which was the same trail, but at the other end. We walked about 2.5 miles and had 100% success on the caches we looked for.

This week I have a few more jobs lined up. I need to take the wheels off and check that the wheel bearings a correctly packed with grease before we head out in January, also a new rear view camera arrived this week that I plan to mount high up on the rear of the trailer. This will help both in reversing, and also ensuring there is no traffic close behind me when pulling out/in during overtaking.

Not quite as cool last night, but it was WINDY. Luckily I had taken in the awning earlier in the day, otherwise we could be flying across the Atlantic by now. Even with the awning in, the trailer was still shaking in the gusts.

When we woke up this morning the temperature was in the mid 40’s, the wind was blowing but it was a clear and sunny day. On the picnic bench outside the trailer we had placed a decorative wicker basked full of large pine cones weighed down with a 4 pound rock. One of the gusts had managed to blow the whole lot off the table and scatter the cones about 40 feet behind the trailer.

The wind continued blowing throughout the morning, and the temperature was reluctant to climb much above 50°F, so we decided the best thing to do was…. nothing!

In fact that is not quite true as Lyn decided these were ideal conditions to go over to Hobby Lobby and a couple of other stores!

By mid afternoon the wind had died down, so we headed out for a couple of laps of the resort. The forecast, if you can believe it, is for one more cool day then back up to the mid 70’s.

Only two weeks in, and I am running out of titles already! Last night was our first cool night, the temperature dropped to around 43°F (6°C). It was cool enough inside the trailer this morning to put on the heating for a short while. Tonight the temperature will be as low as that back in Ottawa, this was not meant to happen. The good news is, we are still climbing into the 70’s during the day. Tomorrow will be the exception to that with a high of 60, but after that we should be back on track for warmer days and nights.

Today was shopping day; we stopped of at Lowes to get a couple of items then headed off to get the groceries. With Halloween just about over, the stores are filling up with Christmas Holiday items (that’t the last time I’ll use the “PC” term for Christmas). Unfortunately the Americans seem to be as scared of using the C word as the Canadians are. Soap box session finished!

After lunch we headed off for a walk around the resort, the place is filling up for the weekend and we even spotted 2 Ontario campers here.

Shortly after we got back from the walk some one came up to us and introduced himself, he was one of the Ontarian’s. He had seen that we had a Shaw satellite dish, and wanted to know if we had the azimuth and elevation settings. We got talking, the guy was 85 and still looking and sounding like a 60 year old. His wife just happened to be into quilting, knitting and other crafty things, so I am sure  Lyn will be over there chatting. They came from the Sault and will be here for the season.

The other couple are just here for the night and come from Brockville.

The main job for today was to re-programme the thermostat….. just in case

Well yesterday’s title may have been a little premature, today was noticeably cooler, in fact it only just managed to reach 73°F, may have to seriously consider breaking out the winter woollies.

I decided to start work on washing the trailer this morning, I figured I’d do half today and half tomorrow. As it was the cleaning went very well and I got the whole it finished in one go. A year ago I would have probably quit half way through, but with the weight loss since then, the energy level has increased. Speaking of weight loss, it continues! I had reached a point where I had felt I’d achieved what I had set out to do, i.e. get the weight down into the “normal range” and feel healthier. Despite increasing my food intake a bit, the weight is still dropping! I guess I’ll just plod along and see what happens, there’s still plenty of pounds left until I hit the underweight category!

After lunch we headed down to the beach on the Gulf of Mexico for our first beach visit. It was nice and sunny, not too hot and not too windy….. ideal really. Considering the size of the beach it was pretty well deserted. Today’s exercise was a stroll along the beach, which is always harder work than walking on hard surface roads.

Back at the camp site I was blinded by the brightness of our newly cleaned trailer, well not really, but that may be the case in a day or so after I get around to waxing and polishing it.

I noticed in the trees behind our trailer that there was a hint of fall colours creeping in, nowhere as near picturesque as up north, but at least there was something. You may need a magnifying glass to see the red leaves in the pictures.

For the rest of the afternoon I amused myself installing the rest of the LED lights in the trailer. Now the conversion is finished we have a much brighter, whiter light throughout. Time for the next project, which will require a torque wrench and hydraulic jack!

Again, a cool night leads into another hot day. Today we climbed up to 30°C and for the first time humidity came into the picture as well. The threat of rain and storms that the forecasters have been pushing for the last few days don’t seem to have materialised.

This morning was quilting time for Lyn, she was working on a quilt she has had for some time now, unfortunately things didn’t seem to be going as planned. After lunch we were planning on heading down to the beach, but Lyn was still having some issues taming the quilt so we stayed put. I picked up some mail from the office, which included the second batch of LED lamps for the trailer, and a hydraulic jack. The jack will undoubtedly feature in another entry!

I decided to put the lamps in while Lyn worked on the quilt, unfortunately these lamps were a little different from the first set. Suffice it to say that I needed to rewire a few of the sockets to get the polarity right for the lamps. Some times nothing is simple, lighting or quilting.

Mid afternoon we took a shortened walk around the resort as the heat and humidity were a little high. As we didn’t get to the beach today, we headed over to the pool, the water was refreshing and cooled us down nicely.

As I am writing this, the rain finally arrived….. for 30 seconds!

See previous posts for wake-up weather, because it hasn’t changed too much, yet. We got up to around 83°F (28°C) after lunch, with a few clouds rolling in.

I had decided that to day was the day to clean the roof; the roof of an RV is effectively a large rubber like sheet stretched over the roofing material, and it has a tough life as it is continually exposed to harsh sunlight. Once a year it needs to be cleaned and conditioned to prevent it breaking down and cracking. If that happens it’s time for an expensive new roof.

Once this morning I arrived I wasn’t so keen on the idea, it was going to be hot up there. The forecast for the next couple of days is warm but cloudy, if we take this thought a little further…. Lyn does the laundry on Tuesday, if it is cloudy the clothing won’t dry as well. I gallantly suggested that Lyn may want to do the laundry today, but that meant I wouldn’t be able to do the roof as it would splash the laundry. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Lyn was not too sure about my master plan. Well at least I tried.

Off to do the roof, not enough roof cleaning product, that wasn’t planned but may help!  By now Lyn was thinking it may be a good idea to do the laundry while it was sunny. Finally I had my reason to avoid the roof for today.

After Lyn put the laundry in the machines we headed off for a walk around the park before it got too hot.

After lunch we headed out to get some roof cleaner, as long as it is cloudy tomorrow the roof will be done, unless …………

Yet another cool night, but a much warmer morning. As the day wore on the temperature climbed up into the 80’s and for the first time since we have been here there were clouds in the sky!

Once we got sorted out after breakfast it was time to give Lyn a lesson on her “new” GPS in preparation for an afternoon trip out.

After lunch we headed out towards the coast and a walking trail that we hadn’t been on before, and as expected there were a number of caches to be discovered along the way. By now the temperature was warmer than it had been for the last few days and the walk was going to be a good workout. After a couple of miles of walking we had found 4 out of the six caches we were looking for, the two we missed were in the more difficult category and had been missed by quiet a few people before us, so we didn’t feel too bad.

Most of the walk was along paved paths, but there was some sandy areas.

I guess by now these blog entries are getting pretty repetitive? Well, today will be no different. A cool night last night, and clear blue sunny skies throughout the day. We decided to just hang around the campground today and do more of nothing than usual, after all this is the weekend.

I managed to do very little for most of the morning before boredom set in, but there were no jobs that NEEDED doing (we’ll ignore washing and waxing the trailer in that statement).

After lunch we walked just under two miles around the resort, and stopped off at the office to check on the mail. I know, it’s Saturday, but the U.S. Postal Service still has a Saturday delivery, and the mail is still delivered to the destination address, not dropped off in a community mailbox. There was a package there for me, which was some more LED’s for different lamps in the trailer.

What should have been a simple swapping of bulbs turned into a 2 hour soldering and rewiring session. Suffice it to say, industry standard bulb sockets are not necessarily standard. I guess we have engineers to thank for that. Anyway, the job got done, and the lamp over the dining table and Lyn’s wall mounted reading lamp have been successfully been converted. The difference is amazing, particularly when you consider the original bulbs used 23 watts of electricity and the LED’s use just 3 watts, while giving out more light and just about zero heat.

Tomorrow is forecast to be same as the last week or so, we will probably head out towards the beach and wander around the trails in that area.