The furnace came back to life last night. A cold front went through which gave us a little rain and a lot of wind. Wake up temperature was 45°F with a high of 54°F. The sky was clear and sunny, but the main factor was the wind, it was gusting above 40mph / 65 kph for most of the day, which puts it well into gale force territory.
Figuring it was too cold to wax, polish or walk I decided the truck needed some TLC (it kept sending me messages saying “Change Engine Oil”), so I headed off to the local mechanics to get an oil and filter change. Now that the Canadian and US dollars are fairly close in value, it is obvious that a number of items are cheaper down here. The oil change would have cost $110 at home, it was $79 here. Before any one has a heart attack over $100 oil changes, the truck tales 2.5 gallons (11 litres) of oil!
The other thing I did while I was out was to sort out storage for the trailer. We have decided to leave the trailer down here rather than drag it back up north with us. This came about after a lot of discussion and research on our planned Alaska trip next year. In the end, we decide we will not take the trailer up to Alaska; however we will still go there. A couple of major factors featured in the decision. As usual money reared its ugly head, and a little calculating showed that for the price of the diesel fuel alone that would be needed for the trip we could:
- Fly to Vancouver
- Take a cruise to Alaska
- Rent a Car for 2 weeks in Alaska
- Fly back to Ottawa
As we had always wanted to do the cruise, this caught our attention. Once we got talking about the trip, neither of us were overly keen on the long drive involved to get there (about 12 days straight driving). We’d also heard from a number of people that the roads weren’t the best, and in many places were gravel which could be pretty taxing on the truck, trailer and driver. So, the decision was made.