Long time, no write.

Well, here it is, Thanksgiving Day! This is gonna be a good day. Kristi and Phil (and James) invited us over to their place for Thanksgiving dinner. They also invited Tim and Ally. And (surprise, surprise) they invited Dave over. It should be an excellent day.

Not much has been happening to us, therefore no entries to the blog. A couple of weeks ago my back screwed up on me again. Always said I'd never let a chiropractor touch me. Well, when it hurts enough and you're running on a time limit, you might change your mind. I went and he helped (also hurt, but that's another story). Anyhow, I'm on the mend so we should be good to go.

We leave in two weeks today. Man, time flies! We're getting so excited! It's gonna be a great trip down and a great winter! At the rate the stock market keeps screwing up, we may come home flat broke, but............I guess that's the chance you take.

That's about it for now. The park we're at in Guelph doesn't have internet, so it's difficult to update the blog, get email, or any of the inet things we take for granted. Once we get rolling, we should have fairly regular access to the internet and the park we're staying in in Texas definately has wifi, so I should be able to bore ya's all regularily. Later guys!

What we've been up to.

We have been a little busy this week. Kathy and Anita came down to visit. We got talking and they were telling us about their vacation plans to the east coast. We offered them our tent and electric cooler which they were very happy about. So we went to Hamilton to pick 'em up.

We had to go to Tim's to get the cooler and hung around visiting until Ally got home, then headed over to Kristi's to pick up the tent and also Mary wanted to get some stuff that we had stored at Kristi's for the new trailer. Tim and Ally came over and we all had a wonderful dinner together. Kristi makes such good dinners. I almost felt guilty that she went to all that trouble after a day at work, but man it was good. But we knew that from the week we spent at their place while we were waiting for our new trailer.

Hey they've all been so good to us. Tim helps me whenever I need to do something. Ally made us a wonderful dinner one day. Kristi has put us up (and put up with us) a couple of times. it's great!

Kathy and her friend Cindy had to come down here on Thursday to pick up the tent and trailer, so we had a short visit. She seems to be excited about her vacation.

Friday, Ally was having an "Alouette" party (skin care and makeup products). Mary and her sister Theresa were invited, so I had to drive to Guelph to pick up Theresa and then to Hamilton to Tim's for Ally's presentation. Tim and I buggered off to the Future Shop and then to Staples to kill some time so we didn't cramp their style. According to Mary, everyone enjoyed themselves and Ally did a little business. Everyone's happy!! Then we went back to Theresa's and spent the night there. That got me a pancake breakfast. I was happy!! This is supposed to be our last week in Milton. Next week we move to Guelph for 5-6 weeks before heading to Texas (yeah!) for the winter. Anyhow, ciao until next time.

Sittin' still, takin' stock.

Here we are in Milton, Ontario (Milton Heights Campground). Not a great campground but they sure do take care of it. There's not much to do here, and it's expensive, and small, but clean and well cared for. We're supposed to be moving from here to a campground in Guelph. It's a little picturesque campground called Riverbend. It's right on the Speed river and in the center of the park there is a large pond. Our site there will back right onto the pond. I'll post pics when we get there. This is supposed to be happening on September the 15th.

That works out well for us. Having had the trailer for a few weeks now has allowed us to find the bugs in it that the dealer (Sicards RV) in Smithville needs to take care of. I'm gonna call them and see if I can get an appointment to bring it in early on the morning of the 15th. That way we can go from Milton to Smithville and back to Guelph in one move.

We called and took care of our health ins. for the sojourn to the States. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, but will steadily climb in cost as we get older. I guess the cutoff is around 70. After that it appears to get too damned expensive. We'll see!!!

Anyhow, we've decided to go to south Texas for this winter!! We've been talking to a bunch of folks and have noticed some patterns. The pro Texas crowd don't like the humidity or the commercialism of Florida. They also tell me that Texans really roll out the welcome mat for the snowbirds (much more than Florida). There's supposed to be a ton of small quirky stuff in south Texas, and you can walk to Mexico for lunch or the day if you want.

The biggest complaint I seem to hear about Texas from the pro Florida crowd is the wind. There is supposed to always be wind in Texas. We're gonna be booked into Texas until the end of February. If we don't like it or are bored with it, we will still have 6 to 8 weeks to go to Florida before we head back to Canada for the summer. We haven't made any plans for next year yet. We've spent a boatload of money this year, so will have to wait and see where we are financially in the spring.

That's about it for now. I'll post some pics and stuff once we've moved to the Park in Guelph. If we like it there and decide we need to keep costs down next year we'll probably go back there next summer. Dunno yet, we'll see.

Well, I see I have some catching up to do. I'll do that with my tale of woe! We were supposed to be headed for Nova Scotia on Monday with an overnight in Moncton. Monday morning Mary looks at me and says "I need a lounger!". I looked at her and said "Pardon?". So she repeated herself. I said to her, do you realize how much a lounger is going to cost? She looked at me coyly and said that they are not that expensive. I pointed out to her that we didn't have room in our trailer for a lounger. So we would have to buy a bigger 5th wheel, and that would require a bigger truck to pull it. So we were looking at around $60,000. All because Mary wants a lounger! Now, that's the story, but we already knew that our little Dutchmen wasn't big enough to fulltime in so we were eventually going to move up anyhow, just not as soon as we ended up doing. Anyhow, I went online (little did she know, but I had been searching online for a new truck and trailer anyway) and found a truck in Barrie Ontario, and a 5th wheel in Smithville.

So, Wednesday we left Moncton and made it to Quebec City, Thursday we got to Cobourg Ontario and we were in Barrie early Friday afternoon. We parked the Dutchmen and went to the dealer and in a couple of hours had worked a deal on our new truck. Here she is in all her glory!Ain't she a beaut! It's a 2006 Ford F250 Super Duty Diesel. It's a full crew cab (4 full doors) and a long (8ft) box. Damned thing is 22 feet long! But, way back when we bought our GMC (which Mary picked out!) she said she always wanted a Ford, and now she has one (it's even in her name!).

Anyhow, The truck sits so high that I would have been unable to pull our Dutchmen with it without extensive, expensive modifications to it, so Monday morning we were up bright and early to drive to Smithville to trade in the Dutchmen and buy our new trailer. We were to pick up the new truck on Tuesday, so timing was of the essence. As it turned out, the trailer we went there to look at was unsatisfactory and we ended up buying a trailer that I hadn't even considered online. We had our choice (in our price range) of about 9 different 5th wheels. One was super beat up, two of 'em had bunk beds (like I'm gonna have kids with me). One had a ridiculous floorplan, and two of them were just a couple of years older than what we wanted. Then Mary saw her lounger (two of 'em even in a) Montana, and the shopping was over. And here she is also!It's a 30 footer with a living room and a bedroom slide.Here's a pic of the kitchen area. Lots of cupboard space. And here's the living room area. If you look closely, you can see the two loungers and our big picture window. This is a picture looking from the living room up into the bedroom/bathroom area. This is the bedroom area and the shower. That's a king size bed there! I didn't take a pic of the toilet as, if you've seen one toilet, you've seen 'em all!

We spent the weekend with Mary's sister Theresa and her husband Ron with their new trailer (very nice). Way late nights by the fire, until they couldn't find another stick to burn. We were at a really nice conservation area outside of Kitchener (Laurel Creek). And now we are in a nice campground outside of Milton. We're probably gonna just hunker down here and try to get the budget back inline, and then leave for Florida the end of October, but we'll keep ya's filled in.

Sunday on Fundy Trail

Well it's Sunday. We set aside Sunday to go walk the Fundy Trail. It's about 10km outside of St. Martins and was one of the reasons we decided to come to St. Martins before heading into Nova Scotia.Ah yes, the Maritimes. If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes. It'll get worse! It was cool (much better for an 11km hilly hike. It was somewhat foggy. Tough to get good vista shots in the fog.But, every now and then a picture opens up that has a mood because of the weather.Of course, when travelling with Mary, one becomes aware of every rock or cloud formation that has a resemblance to something.See the face? If not click on the picture to make it bigger and see the face that Mary saw (no, not a ghost. Look at the rock) (I saw it too actually). It was really a beautiful hike. Long and very hilly and we're really tired now, but it was worth it. You don't see stuff like this

just on the side of the road. You gotta dig a little to get stuff like this. We're getting so woodsy. Yesterday I helped some kids save a stranded eel on the beach and today Mary stepped on a snake's tail (heck, they're all tail, but thatl's what she said). Walking through the trail kinda reminded Mary and me of when we were on the west coast visiting Linda. They are both a rain forest environment. The trees aren't as big, but everything's green and foresty.

Tomorrow we're off to Nova Scotia. Actually, it's just under 400km to Nova Scotia and I don't want to drive that far, so I think we're gonna stop in Moncton overnight and say "Hi" to Dad and Jean again (if they're home).

Friday and Saturday in St. Martins

We drove into St. John today.
The downtown area is kinda nice, but I can see why Kristi said she didn't like the city. It's hilly and rocky. It's also a looks like it's seen better times, but it also looks like it's having a bit of a rejuvination. I've been in places I didn't like more than St. John, but it's not one of my favorite places. But I guess you have to give credit to a city that puts up a monument to their hometown beer (Moosehead). I didn't take many pictures in St. John 'cause I didn't see much I wanted to display. After we left St. John we went back to St. Martins. The tide was in so I took some pics of where we walked on the ocean floor yesterday. You can see the caves we walked in yesterday.That point was where we walked around to get to that little bay I mentioned yesterday. I understand that every year some fools don't pay attention to the tides and have to swim out from that little bay to get back to the beach 'cause there's nothing but verticle walls in the bay. There's a really cool little park across the road from the beach. It's not a tidal pond. It's freshwater and dammed so it retains it's water. It has a step system built into it so the fish can get by the dam. It also had a little stage and seating area, so I guess they do concerts there occassionally.
Mary liked it so much she wore a different top than you usually see her in. There's a couple of covered bridges just by the park.
The park was just to the right of this covered bridge and the other covered bridge was just behind us. Actually, we can see the sea cave area from our campground.

Dad had mentioned that we had just missed the antique car show in Moncton by a week. What a bummer. Anyhow, when we got to this campground in St. Martins, the folks running the place informed us that the New Brunswick Antique Auto Association was having a rally/show at the park this weekend. Why go to a show, when the show's willing to come to you! I took this pic from inside our trailer just to show we didn't have to go far to see the cars!
Lots of cool cars and trucks. The neat thing was that virtually all of these cars and trucks were driven, not towed, into the park. A lot of them even pulled their own little trailers. I've never seen so many little "Boler" trailers around. But the coolest was a 1951 Oldsmobile pulling a restored 1951 trailer! The car was beautifully restored. But having the trailer with it was way cool.

Today we're just gonna hang around the park, go see the cars, do some housework, etc. Tomorrow we're going to go walk the Fundy trail. On Sunday they run a shuttle bus so we'll only have to walk it one way, and they're having some sort of live concert at the far end (to us) of the trail, so it should be a neat day.

St. Martins

After our stay at Ponderosa Pines (by the Hopewell Rocks) we thought a trip to St. Martins was in order. Jean and Dad brought us here many moons ago -- I remember. Dad almost went in the drink as the tide was coming in! Anyhow, this time we got there just as the tides were at their lowest, and man do they go low.That black line by Mary's right ear is seaweed washed up at high tide. And she's nowhere's near the water yet.Seeing as to how I keep showing pictures with Mary in 'em, she said, and I quote, "Put that one in so they know you're still alive!". So, here I am!!! The tide was so low we were able to get around the point to a little bay I'd never seen before.I'm not sure whether or not this will help you understand just how big a difference between high and low tide, but the green stuff on the rocks is seaweed and you can see how far away and below me the water is. This is the picture Mary took (she took most of these) as we entered that little bay I was talking about.This is what the bay was like from the back. It was really neat. Man they get some tides in Fundy. There was a huge cave that's been hollowed out by the tides and the wave action in here. Look at the size of the cave compared to the size of the people.I couldn't help but notice that the clif walls around the caves, etc. were constantly being eroded. Vegitation really has a struggle hanging on. Once a section/slice of wall decides to come down, there's not much any root system is going to do to stop it.Tomorrow we're going to St. John and then we're gonna go back to catch the same cave area at high tide. It should be remarkably different.