Plans for July

I just received an email from my sister in Maryland and she has offered to have Father for 3 weeks. Our 86 year old father lives with me and we are pretty much tied to the house, except for the odd weekend here and there.

We liberated Dad from South Africa in 1999 and then in 2000 he landed up in hospital having open heart surgery for replacement of a calcified Aortic valve. This left him very frail and we cannot leave him on his own for too long. Now that he may be going to the US in July, this leaves us freed up for a week long trip somewhere.

Thinking of going to Northern Ontario somewhere, maybe Halfway Lake or in Lake Superior Provincial Park. Another possibility is The Pinery on Lake Huron. We've never been there and have heard good things.

I would like to try dry camping again as we do have 45 watts of solar panels. We used these panels 2 years ago when we dry camped at Assateague State Park in Maryland. It is enough to keep the battery charged, plus a bit extra for an hour of TV a day. When we go fulltime, we will have enough solar energy to keep us powered up for computer, satellite and TV as well as the monitors and fridge. This is something that we are still investigating. Something else that interests us is wind power. If anyone has any experience with this please email us.

Free Camping in July

We have been given 2 nights free at a campground in Buckhorn! We put our names into a draw at the last RV show and we are on their winners list (so they say). We are getting the free nights in exchange for a tour of the resort, yeah, I know...probably a hard sell, but we will resist as we cannot make any plans until we know what is happening with our retirement. The only thing that will interest us is if they have good rates for seasonal camping. We'll keep you posted!

Trailer preparation

The time has finally come for us to summerize the trailer. There is a bit of maintainence to do. When we closed it up and winterized it, we forgot to turn a tap on to decrease the pressure. When Michael pressed the little valve in the city water connection, the whole thing popped out. We tried to fix it, but, alas, had to buy a new part. That will be fitted this coming weekend. We also want to put a cargo door into the storage area under the closet in the bathroom and into the nightstand next to the queen bed. I doubt if I will be able to get Michael to do that so we will take the trailer to the dealership.

Of course the awning and the outside need to be washed. We store the trailer at a campground only about a mile from us, so it is very convenient. There is water, electricity and several dump stations. These days it is used mainly for storage of RVs.

Things are looking up

This week we will be opening up the trailer. We have some minor repairs to do as well as lots of cleaning. When we winterized in November, we forgot to depressurize the water system before opening the outside valve and blew the white stopper thingy out. Last weekend Michael bought a new part and he will fit that this weekend. Silly thing to do as it is the second year in a row that we did it! Maybe this winter we will remember to open a tap first.

A Bad day today!

First of all I was in bed most of the day with a horrible cold. I managed to get myself up to try and continue with building our web page, but that was not to be. I installed a web accelerator to work with my home dial-up access and now I cannot log in to the program. Maybe the site was down all day, maybe something has gone awry on my computer, we'll have to see in the morning.

The latest Trailer magazine arrived today and I was pleased to see that it was the 2005 models issue. I am going to spend the next few days browsing through, although I do know what is on our short list. We just have to decide how mobile we want to be.

Whenever I get a new magazine I read all the ads. There is so much to learn!

No photos today as I cannot upload anything from home and I am typing this in the library.