Quiet Times

 

The last time I wrote, we had just arrived back from our Escapee chapter rally in Kingston. After a somewhat hectic week, it was a welcome reprise to do nothing but that is not usually in the cards. We still go out and attempt to find some geocaches – not too successful lately but not discouraged, we`re learning. We`re also looking for a new venue to get our kayak wet again, it`s been a long time since we were on the water.

 

 

Barb has been busy with the various quilt projects she has underway. She follows several other quilter`s blogs and picks projects from there to work on. She has finished one project that she joined from the Carol Doak`s site. It turned out beautiful and the colours are magnificent as she snuggles under it on the left. Barb also started a hand embroidery project featuring silhouette figures of Dr. Who. This is all hand work  and she has turned the 1st six into a table runner. Way to go Barb!

Last season, we picked up an inexpensive patio set to adorn our small but cute site. Late in the year, we had a very quick storm come through and damaged our awning and knocked over the umbrella and glass table. Yes, you guessed it, the umbrella pinched the table and it shattered like an auto window, thousands of glass pieces everywhere. We kept the legs with the intention of building a wood top similar to our small camp table but when we priced out the wood, we ended up picking up a plastic table for half the price of wood! It seemed like a good idea at the time, more to come on that decision later.

We have been out on the bikes and always take time to smell the flowers along the way. This is a great area for bike and walking trails. We also found some geocaches nearby the local casino but they took some serious searching to find. Some geocachers find some unique places to hide their caches.

Our youngest daughter had us over for a belated father`s day luncheon. Dean & I took it easy on the deck while the ladies made lunch. Dean had to fire up and work the grill and I continued to hold down the lawn chair. I do enjoy other`s doing the work, somehow the food tastes better!

 

We hope you enjoy our adventures and we’ll be back to share more soon…

Back to the Routine

The rally is over and we’re on our way back to our summer perch and try to find some normality. We stop off to visit with our daughter and grand kids. The kids have all grown like weeds over the winter. After a nice visit and watching the kids play in the playground, we were back on the road toward Toronto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we’re almost through the mega lane freeway, traffic comes to a grinding slow down and as you can see the cause in the picture. Wow, lots of flame and smoke there. We were delayed but not too long as it just happened, the fire crew arrived as we were coming upon the accident. Since we have been experiencing this life style for 13 years, one could argue that the odds of us having an accident are getting ‘better’ but of course, you can not think of it that way or people would not leave their homes.

Monday was Nathanial’s 8th birthday and we decided to park in Terri’s driveway to save the drive back and forth from our campground back into Toronto – about an hour each way. So, according to tradition, someone else cooks when we are traveling so thanks Terri! We had another nice visit as Mark’s mom is in town and we were able to catch up with her.

Terri has a nice big counter which seconds as a quilting table when Barb is there! We don’t have room in the rig for Barb to easily pin her quilt top and back together for sewing so she was able to make use it during our visit.

 

 

Nathaniel is 8 today and Corrie invited us and Dean’s sister Bonnie over for dinner and to celebrate Nathaniel’s birthday. Corrie & Dean experiment a little with meals and Nathanial wanted a BBQ pizza cooked on a cedar plank. They prepare the pizza from scratch and shape it to the ‘plank’, dress it up with the toppings and cook it on the BBQ. Interesting and it tasted pretty good too. After dinner, Nathaniel opened his birthday gifts but did not get one from us – we mailed it at the end of May and he hasn’t received it yet – ya gotta love the postal service.

 

 

 

While we were at the rally in Kingston, we attended a presentation on Geocaching. We have wanted to try it out and a couple of years back, bought a Garmin handheld GPS so we could. After a few false starts, the durned thing went in a drawer! We have often watched at other rally’s and escapades to see if anyone was offering a ‘how to’ session and now we’re off. It is a fun way to get out and about, tramping through woods, over hill and dale to find a ‘cache’. We did 9 the first time out and learned some important things to do: 1/ use bug spray! 2/ set a way point when you leave the truck so you can find your way back! 3/ carry a knapsack with supplies as some of the hikes are over 1 kilometer. Our second effort wasn’t so successful but after we contacted the cache owner, we learned how to get started on a puzzle cache so we’re anxious to try again.

Stay tuned for more to come…..

Escapee Chapter 18 & 41 Rally

Our club chapter had a combined rally with the New York chapter in Kingston, Ontario. We left our summer perch on Friday, May 31st and made our way across the big smoke of Toronto to visit with my brother in Downtown Whitevale for a few days. The traffic was a typical Friday and moved fairly well with no real stops. As usual, our parking spot was ready and waiting right in front of Larry’s house. We haven’t been in for a year or so and we took a few extra ins and outs to get it where we wanted it – it has to be in the right spot to have clear line of sight to our satellites! Once set up, it was happy hour so the 3 of us sat in his Florida room catching up on each others winter activities – Larry to Costa Rica and Florida and our adventures in LA. Later, we headed off to our favourite fish & chip shop for dinner and back to Larry’s Florida room to watch the evening come in.

On Saturday, we were invited to watch Cody, one of Larry’s grandkids play soccer in Markham so why not, it was threatening rain with wind, what a better way to spend an afternoon! It must have been our karma because Cody’s team won. After a quick stop at the LCBO, we were sitting back in the Florida room with another happy hour. When we’re there, we usually provide dinner as our camp site fee. Barb made up a huge lasagne and asked Larry to invite some neighbours over. Lloyd & Marion, long time friends and David stayed for dinner. It was fun and to top it off, it was Marion’s birthday so what a celebration we had.

Sunday, we’re back on the road to Rideau Acres campground and the rally. The traffic was fairly light and we arrived without incident. Others we know got there ahead of us but then Pat & Carolyn only live in Hasting, not too far from Kingston. We were expecting Bill & Ann to arrive shortly after we did but they had a little longer drive – about 4.5 hours, stop at the duty free – thanks Bill and cross the border to boot. While at Larry’s, we made up a pulled pork dinner and had Pat, Carolyn, Bill and Ann over for a rally welcome dinner. It was good to see our friends again.

 

 

 

Monday, we got our bearings, found Walmart, The Beer Store and other important places of interest. One was the Kingston Brewing Co, a nice little place with good beer - We had their very own Dragoon’s Breath Real Ale - and good food. On our way back, we found John & Barb – another Ontario couple we met at the Plantation stopped on the side of the 401 with a blown tire. We had to do a loop at the next exit to go back to see if we could help. They were waiting for Emergency Road Service but we stayed and chatted for a bit then continued on our way.

On Tuesday, we were invited to spend the afternoon with Ross & Pat, another Escapee couple at their cottage on Sharbot Lake. We met Ross at the docks in the village of Sharbot Lake and he chauffeured us across the lake to their little piece of Heaven or as I coined it, their castle on the rock. It is a beautiful setting, the deck overlooks the water lapping on the shore and the cottage in nestled among the pine and birch trees. No road access so all supplies have to come in by boat and you know that you are on your own. We had a wonderful bbq lunch with lots of fresh food and cold beer, what a day. We are so lucky that our travelling adventures have brought us such friends.

So far the weather has been great but today, Wednesday we had some rain but thankfully, the morning and afternoon presentations are in the club house with no affect on us. It also did not interrupt the pot luck dinner held in the club house. Lots of camaraderie and good food abound.

Our Discovery boat cruise of the Kingston harbour was scheduled for Thursday but our spirits were dampened when we awoke to more pouring rain. It’s been a wet season so far and the next few days do not look great for us. Bill, Ann & Barb & I ventured on down to the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes. The special exhibit was called Hundred Year Storm and has demonstrations, pictures and story boards on the worst disaster on the Great Lakes in 1913. The exhibit also has a video on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. There are lots of theories and studies out there while this exhibit and video shows the extensive research conducted at the labs in Newfoundland using 360 video and computer simulations that show what it may have been like in the bridge just before the ship went down. Wow is all I can say.

The museum is also housed in the original dry dock when Kingston was a major ship building port. The back of the museum housed the pumps that emptied and filled the dry dock back in. In the dry dock is one of Canada’s ice breakers off the Great Lakes. In the recent past after this ship was retired, it used as a B&B in Asia. After finding asbestos on board, it was brought back and adopted by the museum. The ship is open for a self guided walking tour but is in disrepair and needs funding to restore properly. Our government would rather spend money on Senate salaries instead of restoring some of our historic properties.

The Discovery boat tour was not much of a discovery with all the rain and the ships speaker system was less than desired so we sat and kibitzed as we toured around the harbour. I’m sure the audio recording and the tales by the captain would have been entertaining if we could have heard them. Our dinner after the cruise was at the Lone Star in downtown Kingston. The service was great, our waiter was very entertaining and we had a good time. Ann was showing us what crazy things she used to do when she was young and crazy, now she is just crazy, especially when her and Barb get together!

Our US rally hosts organized a bbq for Friday evening with a comedic singer after our meal. What a great time, an excellent bbq with beef and pork with all the trimmings, including deep fried Oreo cookies! Yes, that’s correct, a deep fired cookie. They are an acquired taste or maybe it was the texture but I just had

to try one or maybe 2! I found out that it is possible for too much laughter with Roger James entertaining us, my sides hurt from laughter. There was no reason why anyone would go home hungry for food or fun, it was an excellent evening.

Our next rally event we looked forward to was an evening tour and meal of Old Fort Henry. We were to meet after the Fort closed and had a private tour of the officers quarters and dining room. After, we were seated in the Officers Mess and asked to act like the Officers of the era. That means not to be polite to the servers and that can be difficult for a Canadian! The food was good and the experience created good memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday was hitch up day and many fellow Escapees left fairly early. Some were staying to attend another rally in up state New York. We were going down the road to visit with our daughter and grandkids.

Hope all is well out there and please come back for more soon.

Back in Ontario

Well, here I am playing catch up on the blog again. It has to be an age thing regarding that time goes faster aspect. It just seems like we left the fun times at the Tulip Festival in Holland Michigan but I am writing this in the middle of June! It’s pretty sad that I can not remember what I wrote without looking it up and if it wasn’t for Barb’s pictures, I probably would have less to say!

As we roll into our site area, we have a new neighbour which does not make us happy campers so to speak. He has a stack of pallets about 6 feet high, his motorcycle parked between our units – we park back to back so both our services are in the same area – his snowmobile/motorcycle trailer is also parked between us, an ATV under his king pin area and he has a gray tarp duck taped to his rig all around so when the wind blows, we hear the tarp scrapping across the gravel – very nice! I’m not even going to mention that he has not washed his unit since he came into the camp ground last year.

Needless to say, we have agreed to seriously look around for something that suits us better but that is another day as we are heading into Toronto as Terri has invited us in to celebrate Mother’s day at her house. Mark & I arranged a surprise spa afternoon for our ladies to relax and enjoy some quiet time together. Mark & I on the other hand were busy shopping at our friendly LCBO! Once back, we had to ensure the beer we bought was ok for anyone to drink and basically kicked back and watched the spring flowers grow.

 

After all that relaxation, Barb managed to complete a couple of quilt projects she has been working on and I got back into the swing of lawn care on our site and doing the planning on what needs to be done to the rig – washing, waxing, a little caulking and tighten some trim. Whew, after all that planning, I had better sit awhile to recover.

 

On Sunday, Corrie invited us over for lunch to celebrate Mother’s day. We had a nice visit and met Belle, Mack’s girl friend. Unfortunately, Dean was away fishing and we didn’t get to see him.

 

Well, today is the day we’re heading off to check into some other campgrounds – is the grass always greener? Well, the first one we went to – we tried to stay in this general area, we like it out here – we were not too impressed with the entrance area but it is a secure campground. It has a mobile home area (12 months) a camp ground area (seemed older with small sites) but also a ‘senior’ 10 month area up on the hill. The draw back is to have one of these sites, you need to buy a Northlander unit or one of the existing units that were for sale. This area was nice as it looked over the lake and was a senior area. We stopped and spoke to a gent that was working in his yard. Soon, Dave called his wife out since she has the same name as Barb – go figure, we haven’t had that before! We asked about the management, how they liked living here and what the Northlanders are like and quickly, we were inside getting a royal tour. The unit construction was impressive and started us thinking so after we said our adieu's, we stopped off at the office to pick up a brochure. On to the next park and it was not impressive at all. The campground roads were just 2 ruts with grass in the middle and the trailers were in the mud up to the axles so this one does not make the short list. Wow, not much out there and maybe we’re not as bad off as we think – we’ll re-group.

On the way home, we noticed that there is an upcoming car show and swap – maybe I can find a hub cap for our truck, it’s only been missing for 2 years now! So, on Saturday, we head on down the road to try to find one. We wander around the show and see some nice cars and trucks and a possible hub cap but I didn’t bring an old one with me to compare so back out to the truck and take one off and then back into the show. That should take care of our walking exercise for this weekend! What luck, it had the same bolt pattern so it’s a sale. We had to slow down on highway 8 to take in the thousands of Lilac blooms and their aroma, it was a beautiful drive back.

Even with all this excitement, Barb found time to complete a few quilting projects that she has been working on.

We have been out shopping for garden stuff and dug out the grass from around the electrical meters so it’s easier to cut the grass and I’m all about easy! Of course, with the grass trimming cut, it’s time to kick back for a brewski.

 

 

 

Our next blog entry will be about the Escapee Chapter 18 & 41 rally near Kingston, Ontario so until then, keep well.