5C's Que Pasa

Long time readers might remember that back in December 2014 I first met this child who was born with one arm.  You can read about that here.  I got involved in raising money to help her and a family member travel to the Shriners Hospital in Los Angeles to be assessed to receive a prosthetic arm.

I was able to raise the funds with the help of some of my readers as well as fellow RVers.  They traveled to LA in April of 2015.

Romina was accepted into the program but the medical team decided to wait until she was a year older to fit her with a new arm.

I have written more about Romina and the fund raising efforts in a variety of posts.  This post has some of that as well as links to other posts.  On January 9th, 2016 I was asked by the owner of the RV Park to please try and raise $900.00USD as the family had an appointment to fit the prosthetic arm and needed to fly out on January 29th.  You can read about that here.  It wasn’t as easy raising the money that time.  Everything else had been taken care of financially except for the airfare.  I literally was begging for $5.00 here and there.  The family did get to Los Angeles.

This was taken at the Shriners Hospital on March 1, 2016.

This last January I asked for some updated photos and here they are.  Romina has grown into a lovely young girl with a beautiful smile.  A very special thank you to all who helped make this possible.

This post is going to be a catch up with a little bit of this and more of that.  I have to get these miscellaneous photos incorporated into the blog somehow.  For a few years now I have been fretting ( yes that old fashioned word)  about how I will be able to read my blog in twenty plus years time.  Perhaps we won’t have computers or CD’s.  In fact neither of our two desktop computers nor our laptop are able to play a CD.  So how the heck when I am close to ninety plus and confined to a bed or whatever will I be able to read my blog from the beginning.  Once I am no longer able to travel I want to be able to read what I written since 2010. How I wish I had all of our travels from 1999 to May of 2010 which I wrote by hand and some by email to my parents included in the 5C’s Que Pasa files.  I do have those in written form fortunately but what if I can’t access my blog from as it is now, because of new technology?  I have been asking computer savy folks about this for a few years now.  Finally someone came up with a suggestion and my computer guru  😀  came up with a way to save my blog posts 😛   If I can’t travel I certainly want be able to relive the que pasa of my life and now I can.  Sorry but I can’t explain the details to you, way way above my pay grade.  If I am unable to see, hence not read, at least someone will be able to read it to me including the comments and describe the photos.  Your comments are precious to me.  Just think that I will be reading them 20 – 30 years from now and I will remember each and everyone of you.  So very very special to me.

I took this as I was waiting at a stop light.  This dude was bopping his body and especially his head to whatever music he was listening to.  It made me smile that he was so happy doing whatever job he was doing.

This is only a few blocks from our home. You might say that this was a drive by photo.  Colin was driving and had to turn left before I had time to zoom in. This is an osprey sitting on her nest.  Over the past few years we have seen the couple flying over our lake hunting for fish to feed the new family.

After we contacted the warranty department about  our broken  suitcase , we were off Monday afternoon to get it repaired. It was a good 45 minute drive over to West Kelowna.  This is the only facility in our area that does luggage repair.  Fortunately they had parts or else we would have had to send the suitcase in or possibly buy another one for our trip.  The repair was to take an hour and we spent that time grocery and wine shopping.

The warranty department wanted both back wheels changed so that they were balance.  Unfortunately the shop only had one wheel that fit.  The new one is on the top.  I like that is is wider and likely much sturdier.  They will get the second wheel in and replace it once we get back from our trip.  Meanwhile this one is a perfect match height wise so no issue with balance.  So nice to have this all covered under warranty.

We spotted this neat vehicle as we were in the area.

No idea what the make is but really a cool car.  I should have zoomed in on the make but I was just enjoying the moment.

This is the end of the paperwork. I am happy to tell you that I am finally caught up totally to date. What a wonderful feeling.  I had one more medical appointment today and now am doing things like starting to pack, etc.  FYI, I am feeling much better.  The last three days have been very good.  If this continues for another three then I think I may in good shape.

I have been slowly reintroducing real food to my diet.  These beets are from our garden last summer and were stored in our fridge all winter.  Thank you Jannose for telling me how to store our extra beets.

Colin had finally given up his Blackberry and now has an iPhone 6, the same as me. Easy to set up his phone and to show him how to use it.  However he is holding out on the smart part and insists on only using it to text and to make calls.  There will be no contacts set up!  Looks like I have to give him time.  After all I was the same when I got my iPhone.  I really like his case.

So much activity around here of late. Someone got a new shed.

There is a lot of asphalting going on in our park this week.  A good deal of it is due to the flooding two years ago.  It is causing a lot of problems in terms of driving in the area of where the work is happening.  Today I was told to go four blocks further and turn around and then I should be able to turn into our street to get home.  Nada.  So I was told to wait some more.  I asked if I could please just go down our street the wrong way ( it is a one way ).  Finally security agreed.

Some good news. We finally saw the beaver.

But it was not ‘our’ beaver. This one is much smaller.  Not a clear photo but I did not want to frighten him.  We hope that the larger beaver that we have seen for many years is still around.  They did some work last fall in the area the beaver lives to clear debris in order to help with potential flooding.  We are just so happy to still have a beaver around.  Perhaps it is in offspring.

It is 8PM and the sky is still so bright.  We are truly trying to eat earlier but keep getting fooled as to what time it is.  I really think that we used to be Europeans in a past life as we naturally prefer to eat closer to 9PM.  Time for a quick ( 30 – 40 minutes ) bath and then dinner.  Hope you all had a great day.  Spring is in the air.

This morning I was awoken by an extremely loud nasal honking.  There was a goose directly above my bed on the roof.  Time to wake up 😮   No choice as the noise was strident.  Sometimes as I am just waking up I hear a heavy thump.  Often it is one or two geese and sometimes three.  The sound is blaring.  For some unknown reason they love to sit high on our roof and make their presence known.

One left a calling card the other day. Always a mess to clean up.

This morning we caught one creeping up the stairs from the beach. One step at a time and a cautious surveillance of the area.

It finally got to the patio.

Colin sprang into action.  When the girls were still with us we would call out “Caeli, birdie” and she would jump up and dash out the patio door barking loudly to chase the geese away.  She did a great job.  Now it is up to us to go after them.  The last three photos were taken form inside the house.

Al over at the Bayfield Bunch has an ongoing battle with squirrels while ours is with geese.  Nature does give us challenges from time to time.

My sunset shot tonight….approved by Colin Jewall:)

I thought that before we leave next Tuesday on our trip to Europe that I should finish off with the last trip 😆

We left September 27 and returned last month on April 1st.  We were gone a total of 186 days.  We drove 6,450 miles.  The year prior when we simply drove from here to the Isla and back we drove 5,168.  So for the seven weeks we stayed in the US, we didn’t drive that much further. But we certainly saw some wonderful sights from Arches National Park to the magnificent Alburqueque Balloon Fiesta to the south rim of the Grand Canyon where it snowed and was very cold.  From there we traveled to Page, Arizona where we were amazed at Horseshoe Bend and overwhelmed by the wonders of Antelope Canyon.  Afterwards we were awed by the beauty of the Grand Canyon’s north rim, our favourite of the two.  Somehow without planning it we ended up at both Zion and Bryce Canyon National Park, simply stunning.  There were many other stops in-between including a visit to the Valley of Fire near Las Vegas.  We saw so much and I posted about it all starting with the day we left last September.

After all of that it was time to head further south to Mexico and Isla de la Piedra / Stone Island or simply the Isla as I call it.  It was so wonderful to be back in our winter home.  Now that we have been back in Canada for almost six weeks, it is time to leave again but that story will be told beginning next week.

Fuel cost us return trip, $1901.61 USD and 13,907 Pesos for an approximate total of $2650.00USD. This is only for the RV, we don’t keep track of fuel for the Jeep.  The Mexican peso ranged between 20.96 to 22.47 per litre while the lowest we paid in the US was 2.859 to 3.61 per gallon.  We only spent a total of $62.87 for propane the entire trip and that was to run our furnace.  When parked, both the fridge and the water heater are on electric.

We spent 56 nites in the US including some boondocking for which we paid a total of $1556.97USD with an average of $27.80 per night,  The lowest was $16.93 per night versus one night at $49.89.  We paid $2445.00USD for 129 nights in Mexico with an average of $18.95 per night.  While in Mexico at Tres Amigos RV Park we have metered electricity at 15 cents per kWh.  Our cost was $185.00USD or $1.43 per day.  Pretty good price considering we mostly used electric within the RV including our induction cooktop, as well as having at least a thousand fairy lights on at night.

The following are costs only related to our time in Mexico. I won’t go into all the categories but having our laundry done for us every week cost us 2092 pesos or approximately $110.00 USD for over 4 months.  What a treat not having to do laundry.  By the way since most of the costs are already in USD I am staying with USD for everything else.  We only drove into Mazatlan once to get plants for my garden. The rest of the time we took the lancha across and always used pulmonias to or from the embarcadero for a cost of 2595 MXN / $136.00USD.  We ate out as much as we wanted to ( which is much less than some folks ), a few times per week, for a total cost of 17,388 MXN / $915.00 USD. I had fourteen 90 minute massages ( wish it had been more ) while on the Isla at a cost of $33.00 USD each.

RV repairs were our biggest expense and we were only 1800 pesos / $95.00USD  over my estimated budget.  I had not even budgeted for the RV painting but as we were under budget for everything else it more or less slithered in.  My cell phone with some data which I seldom used as we have great free wifi at Tres Amigos only cost 1000 pesos / $52.50USD for the entire winter.  I am not including toll costs as so many were not being charged due to political / local take overs.

Overall it was a wonderful trip.  It all started by wanting to attend the Balloon Fiesta, something we have wanted to see for many years and the rest fell into place. It certainly won’t be an annual event but it is up there as one of our very special trips.  I mean I even hiked with poles  😎   A first for me.

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This was taken last week in Mazatlan.  I would have loved to have seen this in person.