5C's Que Pasa

I was surprised to find this photo in the camera tonight. Colin took it last night while I was stretched out on the sofa eating heated up goulash and enjoying a glass of  Sauvignon Blanc. What you can’t see is that Carlie is on my lap. She was cold and I was warming her up. I was wearing my fleece nightie. We did get down to 41F last night.

This morning the RV park was fairly full for this time of year. Still $43.00 Good Sam rate seemed a lot to me.

It wasn’t long before we saw Mount Robson.

I never get tired of seeing it. It is often clouded it, we were lucky today.

The girls are getting bigger and it is difficult for them to both fit between my legs. Here Ciela flipped onto her back and tilted her head back. I was lucky to catch her before she fell.

Taken shortly after we passed Jasper. We did manage to see a male bighorn sheep. Too quick for a photo but we did see how splendid his horns were.

Nature is amazing.

The girls both like to see what is out there from time to time. Usually it is Carlie but this is Ciela.

We were told that Valemount is about halfway between Kelowna and Edmonton. Once again we are staying in the same RV park that we did back in July. Wednesday we drove 294.3 miles and today we drove 289.7 miles, only 4.6 miles difference.  It should only take 5.5 hours but with stopping to pee the twins and then stopping for fuel today it took us longer. I was very surprised to see that we put in $311.00CAD dollars in fuel in Hinton. Colin had filled the RV before we left home. We likely will have to put in another $450.00 before getting home. Travel has become expensive. We are here at the Diamond Grove RV Park in Spruce Grove and are paying $47.25 for each of the six nights that we are here 😯 At least the internet works but is is limited per day.

We did have a lovely Alberta sunset tonight. My wish is to see the northern lights this trip.

When Colin walked the girls shorty after we got pulled in they saw a very tall, maybe 3′ high or more rabbit. It was lean, long and tall and pranced like a deer.  We intend to find out more about this critter tomorrow. Apparently last night the girls saw a pheasant while walking in the Valemount RV park. They are getting a nose for hunting.

Guess what tomorrow is….

I totally forgot about the time change.  We have been living today as though it is 9:30PM ( PST ) when in reality it is 10:30PM (MST ). Hopefully the girls will sleep that extra hour in the morning before demanding breakfast.

My gosh it is dry here, I broke two finger nails typing this post. We are supposed to have frost tonight, how fun 🙄 Back home it was a balmy 28C / 82.4F today.    Thanks to George of Our Awesome Travels we are staying warm with our Mr Buddy heater. If it weren’t for George we would be very cold tonight. We miss you George but you will never be forgotten.

They followed us in and out as things moved into the RV. They love the RV and spent most of Tuesday sitting on the dash.

The day started with them sunning themselves. Because of my ankle Colin did all the back and forth.  Every now & then I would go into the RV to put things were the belonged.

Colin used the dog pens to build a secure area so that they could freely go from the house into the RV, up the ramp. At one point Ciela decided to take a nap on the RV step.

Eventually Carlie joined her. You can easily see the milk chocolate versus the dark chocolate.

We left about 10:45 this morning. It was off and on drizzle. Here we are driving through Monte Lake which was pretty much destroyed by fire earlier this summer. The rubble is being cleared away at this home.

Difficult to take photos looking to the side from the RV. A few burnt out vehicles here.

I was so sad seeing the destruction. All that was left of this home. We saw several like this.

Looks this homeowner is living in his RV as he starts to rebuild. You can see what is left of his home top left. It was difficult to drive through this sector of the highway.

Ciela for the first time slept on the dog bed ( which is on a footstool ) between us. Usually she sleeps on my lap. She just woke up and is rubbing her face with her paw.

Using her paw to cover her yawn 🙂 At one point this afternoon I could not stop yawning and realized that I can’t close my mouth properly. My upper and lower teeth on the right will not meet up and my jaw aches. I suspect that when I twisted my body last Saturday to avoid falling I really did a number on  my body as well as spraining my ankle.

We stopped at 2PM for a bathroom break and lunch for all of us.

Carlie is doing her ‘sucky’ thing with the green blanket between her teeth. At the same time she moves her paw in an up and down pumping motion. So very sweet, her own security blanket.

Our first view of the mountains.

We stopped in Valemount for the night. A 294 mile drive today. For some reason it seemed very long to me today. The girls did sleep 90% of the time.

Majestic snow capped mountains. It is forecast to get down to freezing tonight, brrr!

It was a 6.5 hour drive and should be about 5 hours but we did stop for a 35 minute lunch. Plus, because of the pipeline, there are dozens and dozens of construction zones which made us slow to 50 kph/ 31 mph.  The only purpose to the slow down is so that the pipeline workers can close this major busy highway so that their vehicles can cross the road.  They have so many flag people standing around doing nothing but smiling and waving at us. So much money being spent on this endeavour.

As we slowed at one point I noticed a semi pulled over and the driver doing jumping jacks.  I guess he was working on staying alert 🙁

Our only problem is that we can’t make the free internet here at the RV park work for us.  We are on Apple computers and iPhones and get the message that their password does not work. The system asks for a WAP2 password which I believe is a higher security level. The park only has the one password. Any suggestions?

We are off in the morning.  Stay tuned.

OMG, I got home this afternoon about 10 minutes before a horrific traffic accident. It happened about 3:40PM and now at 8:40PM the traffic is finally moving every so slowly. We were able to see it all from our home except for the actual crash site because of trees. We watched fire truck after fire truck arrive and even two more about 2 hours after the crash. Sadly only one ambulance left for the hospital. I am thankful that I was not involved nor impacted but I feel so badly for those in the actual wreck and the hundreds delayed getting home.

Today is our Federal election here in Canada.  A small thing but the hundreds – likely thousands so says Colin, how many of those were heading home to vote in their riding?

Between mail in ballots which we did and early voting, it will take a few days before a winner appears.

I finished a fabulous novel last week.  “Beneath A Scarlet Sky” by Mark Sullivan. The four page preface was enough for me to jump in and read it. It is based on a true story of an untold tale of World War II with a seventeen year old Italian as its hero. How could this story remain untold all these years? The author heard about the story back in 2016 and it took him ten years of research to write it. I highly recommend this book.

Why would Carlie prefer to lie on the rocks rather than the grass or the patio?

Things are changing almost daily in our lives. We planned a trip in the RV in about two weeks but late last Friday ( due to circumstances we could not control ) we discovered that we have to leave this coming Wednesday.  Actually this is the earliest we could be ready to travel.

We hope to see Sequoia, the third sister on this trip but it just might not happen. Guess what? Sequoia got the same new dog bed that we did for our girls – you know, the one that Colin likes to nap in. She looks so great in it, especially with that doxie blanket, I want one! Sequoia looks so much like Ciela, they could be identical twins.

So why did I sprain ankle/foot about 2PM Saturday?  Ouch!! First time I have ever done that. All because one of the girls left a chew bone under something that sent me scrambling. I did not fall but seriously twisted my left foot. But I did a number on my back in trying not to fall. So that is why I haven’t posted in a few days.

The girls have been trimming my flowers. They love to eat this kind of stuff.

Gus comes and goes and I thought he was gone but I saw him this morning. I will do an update on him soon.

A few weeks ago Colin did a Zoom type of meeting with his Mexican family from Culiacan. It was very special for him.

Oh and today was the day that we found out that the USA simply does not want us to even think about traveling there by land until at least the 21st of October and possibly longer. We can of course fly into the US but not drive 😡  So we remain in limbo as to heading to Mexico or spending a second winter here 😥

Interesting way to transport an awning support. It was moved by a ‘hummer’ style golf cart towing a trailer.

Thanks to Bella from the Winnipeg area for this blast from the past.  Taken on the Isla in December of 2010 ( 11 years ago ), our second winter in Mazatlan. I had never seen this photo before ( turns out I did ). We sure looked great back then.

I just found the reason for this photo, we were going to see the Nutcracker ballet in Mazatlan. Click here for that post from December 12th, 2010. Thank you for that special photo Bella.  By the way Ciela is called Ciela Bella and somedays we just call her Bella.  Love you Bella and Carl.

Gosh we should have done this when we built our fence last year. Only instead of tea I would be holding a glass of vino blanco.

Some of you might recall how much trouble we had last winter ( our first here in Canada for over 20 years ) getting propane delivered to keep us warm.  It was a weekly battle. We have been with the same company since 2003 with no problems whatsoever until this past winter. We use propane for our furnace, our hot water, the dryer, stove top and oven as well as the fireplace.  We love our fireplace which keeps us cozy but it uses a fair amount of propane. It is pretty obvious that we use more propane than most around here. We can go two weeks on our huge tank ( 380 litres/100US gallons ).

I continued to have problems with delivery and billing. Then I discovered that our company was charging eleven cents more per litre. It was time to make a change.

We switched from Superior ( who bought out Canwest  a few years ago ) to Pogo.  They delivered the new tank last Tuesday the 7th.

It was delivered with approximately 20% propane. Due to the layout of our site and the location of the propane tank they had to bring it in on a dolly. We were told that the tank would be filled at the beginning of this week and that 20% would be fine until then. As you can see it was a sunshine day and warm.

The blinds were down due to the heat but I opened them so that the girls could supervise.

And out with the old tank which will be delivered to Superior and I will get a credit for the remaining propane.

Fall is just around the corner.

It has been coolish for the past few days and we have had the fireplace on for the girls  ( and me  🙄 ). I also did four loads of laundry last Sunday which is about normal for the week. I called Monday the 13th to follow up about about getting our new tank filled. They said it would happen.

Just two days ago Wednesday the 15th, I walked into the kitchen to start dinner.  I also was running my bath when I noticed that the fireplace was almost without any flame.  I had no hot water for the bath and we had no propane to cook dinner.  It was 8PM.  We called the owner of the company and he couldn’t believe that we were on empty.  He said it was not possible. I reminded him about how many things we used propane for. We only had the one electric heater behind my desk. Our oil heaters were still in storage. It was getting rather cool outside. We were able to put in a take out order just before the Italian restaurant closed. Later Pogo credited us the cost of our meal.

At least we got dinner but no bath. Turns out that Wednesday was the coolest night in a long while. We got down to 33F 😯 Unusually cold for September. It was very chilly in our house yesterday morning.

The girls found a sliver of sunshine coming through a window to lay in. It was so cold that they both put on the brakes and came back inside.

The propane truck arrived just after 9AM as promised and delivered over 300 litres. We are good for a long while. They do deliver every two weeks and once per week once it gets cold out. Somehow our first fill fell through the cracks. Just our luck. I am thinking positive that this was a one time glitch. Interestingly enough it got to a high of 61F yesterday. Such a change of temperature in 24 hours.

It will definitely be a weekend of wine and cuddles.