New Scenery!

This past Tuesday we venture out further into the COVID world. It was a beautiful sunny day and the temps was already 28C at 8:45 when we left Kelowna and made the four hour drive to hubby’s brothers place in Surrey, BC.

We didn’t make any stops during the four hour drive, due to this new world we are living in, but it was still nice to be out on the road seeing different scenery than we have for the past four months.

A nice evening on our drive home.

The purpose of our visit was a lunch in honour of hubby’s mom’s 95 birthday. Due to COVID it was a small gathering, just mom, hubby’s two brothers, his sister, and their spouses and us. We had a great visit and enjoyed lunch made by hubby’s brother and sister in law.

After our visit we stopped by to see our son and daughter-in-law’s new place in Surrey. They moved to BC from Edmonton, AB in mid March and this was the first time we have been able to visit because of COVID.

We had a great day and made it back home shortly after midnight. A long day but it sure was fun to get out and visit with family 🙂

And I was even up early the next morning for my walk and a pretty sunrise)

Until next time …

Dry Falls, Washington

I wrote this blog on March 23, 2020 but for some reason it was never published … so here it is.

I think I mentioned in a previous blog that the route we took home this year was the route we took in 2013 when we made our first trip south for the winter, so we think it was only fitting that it was the same route we took home on what, if this pandemic goes on, may be our last trip south for the winter.

In October of 2013 we became full time RVers but because of a broken foot I was unable to travel until the end of November. We left Kelowna on November 21^st with cold temperatures and light snow on the ground. As we headed out that morning we were both a little unsure about leaving our family and friends and heading out to places unknown. It wasn’t until we came around a corner and saw Dry Falls that it hit us both … we were about to see some amazing places on this new adventure we were embarking on! We pulled into the Visitor Centre at Dry Falls and I took the picture below. This was the first picture I ever posted on my blog.

It was getting late when we arrived at Dry Falls this year but I was happy that there was still enough light to get new pictures.

Dry Falls is the remnant of what was once the largest waterfall known to have existed on earth. There are 5.6 km (3.5 miles) of sheer cliffs that drop 122 m (400 ft.), if you visualize this area with the roar of water pouring over the cliffs you can imagine how amazing it would have been. Niagara Falls, on the US side, is only 1.6 km (1 mile) wide and has a drop of 50 m (165 ft).

We have no idea what is in store for us next winter but whatever happens we have had an amazing ride so far!

Until next time …

Yes We Are Still Here :-)

I think it has been nearly a month since I last posted a blog, and while I don’t write regularly in the summer, this length of time is strange for me.

I could blame it on COVID and maybe that has a little to do with it since we are not going out and doing things like we have in past years. But honestly I think it has more to do with how unhappy we have been at the park for the last three months, but finally that was all sorted out earlier this week and we now have time to spend on ourselves. That means we will be able to get out on our bikes again and see the world … at a respectable distance from others of course.

I saw this little duckling all by himself one morning.

But then he saw mommy and swam out to her.

We rode our bikes over to our daughter’s house a few Sunday’s ago and trying to keep a two meter distance while riding through the downtown area of Kelowna was next to impossible. There were people everywhere and very little social distancing. In future we will have to find a different route.

Once again there are no shortage of geese in the park!

Now that life is on a happy keel again I will do my best to write more often. My thanks to all of you that have patiently waited for my sporadic blogs, I really appreciate that you keep coming back to read them 🙂

Orange blossoms

Until next time …

Hummingbird Food

My Instant Pot has been my favourite kitchen appliance for the past three years, and I use it all the time, but until today I have never felt the need to blog about it.

We have two hummingbird feeders and fill them both every three of four days … yup those little hummers are eating out of house and home 🙂

When I make their food I make enough to fill a four litre jug and store it in the fridge. This morning when I asked hubby to pull out my big pot he said he didn’t know why I didn’t use the Instant Pot to make their food. Hmm that never even crossed my mind.

Off I went to my encyclopedia, the internet, and sure enough there was a recipe. Everything I found on the internet said to use four cups water to one cup sugar but I wanted more than four cups. I debated doing twelve cups at a time but decided to play it safe and do two batches of eight cups and it worked perfectly.

No more standing over a hot stove! I dumped eight cups water with two cups sugar, set the pot to high pressure for one minute and sat down to drink my coffee and read a book …. honestly it’s that simple!

Until next time …

Nothing To Say

I keep thinking I need to write a blog but honestly I have nothing to say. We are still keeping busy with our Social Distance coffee groups … in fact our Tuesday group now has the name BAGs, which stands for Back Alley Group since we meet in the back alley behind a strip of stores.

The view from the parking lot at BAG coffee.

Our Wednesday Fed Ex group has been meeting at various locations, the last two weeks were here in the park.

Last week the SLOBs all congregated at the campground for three nights. Do you remember the SLOBs? That is the acronym we came up with for the three other couples and ourselves when we went on the Panama Cruise. It was a fun time even though the weather wasn’t the greatest.

This guy followed a friend and I around the park early one morning and then finally jumped over the chain and through the gap in the gate to get out. He also had a friend with him but the friend continued on to the creek and got out that way.

Tomorrow our oldest son and his wife are coming up from the coast for the day. They are going to spend some time with us, which will involve roasting hotdogs on the fire, and then picking up our grandson from school and taking him home with them for a visit. It is so nice that they only live three hours away now and can do that more often.

The lake is just above full pool and will hopefully start to drop and we will see the return of the beach.

And that’s it, I have nothing else of interest to share and what I did share probably isn’t that interesting to most people but it’s all I have 🙂

Until next time …

People :-)

Today is the day! Hubby finally has people to talk to 🙂 The park opened at 11:00 a.m. this morning and we are told we will be full tonight. We have been busy talking to campers and hubby has helped out a few that were having trouble with their water and other first trip out RV problems.

These two deer were waiting outside the gate the day after I saw my first deer of the season. I think they were respecting the park closed sign 🙂

It is different with some COVID changes and we are still figuring out the best way to provide tourist information while still mainlining two metre distance, but I’m sure we will figure it out … and everyone has been very friendly and respectful of our personal space.

We see this one legged geese around the park, he does very well with only one leg.

Our Tuesday coffee group resumed five weeks ago with a change from inperson to meeting over Zoom. That worked great but two weeks ago we decided to meet in a parking lot, sitting two meters apart of course. Last week we got rained out after forty-five minutes but the weather tomorrow is looking promising.

Wild Rose

Bridal Wreath

The park is a wash in colour!

This Wednesday will see the return of our Fed-Ex (ex Federal Government employees) coffee group where we are meeting at a members house and sitting outside … it sure will be fun to see everyone again.

We had an outdoor movie night before the park opened … we won’t be able to hold them this year due to COVID

We did go to our daughter’s house for Sunday dinner last night but they, and two other couples, are the only ones inside our bubble so I think we are all staying safe.

The Finch and Hummingbirds are eating us out of house and home!

I hope you are all keeping busy and staying safe and healthy 😀

Until next time …

Finally …

I can’t believe it took until May 21^st to finally see a deer in the park, but today was the day. I actually just caught him out of the corner of my eye as I walked up from the beach on my morning walk. Normally I walk much further along the beach and would have never seen him but for some reason today I went up onto the grass.

I also haven’t seen Barry and Barbara Beaver lately but hubby and I came across one of them last night, so they are still around.

That lump in the bottom middle of the picture is a beaver. I only had my cell phone with me and decided to just watch him rather than trying to get a better picture.

The park is starting to bloom and I’m sure by next week will be a wash of colour.

And I finally saw some goslings. I have a love hate relationship with the geese … I love the tiny goslings because they are all fluffy and cute but they grow up to fast … and I hate the grown geese because there are so many of them and they poop everywhere!

So cute and fluffy

Four days later and they are already looking like gangly geese and are no longer fluffy.

The water in the lake is rising but I don’t think we will see the flooding that we did in 2017. Park staff are busy getting the campground ready for opening on June 1^st. While I have enjoyed the peacefulness of the empty park it will be nice to hear children laughing and playing and adults having a good time.

Until next time …

WooHoo We Have Toilet Paper!!

I know most of you are probably thinking it’s not that hard to get toilet paper anymore and while that is true for most people, it’s not the case when you live in an RV. RV tanks require TP that doesn’t clump and breaks up shortly after hitting water. We know many RVers use Costco toilet paper but it has never passed the RV toilet paper test so we don’t use it.

Pictures of toilet paper are boring so here are some of my flowers.

Our go to toilet paper that, during the test, outperforms any other toilet paper is Western Family Premium Soft toilet paper from Save On Foods and until this morning we have been unable to get any 😦

So here we were down to our last roll of TP and feeling really desperate. Okay to be fair we did buy another Costco size package of Kirkland brand (and did the TP test again and it failed) because we were unable to get any Western Family TP. We figured we may not have a choice and would just have to deal with whatever it did to our tanks.

After some discussion on Sunday, when we realized we only had one role of good TP left, we decided that Save On Foods may get a truck in after the weekend, and stock the shelves Monday night, so we would go at 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and hope we were right. Guess what?? It worked … we now have a new supply of RV quality toilet paper 😀

My sister gave me a lot of plants that she had started earlier this year. Now I just need some more dirt to plants them.

And what will we do with the big supply of Costco toilet paper? Well, because of the pandemic, it is looking like we won’t be going south this winter :frown: Neither one of us wants to spend a cold winter living in the RV so we will probably buy or rent a house or a town house or a condo, so there will be lot’s of opportunity to use that toilet paper.

Until next time …

A Beautiful Day!

It is starting to feel like summer in Kelowna, B.C. The last few days have been sunny and warm, which has inspired us to get outside and do some yard work.

Herbs in the pot, veggies in the garden.

Onions on the left, potatoes on the right.

Flowers planted around the pamphlet rack … hopefully I will be filling it up soon.

Well honestly living in a provincial park as the campground host really doesn’t require any yard work but we do putter around our site and keep it tidy.

Most of the wild violets are gone, I took this picture a few weeks ago.

The Oregon Grape is in full bloom and smells so pretty!

Park staff having been mowing lawns and working on the campground, getting it ready for a possible June opening.

The Saskatoon bushes are all in bloom.

We had some nice days early in the week so I was able to get our vegetable gardens going and yesterday I filled up all my plant pots.

The Okanagan Sunflower is also in bloom but it’s mostly along the hills and trail up to the waterfall and there are to many people walking along that trail for us to go up there. There is no way those people are social distancing, the trail is to narrow in many spots to keep a distance of six feet.

Today as we wandered around the park we commented on how strange it felt for it to be empty.  Normally on Mother’s Day weekend the park is full … especially when the weather is so great. But we did enjoy the solitude as we sat outside and read our books for most of the day. We even enjoyed a gin and tonic this afternoon … there is just something about the warm sun and the clinking of ice in the glass that makes a G&T so inviting on a sunny warm day!

Nice view as I looked up from my book 🙂

And it looks like another great day tomorrow so I guess I will have to once again sit in my chair outside, read my book, and enjoy all my flowers 🙂

The finch are making quick work of the bird seed.

And I’m constantly filling the two hummingbird feeders.

I’m sure tomorrow will be a much different Mother’s Day for most mothers, but I hope you enjoy it and are able to use technology to visit with your mothers and children.

Until next time …

Rainy Days And …

Okay Monday’s doesn’t work since it’s Thursday but it’s the song that has been happily dancing around in my head all day 🙂

My view out the window as I write this blog.

Living in the Okanagan area of British Columbia and spending our winters south we don’t see a lot of really rainy days. In Kelowna we may have a rainy day but it rains for a short period, stops, the sun comes out, then a little more rain, it stops, and the cycle continues and the next day the sun is out.

The flowers are out on the Wild Plum Tree.

I grew up in the lower mainland of British Columbia and being on the coast I was used to rainy days on end. I don’t really remember them bothering me, in fact I have some very happy memories as a kid camping when it rained all weekend and my sister and I would chill in the tent with books and spend the day reading. Or we would sit under a tarp by a large fire and read our books … all was good in the world.

We also have a Wild Cherry Tree in the park.

We camped a lot when our three children were growing up and they all learned at a young age how to put up a large tarp to cover the campsite … usually to keep the sun out, but occasionally the rain.

The flowers will be out soon.

So for most of today we had rain and I am in a great mood. I think nothing is better than being forced to stay inside under a blanket and read a book because it’s raining to much to go out for a walk 😀

Although today we did have friends drop by to drop off two face masks that she had made for us and we took a socially distance walk around the park. It was like the rain knew they were coming and it stopped, the sun came out, we finished our walk and the clouds came back and the rain started up again.

Barry and Barbara Beaver are still busy destroying the trees in the park 😦

I would have liked to get my last 500 steps in but as our oldest son always say “Meh, no big deal”. Yup all in all Rainy Days and Thursday was a good day for me!

Until next time …