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 …

Home For A Month

Well we arrived home one month ago today and nothing much has changed.

Maxx is still covered in road grit because it’s just been to cold to wash him. He has been thoroughly cleaned and polished inside so I guess one thing has changed.

I think we have been out a total of three times. Once to pick up some stuff from our daughters, they stayed upstairs while we got our stuff out of their storage room and I wiped everything down as we left the house. I shed more than a few tears on the way home that day, it is so hard to be so close and not able to give them all hugs or stay for a visit 😦

Once our fourteen day self isolation ended we did a major grocery shop so we don’t need to go out for another month.

Our last outing was to donate blood and it was interesting to see the changes they made to keep social distance for everyone.

The rest of our time has been spent reading, watching TV, and walking around the park. You can see by the pictures that spring may finally be on it’s way. We are supposed to get a high of 20C (70F) today so maybe Maxx will get a bath and I may be able to get some of my gardens ready for planting.

The Oregon Grape that gets full sun during the day is in full bloom and smells really pretty.

I took the picture below of our wild plum tree four days ago.

And I noticed this morning that it is beginning to bud, soon it will be covered in flowers 🙂

One morning I’m going to skip my walk and sit on this bench with my coffee and watch the sun rise.

Until next time …

The Animals Of Bear Creek Provincial Park

Remember the picture of the three pelicans I posted the other day? It turns out they are very rare, there was an article about them on our local on line news site. This breed of pelican is rare and is considered an “at-risk species” in British Columbia. They believe the birds were returning to their home in northern British Columbia after being south for the winter.

The pelicans have one nesting colony in British Columbia at Stum Lake, 70 kilometres west of Williams Lake. The park at Stum Lake is closed every year from March 1 to August 31 because the pelicans nest there.

I did see Barry the Beaver when I went for my walk yesterday. And I did have a conversation with him about the destruction he and his friends are doing in the park but I don’t think he really cared what I had to say!

We have also been watching a large ant farm that has been here as long as we have been here. Those ants are busy doing whatever ants do.

I took this picture at the end of March and they must have been hiding inside trying to keep warm.

I took this picture a week later and you can see there are a lot of ants and they are very busy.

There is a lot less traffic on the road in front of the park so we have been entertained by the Mountain Sheep for the past few weeks.

We saw this guy on March 31, he was all alone which is unusual.

We saw these guys on April 4th, I counted twenty-seven of them!

Yesterday we looked out the window and saw a large group meandering up the road.

They hung around long enough for hubby to grab my camera and get pictures

I still see geese every morning but I find them annoying so I don’t take their pictures. Maybe if they have babies I will get some pictures. And the ducks and marmots are still around but they may need to have babies as well before I take their pictures 🙂

Until next time …

Wow I’ve Never Seen That Before!

The weather was above freezing when I woke up this morning so I decided it was a good day to go out for my early morning walk. Up until now it has been to cold so I have been waiting until after breakfast to go but I really feel like I miss things when I go that late … like the sunrise

I went out about half an hour later than usual so I just caught the tale end of the sunrise, but it was still pretty.

I was armed with my bear spray and bear bells so fortunately I didn’t see any of them, but I also didn’t see any deer or Barry and Barbara Beaver. Although the beaver are still around because there is no shortage of trees with their teeth marks in them, or trees completely toppled over 😦

What I did get to see was something I have never seen before on Okanagan Lake … and no it wasn’t Ogopogo because I have seen him before … yup I really have! I saw three pelicans floating in the lake and they were very beautiful.

I sure wish I had my camera instead of my phone.

After some research I found out that during the breeding season, both males and females develop a bump on the top of their large beak and you can see that bump in the picture above. This bump indicates the birds interest in breeding and is shed once breeding season ends.

I sure hope I get to see baby pelican’s around the park this year!

Until next time …

And That’s A Wrap On Week Two

We have finished our two weeks of self isolation/quarantine and while I am happy we are both healthy I’m not sure I’m really ready to go out into the world. There is a very large part of me that would like to continue to stay in this wonderful little bubble we are in but we need some groceries.

Thanks to our daughter and my sister we had plenty to eat but we need to stock up on meat and fresh vegetables. When we were travelling home our daughter asked me for a shopping list so that she could deliver it to us once we arrived at the park. We didn’t need a lot of stuff and I looked in our freezer and counted up the meat and knew I was good for two weeks. What I didn’t realize is that the freezer was mostly full of steak and shrimp with just a few other types of meat and no chicken which is devastating for me. So every night for the past week I have asked hubby what he wants for dinner the next day and he pretends to think and then answers “I think I would like steak” 🙂 Good answer since that is his only option, but then to hubby that is the best option! If we had a freezer full of chicken he would have been very disappointed.

Anyway we are going to enjoy today’s freedom, which isn’t any different than any other day for the past two weeks but somehow it feels a little more free 🙂

Tomorrow we will venture out and hopefully get enough groceries for the next two weeks.

Until next time …