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1 to 15 April 2013   16 to 30 April 2013


Tuesday April 16, 2013


Heading back north.


Close to Danville there is one RV dealer with a few used motorhome.  Maybe one will be the right one!
  

Unfortunately no!

We continue north-west to Roanoke.
We cross the Blue Ridge Parkway, we drove it in the fall of 2010.


We stop at Camping World of Roanoke.
No luck there either.


Onto I-81 north to Buena Vista.
   Onto

We did stop at Natural Bridge two years ago.  It was nice.


We arrived at Glen Maury park in Buena Vista at around 4 pm.



Wednesday April 17, 2013


Glen Maury Park is a nice campground.


The lower part, where we are, does not have sewer.  It is still a nice place to be.


We are running low on food, time to hit the town of Lexington.
A very old town judging by the architectures of the buildings.
  

New road signs always surprises us like this one telling us this is the detour for pedestrians.


On our way back from Lexington we drive by a teapot house.  The arrow points to the handle of the pot.


The S.V.U is located in the town of Buena Vista where we are camped.


The knight is the name of all the sports team the university has.
The university building was a luxury hotel until 1867.
  

I am in cooking mode.  I am cooking my breakfast sausages and freeze them after.
I am also cooking our diner for tonight, chicken.


All this to say not much is going on right now.  It has been a while since we had our toes in the grass.



Thursday April 18, 2013


I am taking a walk in part of Buena Vista.
First, our site.


Buena Vista has had a few major floods in the past.  After the last big one in 1995, it was decided to  build dikes around the town.
It was completed in 1999.  Here is part of it.


They even have floodgates where the road goes through.  It is very impressive.


I just found this building nice with its long windows on the main floor.


The town has a lumber mill and I saw this old truck, loaded with trees, working really hard to make it to the yard.
Pretty neat!


Paxton House is also located on the Glen Maury park.  They are trying to bring it back to its old grandeur.
  

A view of the lower campground from Paxton House.


We stayed an extra day to see a caravan of Airstream trailers and American Civil War enthusiast coming the park.
Here they are.


They are about 26 units here, some are actually motorhome made by Airstream.


I happen to notice a water leak in one of the basement compartment.  Tracing it back, it is the ice making water hose that is leaking.  The arrow is pointing to the hose disconnected from the solenoid.
The leak is much higher in the compartment.


We will have to remove the fridge to have access to the back and fix the problem.

More to follow.



Friday April 19, 2013


We leave Buena Vista behind this morning.
I always liked pointy street houses.


Can you see the quad on the roof of the truck?
The motorhome is just as loaded.
This truck is working hard and it is going by me at  120 km/h (75 Mph).


Some rest are are sponsored by auto insurance company.  It is a good idea since we give them a lot of money after all!


Closer and closer to mountain area.


We traveled less than 45 km in West Virginia.


Next is Maryland for even less kilometers, only 20 in this state.


We actual stopped in a Walmart in Hargerstown, Maryland.


Unbelievable, we are less than 50 meters from I-81, the noise is incredible, we have to move!

Pennsylvania, here we come!


A red onion truck!


We keep driving until we are in Chambersburg.

This Walmart is a long way from the Interstate 81.
The weather man says that we have possibilities of tornado in our area!
We keep a close eye to the sky and check the weather every 10 minutes.

Nothing other then heavy rain.  Good.


One hour later the sky is clearing up.


Tomorrow we will be going west.



Saturday April 20, 2013


Just before we were ready to leave, I went to Walmart for some shopping.  On my way back I noticed our right mud flap is crooked!
  

One of the bolt holding it has worn through the rubber.  Lucky for us, across the road there is a Tractor Supply Co.
I love this store, they have everything.  I purchased a new, bigger bolt and washer, 15 minutes latter it is fixed.


All in all, we were delayed less than 30 minutes.
We are leaving the Interstate behind us and taking secondary highway for a while.
Another pointy street house!


We like secondary highways, you never know what you will see.  Like this race car driver raising money.
It may add more time to our travel, but hey, life is good!


If only this old house could tell us what it has seen in its time.


First time we see a barn being dismantle.


We noticed a large number of old, big houses abandoned, sad.


We had to cross more than 5 mountain range like this one.


Humm! Never saw this one before!


Now that we are up, we must come down.


And up again.


Even with all the road signs they still have to paint it, it must be a good one.
Our going up speed is only 35 KM/H.


Our going down speed is only 30 KM/H.


The roads are very nice.


He must love horses!


He must have loved his motorcycle!


Pennsylvania is coal country.


The warmest it got was +13 C.  Now it is only 9.8 C outside.
Even with the truck heat on, it is still on the cool side in the motorhome.
  

We do see a lot of small towns and villages.


This church did not want kids to sit on the wall, or is it that they do not want the resident to get out on the graveyard?
  

Another abandoned house!


This is one of the few time I did not check Google Earth and check out the road to get to our RV park.
The GPS takes us on a small gravel road.


I get off the gravel road fast, but we are still on a very small road.  Boy it is getting hot in the motorhome!
  

Whaz that?


We made it to our RV park, just 30 minutes later then expected.


It was a little more tired to drive up and down the mountains.  On top we had a strong headwind.  To finish me off, the little gravel road.  I was tired at the end!



Sunday April 21, 2013


Nice RV park and on top of that, it is a Passport America park.  We only have to pay $17.50 per night with all the services, including 50 amps electricity.

Do I look like I am unhappy or what?
I am only going to do laundry.  It is not a punishment, I think!
  

Our home.


Some of the seasonal campers are here this weekend to clean up their sites.  While taking a walk, we come  across this place.
What a sense of humor, a bench with a stuffed Mom, Dad and baby up in a tree.
We love it!  I would love to hear the story behind this one.
  

Me with a wild beast!


A relaxed day.



Monday April 22, 2013


This morning we are off to the next town, Hermitage.
Our RV park is really located in the boonies.


We love the odd looking mailboxes
This one is a first for us.


After some shopping in Hermitage, we head back home.
Just before we got home, this fat little guy was in no hurry to get off the road.


After diner, Michèle continued her search for the perfect motorhome on the internet.  She found one.  It is in Cincinnati, Ohio.
About 4 to 5 hours drive away.
We phoned the place and talked to a salesman and decide to head to Cincinnati tomorrow morning and have a good look.
We are going by car, not with the motorhome.



Tuesday April 23, 2013


WOW, we are on the road by 4:15 am.
The sun is coming up behind us by 6:30 am.


Ohio has different speed limit signs.


Brown school bus, windows covered, who can be traveling in there?


By 9:20 am we are in Cincinnati and we head straight to Colerain Traler Center to check out the motorhome.


Here is the perfect layout for us.  We want to buy this RV.
  


Michèle and I are in agreement and we want it.  Now we have to talk business with the salesman.  BTW, our salesman is Dave and he is a really nice guy.
We sort of agree on the sale price of the motorhome, now is the time to see what ours is worth.  Not good, they are not giving us enough to make the deal.  We are disappointed.

On the bright side, we now know that a place like Camping World will give us more than $12,000 more than a private dealer.
Good to know.

We will continue our search, but at the same time we will be looking at what we can do to make our current motorhome spacious.

Back in Pennsylvania.


It is 5:00 pm by the time we see our motorhome again.


Tonight we are looking at the dates we want to go back in Canada and where to go first.



Wednesday, Thursday April 24 and 25, 2013


No photos for Wednesday.  We spent the day reading and updating our web page.
We also did some preps for our travel tomorrow.

Thursday and we are moving, but not very fast.

Our site and the motorhome on the move.
  

The road is so small to get to the RV park.


A few minutes after leaving the RV park we get to the town of Mercer.  We are heading to I-79.
  

We are on a secondary road for a while before we get to I-79.
  

New York is the last state before we get to Canada.


After more Interstate travel, we move to state roads to get to Buffalo.  We saw a few wineries on our travel.


Turns out we will cross the border today
Buffalo, here we come.


Coming in Canada.
Once again, crossing the customs into Canada is a breeze.


We are spending the night at the same RV park as last fall before we headed south.


Only one night!



Friday April 26, 2013


We do not have very long to drive today.  We are only going to the campground Glen Rouge in Toronto for a few days and visit Odette.
Our site.


The white dots you see in front of the motorhome are small flies.


Love is in the air for the birds.  This one just started to built his nest on the engine of the motorhome.
I took the photo after I took off the next, but you can still see some pieces of dry grass.
  

As we are driving out of the RV park, we drove through a few clouds of flies.  Millions of them!
  

This is the first time we notice orange lines in a construction zone.


Going over the Welland Canal.


On the west side of the Greater Toronto.


We finally made it to Glen Rouge.  What!  It is still closed?
On the park web site we could even book a site for tonight!
  

Still, we have to go to a Walmart for the night.



Saturday April 27, 2013


The Walmart in the city of Pickering is a good place to stay for the night.
  

This morning we are back to the Glen Rouge campground and got ourselves a nice campsite.
  

Once we are setup we take the car to the car wash.


With a clean car, we are going to visit Michèle's sister Odette and her two kids, Onyx and Alix.


We all went to a Chinese buffet for lunch.
The rest of the time, got caught up on the latest happening in our lives.


It was a pleasure to see you again.
See you next time.



Sunday April 28, 2013


Yesterday we picked up our mail from the last 4 or 5 months at Odette.  As I was going through all the letter I notice that the paperwork for the renewal of the motorhome and car plate requires the motorhome to have an e-test to be done before I can renew the plates.  I looked for a place that could take our motorhome in Trenton, it is our destination for the next month or so.  I will have to call first thing in the morning and book an appointment.

The rest of the day we did nothing, just some reading, working of the next web pages.
We also took a long walk on one of the trails in the park.


Walking along the Rouge river.
  

I did some prep stuff for our travel tomorrow.



Monday April 29, 2013


Luck is with us.  I found a garage in Trenton that will do the e-test this afternoon.
We leave Glen Rouge by 9 am.
Getting out of Toronto is easy.  I much prefer to drive in Toronto than Montréal.


We made it in time to "Action Towing & Automotive" for our e-test and an oil and filters change.
  

Working hard to change the oil and fuel filter.
  

You are probably wondering what is an e-test!
It is a test that has to be done every two years on vehicle that are older then 7 years old.  It tests the emission of the vehicle.
The motorhome passes with no problems.

Once done, we head to our "new" home for the next month of so.
"North Shore RV Park".



Tuesday April 30, 2013


First thing in the morning I did was to go to the ServiceOntario office to change our address.  I also got the new stickers for the plates for the motorhome and the car.  We are now good for 2 more years.

Not much after that.  We did some shopping for the new entrance steps flooring for the motorhome.
This one is not bad, but we are still looking for the right one.


The weather is warming up, it is +22 C by late afternoon.

For the rest of the day I do more change of address over the internet. I have to do it not so I do not forget some later on.

Until next time.

Life is good...


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