Home Archives Links Français

January February March April May June July August September October November December

1 to 15 June 2018 16 to 30 June 2018

Friday June 1, 2018

We are on our way to Alliston at the Nicolston Dam RV Park near Borden.
Arriving in Toronto, the traffic is a little heavy, but moving well on the 401.

We had only one short slowdown in Toronto. We then travel on the 400 north until the exit to Alliston and our RV Park.
We go over many of those big hills to get there. The hills are made out of the moraine left behind from the last Ice Age.

What a view!

Almost there.

On our way to our sites. It is a little tight going around the corner.

Here is a tour of our Park and sites.
The old mill is now the park office.

The owners kept all the internals part of the old mill for display.

We are under the arrow.

Getting there.

Our "homes" for the weekend.

The Nottawasaga river runs through the park.

My back is to the river.

The office also has a small store. Look at those tables.

This car is made out of steel from a 45 gallons drum.
It is a nice cooler, but at $950, it is a little out of our league.

We are out to visit Jeremy at his hotel in Barrie.
We had supper at the Mandarin. We did a lot of talking and eating.

After our meal, we left Jeremy at his hotel. He is starting a cold and is tired as he had to work late last night.
At home, we spent a few hours with Jannie and Jan at their MH. We had a good time.

Saturday June 2, 2018

Jeremy gave us some tickets for the air show, compliments of the Snowbirds.
We arrived in Borden shortly after 9:30 am. No line ups at the gates!

We started the day with a visit in one of the hangar to look at the displays.
Even the kids could "fly" their own plane.

It is not too crowded. Jannie and Jan did not have to wait very long to get in the cockpit of this CF-18 trainer. This technician gave a very good "tour" of the cockpit. There was a lot of laughter.

Many of the museums from the base were here with displays.

The Military Police Academy was here too.

I am explaining some of the systems of the CF-18 to Jannie and Jan.

After a quick meal, we sat down to watch the air show.
The Canadian Harvard Aerobatic Team.

The Harvards in formation flying. They made us a nice heart in the sky.

This is how we spent most of the afternoon, looking up in the sky!

The Canadian Armed Forces Parachute Team, The Skyhawks.
They gave us a very good show.

Thank you Skyhawks.

The 2018 CF-18 Demonstration Team also gave us a very good show.

The highlight of the day, the Canadian Forces Snowbirds.
Jeremy is not in the plane, he is back at the airport to do the start and the park of the airplanes.

Pictures can never give you what it really looks like in real life. It is a great show.

We also had other performers at this air show, like Brent Handy in his "Pitts S-2", Manfred Radius and his glider "Salto", Kent Peitsch in his "Interstate Cadet" sponsored by Jelly Belly. We had a few fly-pass from two aircraft from "Vintage Wings of Canada". The F/L Arnold Roseland Supermarine Spitfire MK IX and the Robert Hampton Gray Goodyear FG-1D Corsair.

Our niece, Valerie, is on her AVS course in Borden . She dropped by to say hello.
It was a pleasure to see you today, Valerie.

With the air show completed, we drove to the Lake Simco Regional airport to visit Jeremy and the Snowbirds aircraft.

The Snowbirds taking a rest!

Jeremy, who is our oldest favorite son, is also the "Lead Aviation Tech" on the Snowbirds team.

Jeremy is talking about the different system on the CT-114 Tutor.

Jannie is the first one to sit in the cockpit. Jeremy explains all about the cockpit.

Jannie really enjoyed this part of the visit. She actually loved it.

Next in the cockpit is Jan.

Jan loved it in the cockpit.

This is the Corsair we saw flying during the air show.

The CF-18 who flew in the air show for us today. It is painted in the colours of NATO's 60th anniversary.

Jannie and Jan really enjoyed the day.

For supper, we enjoyed a pizza from a local pizzeria.
We also had a few beverage before bed.

Sunday June 3, 2018

Jannie and Jan were the cook this morning. They made us a very good breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, toasts and some fruits.
They also made very good coffee from their special coffee machine.

Jannie and Jan left a little before us. They will be taking the toll highway 407 to bypass most of the traffic on the 400 and 401 in Toronto.

It is 11:17 am when we arrive at the junction of the 400 south and 401 east. Usually it is wall-to-wall vehicles here. Today, we are driving at 100 km/h to the end of the 400.

Now to get on the 401 east, you need to get on the 401 collector and then move to the 401 express.
It happens quickly. The traffic is moving well at this time.

We were almost home when the rain started.

We just had time to set-up the MH and the rain started again.

Michele warming up some left over pizza from last night.

We had a very good weekend with Jannie and Jan. I think they did too.
It was fun to camp with them.

Now we are thinking about our trip west to Moose Jaw.

Monday June 4, 2018

We have a cloudy sky and the temperature is on the cool side.
Our new home until Saturday.

The view.

A quiet day at home. I mostly worked on the next update of the blog.

Tuesday June 5, 2018

I am at Canadian Tire replacing our car battery. It is not so good anymore.

I also drop by our "home", the UPS store, to pick up our mail. Shoot, no voters cards for me or Michele. We can still vote no problems.

Once I am back home, I place the bicycles in the car for our trip to Moose Jaw. Why do I do that? Simply because having the bikes on the back of the car for 2,900 km is not the nicest thing for a bike. Think about rain, stopping in Walmart, you just don't want to tempt thieves by having bikes readily available even if they are loocked.

We should take about 15 to 20 days to get to Moose Jaw. We will take it slow.

Wednesday June 6, 2018

Time to do some preventive maintenance on the MH.
Time to check again the "house" batteries water level.
They are located under the entrance steps.

There they are! All four of them. The three on the right are easy to fill if needed, but the last one on the left, is a little hard because of the wire bundle and hydraulics lines located over them. I added about one liter of distilled water total to the batteries, which is normal for "house" batteries.

What do I mean about "house" batteries? Simply that they are supplying power only to the RV (house) and not the engine. The engine has its own battery.

With the batteries done, I took stuff to the garbage dumpster and what do I see inside?
A sewer hose, brand new! Yes it is cut in two, but still new. And it is sitting on top of the garbage. I guess it sounds like I look for stuff in the dumpster, not usually, but in this case, yes!

I will fix it and use it as an extension when the sewer connection is far from the MH.

Next items on the maintenance list, the faucets and shower head.
But first, I need to do some updates on both GPSs.
I still have lots of data left on our cell phone to do them.
Boom, everything stops, no more data being transferred to the GPS!
I do not understand, so I call Jeremy, our son in Saskatchewan, he is the owner of the cell plan. He is going to look into it.

Jeremy calls me a little later and tells me all is good now. It was just a miss understanding on the plan when he did some upgrade on his side of the plan.

Because I did not want to stop in the middle of the update on the GPS, I bought one day of internet from the RV Park ($3) to finish the updates.

The RV Park internet is not the fastest internet. It will take time to do the update.
I guess I will do some update on me as well...

With my update done, time to clean the shower head and faucets. I use CLR.

We are getting anxious to leave for Moose Jaw and see Jeremy, Gabriel and Kristin.

Thursday June 7, 2018

An easy morning at home.
After lunch, we went to Trenton to cast our votes.
This is the "Provincial Election". We get in and out in 5 minutes. This is the first time they use electronic voting. I guess it is mostly to count the votes.

On our way back home, we stopped for some last minute groceries.

We skyped with Benoit for 15 minutes.

Tonight is also our last Pub Night at the RV Park.

Friday June 8, 2018

I have my one month follow up appointment for my eyes. All is good and healing well. The next appointment will be in two months, probably in Moose Jaw.
We also make a quick stop at the drugstore to pick up my prescriptions for the next three months.

When we got back home, we did as much preparation for travel as we could.

Saturday June 9, 2018

We start our travel at around 9 am this morning. This green with yellow dots lizard can't wait to meet Gabriel.

Goodbye Jannie and Jan.

In less than 5 kilometers we are stopped. This time for gasoline.

Today being Saturday morning, we don't expect too much traffic on the 401 in Toronto.
Traffic is moving well in Toronto except for a slowdown because of an accident. We lost only 10 minutes. Not too bad.

On the 400 north, there are many construction areas and it causes some slowdown, but nothing major.
A stop for lunch at the King City ONRoute.

After we passed Barrie, most of the traffic was gone and it is a nice road.
We are on our way to Parry Sound.

This is not the first time we stop for the night at this Walmart.

There is a pond next to the parking lot and it has two turtles sunning themselves.

We covered about 380 km today. We are going to take our time to go to MJ.

Sunday June 10, 2018

Back on the road by 10 am, our next stop? Serpent River, about 300 km away.
More bridges being repaired/replaced, but a lot less than the previous years.

This area is really nice.

A Kirpan? No, a Scimitar from the Shriners. It is probably coming back from a parade.

We have been driving by the French River Provincial Park many times over the years.
This time we stop.

Happy 125th Ontario Park.

French River has been an important "road" to the west and the fur trade.

The Visitor Center has an exhibit on the early indigenous life and the importance of the French River as a transportation waterway.
Many parts of the exhibit have a recorded story/explanation station. They are in three languages, French, English and Ojibwe. Really well done.

The arrow indicates where we are right now. To the left, Lake Huron and to the right, Lake Nipissing.

I forgot to take a photo of the canoe! Funny how the French name is not the same as the English name!

Michele says that Champlain wrote really nice.

The first nations location in 1500.

Pretty Michele.

On our way to Recollet Falls.

It was a moderate difficulty trail. Some area were a little harder then other.
You can see the new growth on the trees.

A small garden snake. They do have venomous snakes here.

Where the name of the falls came from.

Here it is!

Can you see the two men fishing?

In less than a half hour they caught two nice walleyes.

We spent two hours at French River P.P. This includes the visit and the walk to the falls.
We could spend more time walking other trails, maybe next time!

After 295 km on the road, we arrive at our next stop.
Serpent River Campground.

We will be here for two nights.

Monday June 11, 2018

Another easy, do nothing day.
A tour of our campground and site.
The campground is located right next to highway 17 near the village of Spragge.

Our site, we have stopped here before.

I really needed to wash the windshield.
I even applied a coat of Rain-X.

It is mosquitoes season and they are hungry, but we still managed to read outside for a few hours.
I took a short walk on highway 17 for about 4 km this morning.

Tuesday June 12, 2018.

Today is a short driving day for us. We are only going as far as Sault Ste. Marie.
So, we do not leave until about 10 am.
While we were talking to the owner, we learned the reasons why many trees have no leaves. Caterpillars are eating them. They are at the end of their cycle.

The black stuff on the pavement are caterpillars trying to cross the road and getting squished.

While reading some of the local information, we discovered this small museum in Blind River.

It is a small, but nice museum. Admission is by donations.
An industrial washing machine used in the lumber camp.

There is no lumber industry now in Blind River.
This was the case of the collapse of the lumber industry. Today, the main employer are mines.

This area is rich in history.

Back on the road, we are on our way to Sault Ste. Marie.
The road follows the Mississagi River for many kilometers.

At times we can see Lake Huron.

Some of the locals.

As we got closer to Sault Ste. Marie, highway 17 becomes a four lanes highway.

After about 170 km of driving, we made it to our destination.

The S.S.M. Walmart.

Things you see in a Walmart parking lot, then he wonders why we can no longer park for the night at some Walmart.
Because of people like you who does work on his vehicle...

We had some rain showers through-out the evening and night.

Wednesday June 13, 2018

It sure is coming down hard this morning.

It is almost 10 am when we hit the road again.
But first, a stop at the local Flying J to fill the MH.

We have a few kilometers of road construction ahead of us.
Most of it is almost done, like here. It is only missing the top layer of asphalt.
Those lines are temporary lines, I think they were drunk when they painted them.

We look at Lake Superior now.

Shoot! The water truck just passed in front of us and made it a nice muddy road. The MH will be some dirty.

We drove by many times by this place. This time we stop. It is the middle of the Trans-Canada Highway.

They explain it better than I could.

The Chippewa Falls are at this site too.
It must be impressive in the spring when the water is high.

The MH waiting for us.

Back on the road after this quick stop. The weather in front of us is not looking good.

It is not looking good on Lake Superior either.

We got some fog for a little while.

Another place we drove by and never stopped.

This time we do. It is a Trading Post.

They had some local smoked fish. I did not try them

That is what we wanted to see.

Just beautiful...

The prices were not too bad.

They had a few of these.

After our visit at the Trading Post, we drove one kilometer to get to Pancake Bay P.P.

And the rain starts just when we get there. To top it off, nobody is in the office right now.

They arrived about 10 minutes later just as I was getting back to the MH to wait. Back to the office I go to register.

The rain has slowed down as we make our way to the dump station.

Here is what happened at the dump station.
We drove two kilometer to get to the dump station. At the dump station I dumped both gray and black water, no problems, it is still raining. Next is to the potable water filling station. This is where things start to go downhill. We can only fill our fresh water tank with a hose connected to our fill point. The fill station only has a hose without an adapter to attach a regular hose, this means only filling by gravity filling point. Remember I do not have that and it is still raining. I can only fill the tank by holding the two hose together by pressure, I get wet some more. I finally come up with a jury-rigging contraption and it took a long time to fill the fresh water tank.

When we got to our site, we found out it is not very level and the layout is not suitable for our MH with slides. Back at the office to change site. Did I say it is still raining?

Finally, we got in our site. More photos tomorrow.

We only drove 75 km today.

Thursday June 14, 2018

I give you the tour this morning.
We can see Lake Superior from our windshield. Hard to see in the photo.

My back is to the lake. This site is better than the other one.

Looking towards the beach.

Some of the sites are huge while other are small or weird shaped.

The one way street, kind of small for us.

This is a bad collage of Pancake Bay. The beach is very nice and the water is so clear. Beautiful country.

After my morning coffee, I am off for a walk on the beach. Michele is enjoying a late morning in bed.
The geese are not impressed that I am trying to walk by and they let me know it. They have babies with them.

Look at that? It is 50 years old and still look good after all those years. They sure don't make them like this anymore.

Through-out this area you can see many of those easel with the small folding chair.

They explain better the "Group of Seven".

Michele and I spent an hour at the beach reading. The wind is coming of the lake and it is cold.

I was looking for some spices for a recipe I want to do.
Why not do a clean-up at the same time.

It turns out I do not have what I need, I guess we will buy them at our next stop.

Friday June 15, 2018

Before we hit the road, another 2 km to the dump station and another 2 km to get back on the road. It is what it is!

Back on 17 west and on our way to Neys Lunch & Campground about 360 km from here.

I know we have this photo every time we drive by, but try to say that name?

We stop for lunch at A&W in White River.

We arrive at Neys at around 2 pm.

Our site for the next three nights.

It is full service sites, but with only 15 amps electricity.
We will have to be careful with power!

I spent most of the afternoon and evening working on the next update of the blog.
Michele is watching a movie, life is good.

Until next time.

Life is good...