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1 to 15 August 2023 16 to 31 August 2023

Wednesday, August 16, 2023.

Money exchanged hands. We are now the owner of a travel trailer.
Pat will deliver it to Jeremy's driveway for us.

It is a Crossroads Zinger 280-BH. The BH is for "Bunk House".

It is 28 feet long. Compared to the MH at 38 feet long, it is small. The bunks will be used by Gabriel and Natasha.

Thursday, August 17, 2023.

WOW! Being 10 feet shorter sure makes a difference.
Today, we moved our stuff from the MH to the trailer. We just put stuff where we assume it will work and relocate if needed in a few days.
My job is to take the stuff from the MH and bring it to Michele. She places it where she thinks it will work. She does excellent work.

Jeremy and Gabriel went biking at a track that is called "pump track". They said it was great.

After the biking, they went fishing for a while. They finished with an ice cream cone!

It is so hot today. They can barely keep up with the melting ice cream.

Friday, August 18, 2023.

We continued to move our stuff from the MH to the trailer. At times, Michele cannot keep up, so I move stuff from the basement of the MH to the basement of the trailer. It is not easy to find spots for all the stuff.

After supper, Michele went to play basketball with Gabriel and Natasha.

I wonder who is putting rocks in grand-maman's back pocket?

The guilty?

Like every summer, we run out of time to do stuff with Gabriel. He has to go back to his mom in Alberta.
Even if we were not all set up in the trailer, Gabriel is over for a sleepover. He likes his new bed.

Saturday, August 19, 2023.

Jeremy is at work today. I give Kristin a break and take Natasha to the basketball court, or should I say, to the throwing of the ball court. Or looking at a bee collecting pollen and following it for a while.

Gabriel is leaving us today. He is taking an airplane around supper time to fly back to Alberta.
We take lots of family photos.

Our handsome Gabriel. We are sad to see him go, but it is life now.

Gabriel is doing stuff with his dad, meanwhile, we continue re-arranging the trailer.

The final result (for now) of the front, right storage compartment.

The same thing for the front left storage.

And the left, back storage. It was not easy to fit everything inside.

Since Kristin will not be here for Halloween, when she was at the store, she bought this dress for Natasha to wear on Halloween night.

Two peas in a pod!

Gabriel is excited to go back home and, at the same time, sad to leave.

Another set of photos. Gabriel tries to protect Natasha's eye from the sun.

Safe travel Gabriel. We cannot wait to see you next summer. Who knows, maybe longer!

As I moved stuff to the trailer, I made a pile of what I wanted to sell. I will put it on Market Place and see what I get.

Natasha is with us for her sleepover. It is her first time in the trailer.
The two accomplices!

The TV can be turned to face the living room or the bedroom.

Natasha will sleep in the bottom bunk. It will be safer for her.
It is time for the story. It is not high enough for grand-papa!

Natasha loves her new bed. She thinks it is a "cave".

Sunday, August 20, 2023.

We have a gray sky because of the smoke from the forest fires.
We are on our way to the blackberry patch.

The blackberry pickers at work.

The official blackberry taster. She did a lot of taste testing.

This is the harvest minus the "taster's take" of the blackberry.

We do not know what happened, but for the last few days, Natasha likes to eat her lunch on the first step.

It was a good week.

Monday, August 21, 2023

Jeremy and his friend Tyler are going to Cumberland this morning for some bike riding.
I am going with them, but I will be hiking a flat trail and walking the village's main street.

My hike is on a gravel road. You can see many off-shoot of mountain biking trails along the way.

After about 1.5 km on the gravel road, I ended up near the main street of the village of Cumberland.
Today is Monday, and most of the businesses are closed. It is pretty calm on the main street.

The Canadian Legion is very nice here.

Cumberland has a nickname, Dodge City. I did not find the reason why!
They have a few murals. This one is very nice.

Cumberland's history is rich. Mining was a big industry here.

From 1912 to 1914, on most of the Island, a general strike was happening. It all started from the mines here in Cumberland. Joe Naylor was a big player in this movement.

The Ilo Ilo theatre.

The Cumberland museum, I will have to come back and visit this museum.

** Warning** Do not transpose today's value on yesterday's history. It happened, right or wrong, let's learn from it and not cancel it. My two cents worth.
Like many small villages and big cities, you had segregations by neighborhood, White, Black, Chinese and Japanese.

One more mural.

This is my hike, a BIG 5.25 km in one hour and a half.
As you can see on the map, they have more than 80 mountain biking trails here.

During the afternoon, while we were all taking a nap, we heard a weird "thump". When we woke up, we saw this roll of yellow paper. This is what the Search & Rescue drops from an airplane to check the wind direction.
Natasha loves it.

Natasha went for a bike ride after supper. She does not have the courage yet to use the jump.

We keep doing stuff to prepare the MH for storage tomorrow. By the way, we did find a place to store it.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023.

We changed the car registration to B.C. We now have a BC plate on the car.

Before I took the MH to storage, I went for a last dump at the military campground. My next stop was at the gas station for half a fill-up at $2 per litre.

After that, we took the MH to the storage place.
This is our spot. The site is 12 feet wide, and the MH is 10 feet wide.

I took a photo of the other MH and our door just to witness we did not touch the other MH. You never know.

Our driver-side mirror is over the line a little. We will see what the owner will say when he comes and uses his site.

Have a good sleep MH.

We sure hope to sell it soon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2023.

I spent part of the morning on the phone to cancel my Ontario car insurance.
We also discontinued our Shaw Direct account.
We are using IPTV now and love it. It is not perfect, but at $45 per year, you do not complain.
IPTV is live TV over the internet. You get most, if not all of the world's TV channels,

A few of the channels we liked.

All the Canadian channels (CA).

The channels from France (FR).

From the UK.

We also have channels from New Zealand, Africa, and even from Arab countries.

Natasha has a new passion, ballet.

Jeremy is back at work today.
We are placing some decorations in our new (to us) trailer.

Thursday, August 24, 2023.

I installed some door holders. I got two from the local store. I need two more, but they are on order. They are the same price as Amazon, so I bought them locally.

I also added an eye bolt on all three roof vents.

Why? Simply because they are high and Michele cannot reach them to open or close them.
We use a long handle, through the eye bolt, and operate them.

We placed a few of our personal stuff on the wall.

Some hooks to hold our hats.

More hooks, but for keys.

The humidity is high on the Island. We use this thing to help bring down the humidity level in the trailer.
It works.

Our fridge is an RV fridge, meaning it is not very efficient. To help it keep stuff cold, we placed a small fan to move the air around inside. It does make it better.

Michele found two jugs of RV antifreeze for only $10. One is full the other is half-full. One usually costs about $17.
We will need it this fall.

It was a busy day. Our trailer is starting to feel like home.

Friday, August 25, 2023.

Surprise! I got a text message at 5:30 a.m.!!!
It is one of the campers at North Shore who may be interested in our MH. I politely explained the time difference in my reply. We are waiting for his phone call.

We have a lot of smoke in the air this morning. The air quality is terrible, to the point of closing all the windows in the house and trailer.

We continue on more little projects in the trailer
I flush the hot water tank. It was pretty clean, which surprised me.

I do not know if or when they used the fresh watered tank. I am sanitizing it.
I drained what water was in it and watered the grass with it.
Next, I fill the tank with fresh water and a small quantity of bleach to sanitize it.

I dump the gray and black water. I will have a good photo of how we do it.

I installed two door holders.

Jeremy and Kristin are in Nanaimo to service their Audi.
While they waited, they toured the area.
This is the Abyss. It is wide enough at places for a person to fall in. Many theories exist about its formation.

After we picked up Natasha from daycare, we went for a walk in the woods.
That was the plan. A warning sign about the sighting of a bear in the area.
We decided to walk the road by the woods to be safer.

Snow? It is because we are next to the arena.

Jeremy and Kristin are not with us for supper. It is taking longer than expected to service the Audi.
We have a left-over supper.
Natasha ate her whole plate. She even had room for ice cream.

We have a plum tree a few houses down from us. We went and got a few plums.
Jeremy did some research on how to grow a plum tree.
Here are the steps.
First, a damp paper towel.

Place the seeds that came out of the pit between the paper towel.

Add some water to the paper towel.

Place the paper towel and seeds in a zip-lock bag.
They should germinate in 7 to 10 days, with more to follow.

With so much smoke in the air. It makes for a nice sunset.

The sunset is making our faces red.

Our two beautiful girls.

Jeremy has problems with his outboard motor. The water pump is not working as it should.

I gave him a hand to replace the water pump.

The test run will be tomorrow.

Saturday, August 26, 2023.

Michele and I are out doing some yard saleing.
We found a few things for really cheap.
We went all the way to Fanny Bay because they had a huge yard sale.
Look at how tall the trees are on the Island.

It was OK.

On an adjacent lot, we saw this old boat. It is kind of nice.

We decided to go to Cumberland at the Rib Fest for lunch.

Two of the cooks are hard at work. Do you want ribs or chicken cooked on a wood fire? This is the place.

I took the half-rack of pork. Michele had the brisket on a bun. It was good, but at the price they are, you could buy more for the same price. They would probably taste the same or better.

Kristin and Natasha are out on a photo shoot.
Kristin is really good at photography. Here are some examples.

Natasha has a sleepover with us.
She has her bath in the little bathtub in the trailer.

Some junk food and a movie with grand-maman.

Reading a story before bedtime.

Jeremy went to run the outboard motor today. It works great now.

Jeremy and Kristin went fishing after supper. They came back with a big pink salmon.

Sunday, August 27, 2023.

Natasha had a good night's sleep.

I did some more repairs, cleaning and verifications in the trailer this morning. I cleaned the back of the fridge, the converter, the heater and the air conditioning. I also put some pipe insulation on the piping to prevent some of the water hammering when using the water pump. I did not get any photos of all that action.

Grand-maman has a lot of fun with Natasha at the playground. Natasha is getting more and more bold.

She loves playing "the bus".

Grand-maman makes really good milkshakes.

It was a busy week.

Monday, August 28, 2023

Today, we are washing the trailer. The trailer has spent more than 7 months near a cedar hedge. Here on Vancouver Island, it is very humid all year round. Things will grow on almost anything if given time. The previous owner did not clean the outside, and it shows. The roof is dirty but in good condition. I had to use a brush to clean it properly.

It took time, but the result is excellent.

It does not look like the same trailer now.

We will wash it at the end of September, and wax it for the winter.

Tuesday, August 29, 2023.

Jeremy is not going biking, so we go fishing in the ocean. The tide is very low because of the super moon.
This is the boat ramp at low tide. The two small red lights are from Jeremy's car when he goes to park it.

The big ocean-going boat!

Jeremy's doing a "captain" impression!

The aircraft landing is an Aurora.
We are about one kilometre from shore.

There is so much bait food in the ocean. The big fish are not biting.
This is the result of our fishing.

No fish for supper tonight!

We went to Nymph Falls after supper.

As you can see, the trail is wide.

Natasha is still not confident enough to go through a stump.

Nymph Falls. We can see the fish ladder made for the salmons and other fish.

It is the Puntledge River.

Jeremy had to do it!

On our way back, Natasha checks out a slug crossing the trail.

We are still looking at the Puntledge River, but a few kilometres downstream. The circles you see on the water are from Salmon going upriver.

It was a busy day.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023.

It was an easy day doing small stuff around the trailer.

Grand-maman is combing Natasha's hair after her bath. Those two have a special connection.

The big snack before bedtime.

Thursday, August 31, 2023.

Normally, I would empty the black and gray water tanks on Friday, but for some reason, they are full a day early.
This is how we do it.
1. The sewer hose hooked up to the trailer.
2. The other end of the sewer hose is hooked up to the "garburator". A water hose hooked to the "garburator".
3. The water hose goes to the basement.
4. The other end of the water hose is hooked to an adapter I made. It is replacing the regular cap on the house sewer system.

It is a closed system, with no leaks, no smell, perfect.

I had to change the kitchen faucet.

Surprise! Once changed, it started to leak at the valves...

I played around for a while but still leaking. I will have to look at it again tomorrow.

Until next time.

Life is good...