Week ending May 25, 2017 Vulcan

Friday, we went golfing at Stavely. 

On Saturday, our friend Pat with a Titanium similar to ours, came into the campground to de-winterize her trailer.   After having chatted with Joan, she came over with a bunch of rhubarb.    Joan stewed this up, and we enjoyed it on our oatmeal for several mornings.


The various bushes in the campground were in full bloom this week.   We couldn't identify the shrub below.

?

 Flower on shrub above

 Crabapple

 During the week, we did a few walks around town.



On Wednesday, after a walk we stopped for lunch at the Vulcan Hotel.  It has a fairly basic menu, but the spicy chicken burger lived up to its name.

Wednesday evening, the wind storm that covered most of Alberta blew in.  It disturbed our viewing of the Survivor season finale, as a bush near the satellite dish kept blowing in front of the dish.  We had to watch on a standard definition channel.

Thursday morning, the wind was still strong, but not gusting like it had overnight.   Joan talked to one of the town workers.  They had been out since 5 AM cleaning up a tree that had uprooted on Centre  Street, getting leaves out of the swimming pool, and cleaning up branches off the streets.  He figured it would be a while before they could clean up the poplar branches that had broken in the campground.   There was also a small tree between a couple of sites that had been uprooted.  The flowers on the bushes were mostly blown off. 

 

 

Week ending May 18, 2017 Vulcan

Friday, we hooked up the trailer early, having done a lot of the prep work Thursday afternoon and drove to Smitty's in Killam.   As we drove in, we hoped the house on a semi wasn't going to head south on highway 36 ahead of us.   As we were enjoying breakfast, we were happy to see it head east instead.  Early afternoon we arrived in Vulcan at one of our frequent spots, Virginia Mitchell campground.

Saturday morning we noticed that a mouse sneaked into the trailer overnight to enjoy some sweet potato.  We didn't realize that was in their diet.   We went into Okotoks to get some mouse pads, pick up Joan's license, changed our address with Alberta Health Care at the Registry, and pick up Cheezies at Costco.  We brought in an empty storage container from the truck to protect the root veggies.  Late in the evening, the mouse was back and got stuck on a sticky pad.  It turned out that leaving a cabinet door unlatched may have been the opportunity the mouse needed. 




Wednesday was a rainy day, so we decided it was a good time to renew our passports, since they expire next February, before we would be returning from the USA.  We also stopped at our insurance broker's to update our address with them.   

The other days this week we walked for about an hour at least every other day around town.  We had a project to see if we could find the Titanium we know spends the winter in town.   We went along most of the back alleys in the area of town where we thought it might be, with no luck.  

We arranged with Karen to come and visit her in Regina the first week of June, and plan to go through the stuff we have stored there, and see what is still worth keeping. 

Week ending May 11, 2017 Gibbons to Sedgewick

Friday, we visited with Mom . After the visit, John went to a clinic on 50th street to get his ears flushed, again already.  He had an interesting talk with the Dr.   The last Dr had recommended increasing the use of the sweet oil to once a day.   This Dr said that the use of sweet oil is controversial.  He said that the believes that it hardens the wax, rather than softening it.   John's experience over the last couple of years is that the more frequently he uses the oil, the more frequently he has to get his ears flushed.  Interesting.   Joan had mentioned to the girl who had flushed John's ears that we had tried to get Elephant Ears flushers, and concluded that only Dr offices could buy them.   She said that we could buy one at the Healthcare Solutions stores at Northgate Mall.  The Dr said that John could use it himself, as he would feel when it got too close to the eardrum, approaching slowly.   We headed over there and bought the last one they had on the shelf.  
On Saturday, we went to Ft Sask to check out the RV park there.   Lots of trees, narrow sites, so Gibbons is better.   We did a walk around the Lion's fish ponds at the south end of town along the River, a 5.4 km loop with one side beside a bend in the North Saskatchewan. 

North Saskatchewan River

Tribute to trade workers

Sunday, we visited with Mom and Dad.

Monday, we started heading back south, starting with Sedgewick Lake Campground.  It isn't officially open until the long weekend, but we were able to make a reservation.  Only one other trailer, other than the operators.  The water was off at our site, but Joan mentioned it to one of the summer students, and she arranged to get it turned on.  She was kind enough to let us know a little later that they were working on the water, so might need to turn it off for a short time occasionally.   We took a walk by the lake, along the nature trail. There are lots of birds in the park, and on the lake. 

Swimming area

Redwinged Blackbird

 Loons

When we were done, we went by the office (which doesn't open until 4pm), and noticed an envelope for us taped to the window.  When we took it off, the lady running the park opened the window, and chatted with us for a while, particularly about their winter in Costa Rica. 

Tuesday  we walked the mile into Sedgewick and picked up some veggies at Co-op. 

Wednesday, we cleaned out closets and drawers of clothes that were ragged or we hadn't used for a while  We took two big garbage bags of clothes and hangers into the Good as New store in Sedgewick.  When we got back to the trailer, John got a call from the DMV in Edmonton,  informing him that his driver's license had not been able to be delivered to the address on it.  It turned out that the registry in Cochrane had put the Okotoks street address on it, but left the town and postal code as Cochrane.  We checked our registrations, and our utility trailer license was correct, but the truck and 5th wheel had the same problem as the driver's license.  We drove into Killam to the registry office there to get the problem fixed.  They were able to verify that Joan's license was correct.   So 3 out of the 5 addresses they changed were wrong.  Fortunately only 22.45 to correct the problem. 

Thursday, we dug out our golf clubs and carts and walked to the golf club for our first round of the year.   It took us a while to get back in the swing of things, so we let a couple of parties go by us.  It was fairly quiet, which was good, as it was aeration day for the greens.  Consequently they had pounded flags into the fairway well in front of the greens.   After the first 'hole', we didn't bother putting.  After finishing, we had a salad and soup in the club house.  It was very popular, with more people having lunch than we had seen on the course.

Week ending May 4, 2017 Gibbons, Edmonton

Friday,  we went visited with Mom.  Then John fixed a problem that Dad was having with his MS Office tools.  He had found a MS tool called OffCAT (Office Configuration Analyis Tool?).  It identified a problem with a product called FinePrint, which was so old its add-ins were causing Outlook and Word to crash.     Following its procedures on disabling the add-ins,  Outlook and Word started fine.   Excel still didn't work, but it did work in 'safe mode'.   Then we did a grocery run.   After returning to the campground, we walked around it.  There is a sign mentioning the Athabasca Landing Trail, but the roads in the direction indicated were both marked as no trespassing, as they go into town facilities.    

On Saturday, we visited with Mom in the morning,  did Dad and Mom's taxes.  Dad took us, Ann, Daniel and Rosina to Uncle Ed's for lunch.

Sunday, Ann did her and Daniel's taxes on our computer since it was the end of April and they wanted to Netfile them.   We printed everybody's taxes except ours, since we were having problems  printing.

We visited with Mom on Monday.   In the evening, Dad got in contact with someone renting a suite in the condo complex connected to Mom's care home, and arranged to move in the next day.

Tuesday, we drove in early and took a load of boxes from Ann's to Dad's.  Joan unpacked and organized the kitchen while Dad, George and John picked up some of Dad's furniture from storage.

On Wednesday, Dad and John went to Shaw at 76 Ave and 50 St to order cable for the phone.  Dad decided he didn't need internet as there is wi-fi in the condo complex.  Then we met George at the storage site and picked up another load of furniture.  After unloading, and lunch we visited with Mom for a while.

Thursday morning we checked with one of the fellows in the park to see where the Athabasca Landing Trail went from here. He told us we could go through the gate in the pasture east of the trailers, and head toward the river.  If we went for about 2 hours we would get to a really old bridge.  We didn't think we would do a 4 hour hike, but started off in the direction indicated, following along the top of river valley.  We looked down one trail into the valley, but it was quite swampy still.   A while later,  after gradually going down a bit, we came to a spot on the trail that was quite wet with no way around.   We retraced our route back to the pasture, and walked around the circumference of the pasture, past a dugout with some ducks in it.   We saw a bunny, a deer and a hawk as well.  Our walk only took us about an hour, but it was good to have a chance to walk again.