Last minute chores before hitting the road

Thursday, August 17

Sent Ray off this morning to a nearby park called "The Glade" for a photography walk. This should help him feel like he is "doing something". Unfortunately he was back 10 minutes later as this "park" has been donated to the City of Surrey with the covenant that the people could continue to live there until they died, hence they are still there and the park is really not open to the public.

He decided to go to another one that the dogs could come to so off he went again. Hopefully he will be successful this time.... Came back after 1/2 an hour, apparently it was a great place to walk the dogs off-leash but not so picture worthy! lol

Freya and Kira enjoying being in Dad's front yard. Impressing the neighbours as they never bark or leave the yard.

After considering all the work involved to move our stuff from one storage locker to another, even if the new one is "free", Ray and I decided not to bother until the spring. We unfortunately planned to move the stuff during the week and the access to Kristi's storage would be difficult during business hours so we will rethink the whole thing in the spring and plan better. Ray's brother and husband were going to do the "heavy lifting" and that also meant tying them up for the two days as well with Ryan having to take days off of work.

With that decision being made I managed to move up our doctor's appointments for prescriptions on the island to a week tomorrow and Freya's Vet appointment next Tuesday. So with all that, we hope to leave for Paska Lake  next weekend for 10 days or so before starting our trip east this year. I'm looking forward to finally trying out my inflatable kayak and Ray is itching to fish this summer while it is still nice out.

Friday, August 18th

Ray has been wanting me to fill his "cookie tin" and I happened upon Copy Cat Pirate Cookies on facebook, so I got started on that this morning before doing any other chores. They turned out great. Got the call that Dad's meds were in at Costco, so Ray and I decided to have a late lunch at the Fox and Fiddle in Langley for the English Style Fish and Chips. We had not been there for several years when we went with our good friends Dianne and Steve. Shared the plate as the fish is huge ... each piece has got to be 10 inches long. After that it was off to Costco to brave the crowds. Ray dropped me off at the entrance and then go find somewhere far away to park while I ran around the store. It actually worked out pretty good. There was no line up to pick up meds ... I was the only one in line. After paying for the meds I looked behind me and now there were 10 people in line! Once that was done I whipped around the store buying Larny's last minute items and dogfood for me. Up at the cashier I only had to wait for 2 people ahead of me. Sweet! I was in and out of the store in 20 minutes or less at 2 pm on a Friday afternoon. Called Ray on the cell phone to pick me up and off we went. Another item of the "get out of town" list.

I 've not slept very well for the past several days  (too much planning in my head) so decided to have a nap. Wonderful way to spend a cloudy afternoon. Dinner was simply barbecued steak and corn.

Saturday, August 19th

Woke up to cloudy skies again. Oh well, more chores to get done and a haircut in order for me. Ferry reservations made to get back next Friday afternoon from the island as well, as it sure is the busy season on the ferries and we want to get back at a decent time in order to leave next Saturday morning.  Rest of the day spent on chores to get ready or chillin in the sun.

Sunday, August 20th

My day to look after Dad and make him dinner. Last time until next spring. With our usual nomadic life it was kind of hard being stuck in a "same old, same old" routine where you were committed to something every week at a specific time. As Dad has gotten much older, there is not much he likes to eat so it was always a challenge to come up with something "new". Tonight's dinner is jaeger schnitzel.

Garrett and Kat arrived back from Kamloops around 1:30  pm to pick up Kira, Garrett's dog, and have a quick visit with Dad. Freya will miss her big sister. Unfortunately Garrett came home with the start of a migraine from his sore neck so they only stayed for an hour before heading home to Squamish. There was an accident on the upper levels highway and they were re-routed around through the British Properties and did not get home until about 5:30 instead of 3:30.

I spent most of the day doing countless loads of laundry in Dad's large washing machine, as all my floor rugs needed to get done after Freya's smelly sister's visit. Poor Kira, she had her anal glands expressed by the Vet 2 weeks ago but I don't think they got it all or there is a problem but OMG she totally smelled up the coach. Anyways not the dogs fault and Garrett will be taking her back to the vet to get that checked out.

Monday, August 21st

Solar Eclipse Day! Of course we are not prepared. Ray tried to get a filter for his camera lense yesterday at London Drugs and they laughed at him for being so late ... the filters had been sold out for a month! Oh well I guess we will see it on TV and I will have to steal a picture from Google for the blog.

This is the start of it, picture on google

Today I will wash the rig with Ray supervising. He managed to do the roof on Saturday, of course killing his back but I will not go up there!  As usual the roof attacked him many times and he came down with several scratches.

Plans for the rest of the week:

Tuesday, Freya has her annual vet appointment and we will make sure everything is stowed away in the coach, including kitchen cupboards which after 5 1/2 months of sitting, things have migrated out of place.

Wednesday, I will be stocking up the groceries, Ray needs to pick up his guitar from repairs and then we have a lunch date with my aunt and uncle. at their favorite pub in Coquitlam. Later in the afternoon, we will load the car with the shelving and shelter we're taking to the island the next day for Kristi and Jason. Larny is going to look after Freya as there will not be room for her in the car.

Thursday morning we are on the ferry to Nanaimo for a visit with Kristi and Jason in their new house. While we are there, we need to visit our storage locker to exchange a few things.  Ray's guitar cracked again because it is too dried out so we need to get his guitar case from storage and put the guitar back in its case with humidifier packages inside to prevent further drying out.

We have our doctor's appointment on Friday and  will come back on the 3:15 ferry back to Vancouver.

Saturday morning, after picking up our prescriptions for the next 7 months and dumping the tanks, we should be on our way with jacks up by 10 am hopefully and on our way to Paska Lake for 12 days of fishing. I have a new inflatable kayak to try out. That is the plan anyways.

So nothing really exciting ... I may update this post at a later time but otherwise I will be off-line for a while as we do not have cell coverage at Paska Lake and I will have to drive out to connect.