Kastle's Journey: First two weeks of September, and a weekend with Amelia - Sept 4

Tuesday, I headed into Duncan to do a bit of shopping and pick up our prescriptions for the trip. Of course I had my pedicure done too. Next a stop at the Post Office to put in our mail forwarding to Kristi's house until April 1st. Hopefully this time they clicked the right buttons for TEMPORARY and don't give our box number away again.

Once back and we ate lunch, we sat on the lawn out of the wind for a couple of hours. Not many days left before we leave.

I happened to see this picture of our town on Facebook. It's taken from the road coming into town over the Cowichan River and you can see the lake in the distance where our house would be on the left.

We have a friend who was recently visiting Haida Gwaii and sent us a picture of our old house we lived in 30 years ago.

They took off the wrap around deck, this is what it looked like when we were there.

Doesn't look much different. So now instead of a log house we have a timberframe house. :)

Wednesday, a busy day here at Kyle's Kottage. Ray moved the motorhome out into the cul de sac so we could get the boat trailer out of the garage and fetch the boat. We took it out at the marina for $15 as the boat launch across the lake, that is free, is way too low this year and we would have grounded the trailer. Good thing we checked it out with the boat last weekend. The only thing left to put away on the dock is two zero gravity chairs and the flag we can't reach easily due to low water. Roy will take it down for us next month.

Ray spent the morning cleaning the boat from all the grunge from the lake. Our neighbour Mike, told us to get a bottle of Spray Nine Hull Cleaner from Lordco. Wow, that stuff works amazing. Everything came off with minimal scrubbing. With the boat clean \,our gardener Rick, helped push it back into the garage for the winter.

Today, Rick and Sean cleaned out the remaining planters and pots from the back yard, moving them under the sundeck for the winter and took all the dead plant material and spent dirt away. Another job done. So nice we didn't have to do all the lifting this year. I just have to use our pressure washer to clean our concrete outside the front door from the planters.

Ready for winter.

Ray moved the MH back into our driveway and we will level it again tomorrow. We are almost ready to leave next week.

Thursday, while Ray went to Nanaimo for his appointment, I started loading all my clothes into the MH and washing the floors. We have a lot of mess still left from BMT Group fixing the inside of the roof. Even though they vacummed it out there's lots of stuff that came out from under the slides. All clean now.

Friday I loaded all the frozen meat into the fridge and Ray put his clothes in. We are officially packed ready to go. :) Amelia comes tomorrow for the weekend.

Amelia and family arrived Saturday morning at 9:30. She wasn't too happy about Mommy and Daddy leaving, but within minutes of the door closing it's all smiles again. What a great weekend with her and it's a lovely opportunity for Jason and Kristi to have some "alone time".

First up grocery shopping to pick out what fruit she would like to eat.

Lots of time at the playgrounds in the area ... all four of them lol.

The Lake Park at the campsite next door.

There he is!

Playtime on Grandpa and Grandma's deck building her flowers.

Popsicle time. lol

Playtime in Grandpa's boat!

Of course ice cream with Papa

There's a Show and Shine Car show at the A &W we noticed on our way to the Duck Pond kids park. We took a quick walk around and then Ray went back later for pictures after dropping us at home.

Her favourite thing, pushing you on the swing.

Baking time, yummy chocolate brownies. This is after making blueberry pancakes for breakfast. She loves wearing her little apron.

Playtime at the neighbours swingset.

The play park in the new subdivision behind us.

Here's Ray's pics of the carshow. Apparently the organizers only expected about 20 cars but it ended up around 50 or so.

Monday our power is scheduled to go out for 2 hours, so we took Amelia to lunch at Jake's on the Lake. Here is a picture of the crane installing the pumps over the weir. The pulp mill in Crofton draws their water at the base of the weir. Our lake level is so low, the now must pump water into the river for their infeed and the fish downstream.

Here's a picture of our beach to show how low. The chain for the boom is usually under water.

Monday's lunch at Jake's at the Lake.

Busy 2.5 days with us. All of us slept pretty good. :) Mommy and Daddy arrived at 2:15 and she woke at 2:30 from her nap. After snack and pack up, they were on their way back to Nanaimo for 3:30. This will be the last time we see them all until December.

I noticed last week, a hole under the post on the front of our "car" garage. The stone on the bottom came loose. We managed to contact the mason, Matt. He did Roy's work next door, and he came over yesterday to repair that hole. Well..... like everything else, the problem's much bigger than it first appeared. He needed to take off all the rock on the post and around the corner on the house. All the wire netting is all rusted, so he kept going. He ended up going all the way to the front door. The post behind him had an even bigger hole under it that we were totally unaware. This happened because the guy who orginally installed the stone then brought the landing and stairs against the side.

Of course, the scheduled power outage came as he's hammer drilling to get the rock off. We started the generator on the MH and plug him in there. lol

Quite the mess!

Matt went to town and picked up the new tar paper and wire mesh to put on before filling up the concrete and putting on the starting coat.

Tuesday Matt came back to put the rock back on. We are also having him "repoint" the grout between the stone stairs and the opposite wall, but he won't get to that until November while we are away. He said he will just poly up the enclosure and put some heat on so he can do it then. Better while we are not home as this is our main entrance into the house.

Mat will be back tomorrow to put the drip rock on the top back on.

The next day Ray;s busy in the morning doing his final stuff and I went for my hair appointment. A drizzly day, not the rainfall previously predicted and needed. Out for lunch at the Riverside Pub for fish and chips with enough leftovers to reheat for dinner. Our fridge is basically empty. Gave the kids all our fresh stuff.

Elvira, our housekeeper, was here to clean and will come back to finish after we've gone so we are ready for our arrival in December. She will also check the house every 2 weeks, turn on the water and flush all the toilets before turning it off again. A few years ago we turned off the Hot Water Tank and drained it .... bad idea. It quit working and Jason had to get a new one installed while we were gone. Now we just turn off the water and have Elvira turn it back on every two weeks enabling the HWT to refill completely. A much cheaper solution!

Found out from BMT Group that our awning material will finally arrive today so we should be good to go Thursday morning. Talk about cutting it close as we are on the ferry Friday morning.

Wednesday, last minute things loaded into MH as we have to leave first thing in the morning to get to BMT as early as we can. Then heat pump set to vacation mode and fridge set to vacation mode. We also shut off the main water to make sure no leaks while we are gone.

Ray went to check tire pressure and noticed one of the rear inside tires is flat and couldn't be inflated. Dave at OK Tire came to our rescue and Ray took the coach in and have it fixed. It turned out to be the valve stem as the round rubber gasket to protect it coming through the outside tire was missing and damaged the valve stem. Easy fix. Yeah.

Roy and June's excavation for their new garage and guest house is one step closer this morning, the excavator is here!

Doesnt' take the excavator very long to rip everything up. lol They took out quite a few dump truck loads of stuff out.

Their yard will look very different with a house framed up when we get home at Christmas!

Matt came back to finish up the rock drip edge. He will come back Thursday or Friday to pull the wood strips and pressure wash the area to clean it all up.