Saturday - July 26
Well, I been sending this little tale I’ve been writing to
my sister, Joline. This is an excerpt
from the email we got this morning. Funny, I didn’t know she had been a camper
in another life. Now you can see where I got my talent.
We will be leaving here at 7:30
tonight and plan to drive straight through and should be there at your
very gates about 3:00 A.M. on Tuesday, July 29. We would appreciate
it if you would have our camp spot (right by the lake) raked so that we
can set up right away because of course we will be tired at that early hour.
Since you are the one responsible for making the reservations we figured that
it wouldn't be a problem to squeeze in one more little tiny (two story, 48'
long with three pop-outs on each side) trailer. After all I am really
family and I know you give a (flyin) fig about me.
Coffee and bacon (cooked
crispy but not burned) and those delicious pancakes you describe would be nice
upon our arrival as well. Thanks so much - we know it won't be a problem
because you need to get up to open the gates anyway and if you open them for us
at 2:30 (in case we get there a little early - you know how we hate to be kept
waiting...) and fix breakfast you can go back to bed for an hour or so before
you have to get up for work.
Oh, we will want to shower also so please double
check the bathrooms to be sure they are clean - Again, thank you so much. Oh,
do you give senior rates? or honor AAA or AARP discounts? Are there any on-line
coupons? Do we get any price break because we don't have
children, drink (much) or play loud music? Of course we will be
bringing the three great danes (they [Kukla, Fran and Ollie] are the
reason for the extra pop-outs on the trailer) so Bill (yours - mine will be on
vacation after all) will need to be extra prudent with regard to keeping
the sand clean - those darn dogs do poop a lot.
Love,
Joline
We made it through
another Saturday. Lots of changes. Campers from Sites 11 and 13, Karen and
Christine came over to the store to say good-bye and they each gave us really
nice hanging plants for our lanai. We
don’t think we’ll be able to take them home, but we can enjoy them for the rest
of our stay here.
I
didn’t have any washroom checks today, and Pat relieved us of our Saturday
cleaning, so I was a happy camper. Okay,
I’ve mentioned washroom checks a couple of times. Sounds like you just stick your head in to
see if there is enough paper. But it is
so much more than that. You go in with a
broom and the cleaning basket. Check the stalls for paper and replace the
ladies trash bags. Sweep the floors,
wash the mirrors and sinks (and toilets if necessary.) Then you wash out the bottom of the showers
because some people just don’t understand what “Please rinse the sand off your
feet and have your children do the same, before entering the washroom” signs,
which are posted prominently outside the doors, mean. There is a convenient foot wash station just
outside the door. Last, you wash the
floor with hot water and disinfectant.
And that is just the check. For
the clean, you also scrub the entire shower stalls from top to bottom with a
brush, and scrub the floor around the toilets and urinals with a long handled
scrubber. So there is very little
difference between a check and a clean.
Sunday – July 27
Sunday’s
are such a quiet day after the Saturday rush, but there are a whole new bunch
of people to train. They need to take
their trash to the dumpster, not leave it next to the recycle bin. If the grass around their site starts to look
a little dry, WATER IT! How hard is
that? They shouldn’t sit up until 2:00
drinking and laughing, (Some people have children who are trying to sleep)
(also old people, like us,) and then get upset the next morning when some
children are playing near their trailer at 8:00 am.
Another
thing I’ve mentioned is opening the gates.
They have to be opened by 6:30, but it is okay to open them early. When
I open them at 6:30, I come back to the trailer and try to go back to sleep,
but I can’t quite get there because I know that I’ll need to get up around
7:30. So, this morning I thought that if
I snuck out at 4:45, and came back to bed I would be able to fall asleep for
almost three hours, but that didn’t work either, because by the time I walked
to both gates, and unlocked the laundry room door, I was too awake to get back
to sleep. So, it will be back to 6:30,
and I’ll just stay up and read until it’s time to get breakfast started.
For anyone who hasn’t spent a lot of time in a trailer, it is an experience not to be missed. We have a nice front yard with a picnic table and grass all around. The awning is out unless it is too windy so we have a great covered area for our comfy reading chairs. Unfortunately, they are building condos on the lot next door, which used to be another campground, so those are looming over us.
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| The one on the right is our home |
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| The master suite |
But,
there is really no need to go in there except to go to bed, because there is
only a foot on each side between the bed and the window. And the bedroom TV is on a pull-out shelf to
the left of the foot of the bed, so if you forget, and try to walk to the door
to squeeze out, you hit your head every time.
Just
next to the front (and only) door is the entry closet where we keep our jackets
and canvas bags. There is a little
alcove where we keep the phones and keys.
The TV sits on top of that. The
living room/dining room/kitchen is really large. With the slide-out it is 13 feet across ,
counting the couch and seating area of the dining room. The couch is about 4 ½ feet long, enough to
sit together, but not enough to stretch out on to take a really good nap. The L-shaped counter and sink faces the front
door and there is a little counter with an extension that can be pulled up to
give one an extra ten inches of space.
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| Kitchen |
The
coffee pot and smoothie blender take up a quarter of the counter space, but we
use those every day, so they get left out.
We keep the toaster under the sink with the pans. There is a little room behind the stove for
the salt and pepper and a little tea pot.
The stove has a metal cover which can be pulled down to add to the
counter space. We keep our fruit bowl on
that except when we’re cooking.
About 18 inches from the sink is the stove, oven and microwave. The microwave is so high that I have trouble reaching it. You have to do the dishes after each meal because the sink is too small to leave them for later. The pantry is really large and we were surprised with how big the refrigerator is, although it isn’t as large as we would like. Luckily, Pat is letting us use her freezer, so we are keeping some fruit for smoothies and some bread and meat at her house. We keep the computer on the dining room table and a basket with magazines, pens and pencils, pad of paper, the Garmin and the camera next to it so we have to move the computer to the bench seat when we eat at the table.
About 18 inches from the sink is the stove, oven and microwave. The microwave is so high that I have trouble reaching it. You have to do the dishes after each meal because the sink is too small to leave them for later. The pantry is really large and we were surprised with how big the refrigerator is, although it isn’t as large as we would like. Luckily, Pat is letting us use her freezer, so we are keeping some fruit for smoothies and some bread and meat at her house. We keep the computer on the dining room table and a basket with magazines, pens and pencils, pad of paper, the Garmin and the camera next to it so we have to move the computer to the bench seat when we eat at the table.
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| Dining room |
Travel
down the hallway to the bathroom and second bedroom. There is a closet for hanging our clothes and
the floor of that is used for our books, cleaning supplies and stuff. The bathroom is so small that when you get
out of the shower, you have to step into the second bedroom to get dried or you
hit your arms on the wall. The second
bedroom is also a slide-out and that is where we keep the clothes we don’t hang
up.
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| Guest Suite |
There
are three drawers and the bunk beds, which serve as the perfect place to keep
folded shirts, shorts and extra towels. The
pantry has doors on the back side, so if you want to grab a few almonds or a
cracker while getting dried, you can just reach in and get some out. We keep the ice chests in this room, and the
small suitcase, both of which we use for our cottage jaunts. There is lots of storage so we keep our
shoes, games, and any other stuff we have in those. You can’t leave anything
out or the place looks messy, not to mention that you’ll trip on it. So, that is what our domicile is like these
days. The great thing about this is that
our house in Sparks and even the condo is going to seem so big when we see them
again.
Bill
just came home for a lunch of a barbequed Italian sausage sandwich and bagel
chips, the last of the huge bag we brought with us from Sam’s Club. We are suddenly running out of food, so I
guess we’ll have to do a major shopping trip on Tuesday. I took a walk a little while ago and saw
Pat. She said that today was her day to
open the gates so I got up early for nothing.
So, when I look at the schedule, I also need to make sure I know what
day it is.
We
are still trying to decide if we will come back here next year. We enjoy being here, and everyone is really
nice. The work isn’t hard, except for
the raking Bill is doing, which hurts his back and shoulder, and his hands are
a bit torn up from sorting the recycling.
Even Neutrogena isn’t helping them.
We don’t love doing the washrooms, but everyone shares in that duty, so
it’s a fair way to get the job done.
Well,
Bill is back at work and I will meet him at the washrooms in about one hour, so
I have time to sit and read for a while before that. I talked to Joe for a little
while the other day, and he and Gee are still having a great time in Maui. He has been doing quite a bit of volunteer
work, renovating the resort front desk.
I also got a long email from Gee, and those are always fun to read. They love and enjoy their 2 year old
grandson, JP so much and I love reading about the things he says and does. But hearing about him makes me realize how
much we miss Bailey and Bryanna, and also that we are missing out on really
knowing our grandsons Carson and Brendan in Michigan. At least we live near two out of four of the
grands.
Monday – July 28
Monday is the day I go to many of the campsites to get them
re-booked for next year. That is rather
neat, because most of them are friendly, and some get to talking for quite a
while. I don’t want to take too much
time, but Pat said that PR is part of the job, so I can visit for a little
while. Today, I gave out five business
cards and invited them over to see our condo pictures. I watered the hanging plants in Pat’s yard,
did a little dead-heading and raked leaves.
Then I washed the patio before heading over to do the washroom
clean. We finished at about 2:30.
Bill asked me out on a date after work. We drove into Kelowna and saw “Mama Mia. “
Wow!!! I expected to like it because of the music, but from the first scene, I
loved it. It was fun, romantic and the
singing was expert. Meryl Streep, who we
haven’t liked too much in the past, and Pierce Brosnin were wonderful in their
parts. The daughter, Amanda Seyfried, is
beautiful and has an incredible singing voice.
Oh yes, it was also extremely funny, especially during some of the
songs, when the townspeople joined in the chorus. I would see it again and again, and when it
comes out on DVD, I’ll buy it. Maybe
I’ll buy two copies for when the first one wears out.
We wanted to eat dinner out, but we did some caching first. We found the smallest micro ever. It was the size of a bolt and just thick
enough to fit a tiny scroll inside. It
was stuck to the side of a bridge and blended in so well, that it was easy to
miss it at first.
Finally, Bill was
under the bridge, looking around at the exact right coordinates, and he looked
up to talk to me on top of the bridge, and he spotted it between two real
bolts.
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| The micro-mini cache is on one of the supports |
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| The cache is the tiny spot between the two large bolts |
By the time we were done caching, it was 7:00, so we stopped in Westbank and got pizza. We came home and read while we had dinner. After it got dark, we watched CSI and Jon Stewart and Jay Leno.
Tuesday – July
29
I felt yucky this morning, so we laid around until almost noon doing a few necessary things, such as going through our receipts. We’ve been trying to keep track of our expenditures. Finally, we got going and headed to Peachland, just about 7 miles west of Westbank.
We found two caches pretty quickly, but didn’t find one,
which appeared to be very easy.
After we got back, and I checked the website, I discovered I
had written the coordinates down wrong and we hadn’t loaded that one into
Garmy, so we’ll go back another day to find it.
Peachland is very small, even smaller than Westbank, and we
didn’t find any place where we felt like having lunch. We headed back towards
Kelowna. Bill has wanted to go to the Kelowna Marina Grill so we drove to the
off-ramp just before the bridge. We got
to the marina and discovered a broken down building where the restaurant used
to be. So we decided to find the cache
that was associated with the floating bridge.
We went through a round-a-bout, just past the coordinates, and
discovered there was no place to park.
We couldn’t back up, since it was part of an on ramp, so we had to drive
all the way across the bridge, which is probably a half mile long. Once we were across, we decided to go into
town to a little restaurant we had seen.
The food was very good, but it was so cold inside, that we asked to be
moved to the patio. After lunch, we
drove back over the bridge, went down the ramp, and though the second
round-a-bout and we found a parking spot in a construction yard. We walked under the bridge to the
coordinates, and quickly found the cache, a small metallic box between two street
signs. Finally I was able to cross that
one off my list – it has been on there since before we came to Canada.
We got home at 3:45 and have spent the rest of the afternoon
reading and writing. It’s cold and windy
and rainy so we have had to stay inside, which is not our favorite thing to
do. Bill brought the footstools from our
outside chairs in so we can sit on the couch with our feet up. It’s a lot more comfortable that way. We haven’t watched much TV, but we saw that
Criminal Minds was on so we decided to watch that before bed, and it turned out
to be one we hadn’t seen, so that was a nice surprise.
Wednesday – July 30
It was cold and rainy during the night. When I checked the thermometer at 8:00 am,
just before I left for my washroom check, the temperature was 14 degrees. That’s almost 60 in our degrees. The last few nights have turned pretty cold,
so we put the second quilt on the bed.
Pat made one of them, as well as the quilts that are at the cottage and
she did a wonderful job on them. I wish
I could get her to make one for our king-sized bed in shades of blue and
purple, but she is so busy that I don’t know where she would find the
time. I think she will be working on one
for her soon-to-be new grand baby. For
some reason, the covers fall toward Bill’s side of the bed, so I wake up with
one side of me covered and the other side cold.
Maybe I should ask Pat if I can borrow another quilt so I can wrap up in
it. We brought a couple of our throws, and
those are nice for when we sit outside to read and it starts to get a little
cool. They are also good for piling on
my feet when I first go to bed and throwing on the floor when I warm up.
Bill has left for work and will be home at about noon. Then I’ll leave at 3:55 to get to the store
by 3:56. I don’t like to be late for work. Bill will join me at 6 and stay until 8. See, we have our routine memorized and it
only took us four and one-half weeks.
We’re half way through our summer vacation.
We’ve been trying to think of a way to simplify our jaunts
to the cottage. We always plan our main
meal, and cook it there, having to clean up the whole kitchen afterward. It seems as if we spend half our time there
cleaning something. This week, we are
going to prepare a big salad here before we leave. That, along with fruit and some garlic
crackers will be dinner on Thursday.
Friday morning, instead of preparing pancakes, bacon and eggs, we’re
going to have cereal and fruit and a toasted flax pita. We’ll take along some cheese and extra fruit
for snacking and when we leave on Friday afternoon, we’ll stop somewhere on the
way home for a light dinner. The only
problem is that we are trying not to spend too much money and eating out here
is very expensive. We sometimes get a
sandwich to split, but we can’t do that unless we both want the same
thing. We decided that, as much as we
enjoyed spending two nights at the cottage, making sure to get up early enough
to finish cleaning the bathroom and dry mop the wood floors and drive back to
camp to put away all our stuff before work might be too stressful.
While in Lake Country, we’re going to try to find the caches we couldn’t find last week and I have loaded two more into the Garmin. I found that if I read the logs of people who found a cache, it can give us good clues to the location, even though some people put in fake clues as spoilers.
We did a booming business in candy sales. All the sales and campers signing in made the
night go fast. We’re watching So You
Think You Can Dance, our newest vice, so it’s time to stop writing and start
relaxing.
Thursday – July 31
I called my sister as soon as there was a lull at the store
this morning. I said, “Did you see “Mama
Mia”, yet?” She answered, “There are very few movies I have to own and that is
one of them.” That is why she is my
sister – she has excellent taste.
The day was pretty slow, because it was cold and
cloudy. I cleaned the store, sold a few things,
visited with Jodi when she was in there with me, and gave out the pool, ping
pong equipment, horseshoes and bocce balls.
Finally, it was time to go home to pack for our cottage trip. Then we cleaned the washrooms and we were
off.
On the way, we found two caches up on Knox Mountain. And we didn’t find one we tried for. We parked at the end of the road, next to the
trail. There were a couple of signs
posted saying, “Active Bears – carry a bell, make noise, and watch for
bears.” People had told us that they put
those signs up just in case, but that the bears really don’t go near where
people have been. There were a few cars
in the parking lot, so we decided it was safe enough to go up. We followed the trail all the way to the top,
quite a distance, but it only took about 15 minutes. However, we don’t know where the people who
came from those cars went because they sure weren’t on the trail. We made as much noise as we could, me tapping
my walking stick on every tree branch or rock we came to. We got to the top, and the view was wonderful
of the Okanagan and the bridge. Too bad
we had left the camera in the car, but Bill had his phone, so he took a couple
of shots, which aren’t as good as a real camera, but better than nothing. We found the right spot, but it was 30 feet
down a slope that was a bit too steep for me, so Bill went down while I called
out at close intervals – “Hey bears, we’re here,” and “Helloooo bears.” He searched for almost 10 minutes, but
couldn’t find the cache, so he finally gave up.
We went over to the lookout to gaze at the scenery before hiking back
down to the car.
We got to Lake Country and saw that there was a cache right next to the road, so we had to stop to see if we could find it. We got out of the car and headed off on a trail at Jack Beasley Park but we only went 30 yards or so when Bill heard humming in his ears, and saw mosquito sitting on his arms. Then I looked at his back and saw three of them, and there were two on my arm and several flying around us. It was the first place we’d been here where there were so many of them. We zoomed back to the car and decided that we would come back another day. We had repellant with us, but we didn’t feel like putting it on so we went on to the cottage.
We got to Lake Country and saw that there was a cache right next to the road, so we had to stop to see if we could find it. We got out of the car and headed off on a trail at Jack Beasley Park but we only went 30 yards or so when Bill heard humming in his ears, and saw mosquito sitting on his arms. Then I looked at his back and saw three of them, and there were two on my arm and several flying around us. It was the first place we’d been here where there were so many of them. We zoomed back to the car and decided that we would come back another day. We had repellant with us, but we didn’t feel like putting it on so we went on to the cottage.
We read for a while and had tuna salad with the most yummy
tomatoes and corn on the cob for dinner.
Then we watched the movie, “Cellular” – very suspenseful. We watched a little more TV and headed off to
bed.
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| Kalamaka Lake |
Geocache
Junkies
Friday – August 1
We got up to a cloudy, windy and cold morning. Bill read on the deck from 6:00 to 6:30 until
it got even colder, so he came inside and found that I had just rolled out of
bed. We watched Today and dozed a bit before
having cereal, bananas and fresh, juicy peaches for breakfast. We read, and I worked on the computer,
getting some caches lined up. It rained
off and on all morning, and we really wanted to do some caching, so we left at
12:30 and headed over to Oyama, where it was cool but mostly dry. We found three caches pretty quickly, all
near Kalamalka Lake. This is an absolutely beautiful
lake with turquoise water. We wished we
had brought a picnic, so we could have lunch there. We hiked until we found one of the caches,
and then we hiked some more, just because it was so neat in there, very dense
forest, but right next to the lake and within a park, so we felt pretty
safe. We came upon a little bay that was
home to about a thousand water lily plants.
We took a few pictures, but the color of
the water didn’t show up as lovely as it
was. We also set the camera on a bench
and took a picture of us, because we haven’t taken very many together.
It was getting late, and we hadn’t had
lunch, yet, so we went to a nearby pub.
That was a first for us. It
turned out that it was just a sports bar.
The food was very good. I had
veal cutlets and perogies, which are dumplings filled with mashed potato and
cheddar cheese. Bill got a BLT wrap and
a salad.
We did that, but there were houses on a
cul-de-sac, with no trail between them.
We thought we’d drive further up the mountain, circle around and go back
down via another road, figuring there had
to be another road since we could see some houses above. We tried that and found a trail. We started out confident that we had found
the right trail, walked a quarter mile east and came to a backyard. The trail turned south and we still needed to
go 100 meters north. North was a 60 degree slope that even a mountain
goat would have trouble with. So, back
to the car (UPHILL.) We talked about
giving up, but we really wanted to figure this out, so we went back to our
original parking spot, got out and figured out where we were (coordinates, that
is, we knew were we were as far as the street we were on.) This time, the
c-oords were leading us to cross Dilworth and go down the other side. We figured we should give it a try and when
traffic cleared, we ran for it.
The grass was thick and it looked like a
lost cause, but we walked a few feet north and then a few feet west, and, wa
la, there was a trail. So we walked down
the side of the mountain, not too bad though, because it was in the grass, with
a dynamite view of the the back of Walmart, Kelowna and the Okanagan. Finally, the east/west coordinates were
moving the right way. And we were
paralleling the way we had walked before, so the north/south ones were going
the right way too. And there it was, a
huge, long-needled pine tree with debris under it, just to the left of the
path!
We walked around to the back of the tree
and found the coordinates. They were
bouncing around a bit, but we were sure we were in the right area. The only trouble was that there was so many
broken branches and the needles on the ground were three to six inches
deep. Doesn’t anyone ever rake around
there? Also, there were several large
rocks and all of them were pointing towards the vicinity of the tree. So, we started lifting branches and moving
piles of needles (ever heard of a needle in the haystack? ) We methodically looked all around, gave up on
that spot and moved to a nearby spot that was being pointed at by one of the
large rocks. We searched there, as well
as three other likely spots. The sun had
come out and it was getting very hot, so we said we’d give it five more
minutes. We went back to where we had
started and, instead of lifting branches and needles, Bill began to poke into
the needle piles with a long stick.
Suddenly, we heard “clunk.” He
moved aside the needles, and there was the cache box. I don’t know why the person put a camo box in
there. It could have been painted neon
orange, and it still wouldn’t be seen under all that stuff. Bill signed the log and we hiked out (UPHILL)
to the car. We were finished for the
day. When we got in the car, we punished
Garmy by turning her off. If she had
said, “Arriving at GC1AJC7
on right,” in the first place, we would have found
the path right away, and not wasted time driving around looking for the cache
on the wrong side of the road.
We got home, unpacked, and read our books
outside until it got too cold. We had a
good day off, and got lots of exercise.
Tomorrow is another Saturday.
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