Newman & Jerry are back together again!
We have been busy! We started packing up Newman last week to be ready to leave today on our 7 day trip to the Ottawa area. We decided we would take it ‘easy’ since we are retired (or at least I am), and not drive all the way to Ottawa from Fort Erie in one day. Because we weren’t trying to kill ourselves by driving so long, it meant that I could golf Ladies Day at Bridgewater Country Club today.
I was a bit better than this golfer today!
Actually despite the 30C heat, I had my second best round of the year. It sure was a tough walk today though in the heat! When I got back to my car after golf my Mazda registered 40C on the dash! OMG! Thank goodness for air conditioned seats on my 7 minute drive home after golf.
Since I left the house for golf at 7:50am and I had not checked my cell phone when golfing, I was not aware of what last minute preparations Richard was up to, but I knew our plan was to leave as soon as I got home and had cleaned up, I texted Richard to please pack up the fruits and vegetables and move them to Newman. Instead of an affirmative reply that Richard would be packing up Newman, he replied that he had to get on the roof of Newman. Oh oh! That’s never good when Richard who doesn’t like heights, has to get on Newman’s roof!
For the past few days in this very brutal heat, we have been running the A/C in Newman as we packed him up for his journey to Ottawa. Since we never had to run the air conditioning while we were out in Fanny Bay over the winter, we never knew that running the air conditioning might be a problem.
So before I arrived home from the golf club, Richard got up on the roof to see if the rear air conditioning was draining properly. It turns out that the air conditioning does drain, but it drains into a speaker in our bedroom ceiling, which in turn, drips all over our Hudson’s Bay duvet cover!
The air conditioning drain works great. Richard says not to worry, this is his side of the bed!
Now we know why there is a brown spot on this speaker in the bedroom ceiling.
Where is St. Stephen when we need him? Oh, he is in Halifax with his lovely wife Karen celebrating their 31st wedding anniversary today! I guess we will not bother him with this problem, so he enjoys his anniversary!
So it looks like we won’t be able to run our rear air conditioner while we are up in Ottawa. Let’s hope the evening temperatures are nice for sleeping and if we have to, we can still run the air conditioning at the front of Newman. We also have a fan we can use as well for sleeping. Newman never fails to disappoint when it comes to excitement!
We finally got all packed up and hit the road at 1:38pm this afternoon. After a quick stop in a truck pull off on the QEW in Fort Erie, to check the connections on Jerry, we were safely on our way. I had to play Willie Nelson for Richard “On the Road Again” as I was instructed to by our friend Ron Porter!
We saw overhead signs in Hamilton which said the QEW was very slow from Appleby Road. We weren’t sure whether we could use the HOV lanes with an RV pulling a car, but we decided we would rather ask ‘forgiveness than permission’, and proceeded to get through Oakville without much delay, by taking the HOV lane.
As we were driving on 427 North, we saw another overhead sign saying that the 401 was very slow going through Toronto. We made the quick decision to continue on 427 North until we could catch 407 East. We hadn’t planned on taking the 407 toll road all the way to the 115/35 cut off, but are we ever glad we did! The 401 it turned out was totally blocked East of Toronto as well. We would never have made good time if we had continued on the 401. And who really wants to be stuck in traffic anyway when going on vacation?
Just as we were getting onto the 407 didn’t the heavens open! We saw lots of lightening and the rain started coming down.
We felt like we were having bad déjà vu! We felt like we were back on Vancouver Island during the winter with torrential rain again!
We had to make a quick stop in Havelock as Richard needed to go to the washroom. I decided to stretch my legs and I saw a nice tourist information site which I thought I would go and photograph.
Of course it started raining again as I was heading back to Newman. Then I heard thunder and saw lightening and I picked up the pace to get back to Newman quickly!
Newman waiting for me in Havelock, ON.
We easily found our campground for the evening. ‘Heritage Trail Compound Ground which is on KOA Campground Road. It turns out that this campground which used to be a KOA, is no longer a KOA. The campground apparently has 74 acres of hiking/ATV trails as well. Good thing the ATVs have to stop at dusk! While we have a nice wooded site, the service here has not been great. As we got set up in the pouring rain, I thought I would try hooking up to the campground’s wifi. The wifi network didn’t come up for me to discover, so Richard called the owner and asked what the wifi code was. He claimed to be having technical issues, not sure the wifi works and if we can’t get on the ‘free’ wifi for an hour, we can pay $4 for an hour of wifi. And despite saying we had full hookups, we only have 30 amp service. Usually when we have full hook ups we get 50 amp service. We will never stay here again and I am definitely going to write a Campground Review on this spot. Its a good thing we are not going to be spending more than one night here!
Now its time to make dinner. We brought with us 2 Good Foods meals so we wouldn’t have to worry about setting up the BBQ in case it was raining. Tonight we are having Golden Turmeric Ground Turkey Lettuce Cups! Yum Yum! Can’t wait!
Tomorrow we will be heading to Recreationland Campground in Ottawa. The drive along Highway 7 should be about 2.5 hours, which is a nice short drive for our second day on the road. We will be parked at Recreationland for 6 nights. We stayed at this campground last September on Newman’s maiden journey. We are looking forward to seeing family during our time in Ottawa, and playing some golf too!
And now we have solved the mystery of why the brown spot is on the speaker in the ceiling of the bedroom! I think the HBC duvet cover might need to be replaced after this trip, but not until the roof is repaired! St. Stephen- we’ll be in touch!
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