Welcome Home

 Well here we are settled at home and everything is happening! Meaning we are back doing one of our favorite things - chasing the grandchildren around their activities.

Connor and Mason are in spring hockey. This is something for Mason as he is still in the age group that is half ice in regular season. Mason will also be playing baseball, Connor decided not to as he is in Cubs and it continues until the end of the school year.

Blake is in several hockey camps, but also playing Lacrosse again.

And the girls are playing 3 on 3 ringette!

Our other big focus in May is the long weekend camping trip! It has now become customary for the family to all go to Lindsay and Jeremy's cabin/land. We have lots of quads and a side by side and you can always count on lots of miles. Sunshine, laughing, great food and drink, and all of us in one place FINALLY!

Don and I took a few short road trips as well to our favorite places - highway 11 drive, and of course a lunch in Jasper one day. 

May sees 2 family birthdays. Blake turned 15 on May 5 and Lindsay celebrated her birthday May 27. When are your children old enough you don't state their age? LOL

We fit in a dinner with Blake on his actual birthday, between his sports. And we caught LIndsay for supper and dessert! 

To some families these may seem like small achievements, but we are all so busy it is awesome when we make this happen!

May ends with our anniversary. 42 Years !!

June really was more of the same... another camping trip - this one the annual fish off with Bruce and Kerri at Calling Lake. The weather, fish and beverages did not let us down again. A fabulous time for all and truly one of my favorite weeks of the year.

The girls and I finally fit in Lindsay's birthday date at the spa, the Cameron kids spent a weekend with us, and I had my usual share of meetings and work.

A very momentous event happened at the end of the month as DWS Aggregates Consulting closed it's books. It was a great run and we all are so very proud of Don and that unique piece of his life!

Blake graduated to high school and Reese graduated to Junior High! Time stops for no one, even us.

April Showers

Ha ha, not really.

The weather continues to be HOT! We moved back to Lake Havasu for another Craggy Wash visit, and as often happens we met up again with Ernie and Deb. We shared more food and drink and visiting! The mountain photo is Finger Butte, a popular mountain named for it's similarity to "the finger".

The heat was really getting to us and as much as we don't entirely enjoy campgrounds, we felt it was necessary for our sanity to escape from the +40 weather and run the air conditioning. There are a few places we like with services and one of those is the Big Bend of the Colorado State Park at Laughlin. Huge sites, full services and access to familiar places made this the right choice. The air conditioner never stopped! Thank goodness we made that stop. The heat can be exhausting. We spent our days sightseeing through the windshield and our evenings with a refreshing beverage and Netflix! One of our favorite stops was the Road Kill Café in Seligman - You Kill it We Grill It. LOL

April was destined to be a short month, as I had to fly back to Saskatoon twice. The first one was unplanned when we originally left, but the company CEO retired and I had to attend interviews.

After leaving Laughlin we searched for a new site in a cooler climate and settled in the Lovell Canyon Dispersed Camping area, west of Las Vegas. NEW LOCATION #5! You wouldn't believe how much cooler it was there. This was where Don stayed while I was jetting around. He can attest to the cooler temps by the frost observed and signs of SNOW! Meanwhile down the hill in Vegas it was still scalding hot.

When I returned to Vegas, Don had moved to Government Wash. This is definitely our favorite place to visit Las Vegas, Many many areas to chose for camping, and again, close to our favorite city! We spent a lot of time touring Henderson, found a new beer and eats place, saw the arena where the Silver Knights (AHL hockey) play, and walked the Railroad Tunnel Trail to Hoover Dam.

Sadly this busy spring time came to an end. Something different for us his year were all my trips back for work, but overall it has worked out all right. While I am on my final April trip to Saskatoon Don will be driving home on his own, and we will meet again in Alberta.

Stay tuned as we share our Alberta adventures with you!

Marching Along

Well if February seemed to fly past, March was faster.

It was a great month, lots of stops in favorite places, and discovering new ones.

And on top of that I flew to Saskatoon for in person meetings! This was FANSTASTIC to actually be with the Board in person and enjoy each other's company.

We moved to Telephone Cove for a week. This is "our place" by Laughlin and the beauty of being by the water never grows old. I'll throw in  a photo of my office view. And as always we took a trip or two to Las Vegas!

Don's sister Kathy had plans to visit us for a week so we needed to move close to Phoenix. On our way there we stayed a night near Wikeiup. It is horse country and lots of folks warned us away form boondocking there, but we found a more than suitable site to park in for a visit. NEW LOCATION #1 this trip!

Then on to the Phoenix area and another new location. Don found a boondocking site north of Peoria, a city bordering the north side of Phoenix. This is definitely a spot to return to. Not only were the views amazing, but being close to the city but seemingly far way appealed to both of us. And again, just like in Sedona, we were parked in a hot air balloon area. Oh but a quirky lovely part of this place was a five minute walk down a road was a burger and beer joint. Now that's convenience! NEW LOCATION #2

Eventually we had to pull up the jacks and move to the south east side of Phoenix, preparing for Kathy's visit, and close to Ron and Bev. And also for me to fly to Saskatoon...

So - on to NEW LOCATION #3!

Another win for Don - he found boondocking on Gold Canyon dispersed land. This is also a phenomenal find!

While we were here we had many visits with Ron and Bev, and toured Kathy around the area including Tortilla Flats, and spent a lovely day with their cousin Carol and husband Richard. They spend the winters in Casa Grande. Kathy has never visited this area so everything was new!

While I was away at meetings Don moved from there to a boondocking site on State Trust Land, south west of Tucson, on Pump Station Road. NEW LOCATION #4! What a great year for finding new places!

Although Kathy ended up staying with us longer than originally planned, eventually she had to go home, and before taking her back to Carol and Richard's we had a chance for a lovely visit with Susan and Doug in Coolridge and tour their new home.

With company and a trip to Saskatoon, and moving around so much, March was a whirlwind.

On the Road Again

Writing a blog can be the biggest commitment a person makes. For the most part over the years I have been motivated to write about our adventures, at least on a monthly basis. Sometimes weekly or daily! But the bottom line is you have to have some motivation and be in the right head space to write, or it becomes mundane reporting of your day, what you ate even. So as you noticed I have missed months of blogging. Someone asked my recently if it was due to not going anywhere new, the adventures stalled? Nope - I just simply couldn't put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

So to get my jig back I decided I am going to start with reviewing last springs vacation. I'll try to summarize in months and hopefully get through to the current:)

Most important to note is that this felt like the most precious gift, after the pandemic, which may have drained my writing enthusiasm, to be able to freely travel again with the fifth, and rediscover our own passion for travelling together in our own way.

For myself, until we crossed that Canada/US Border it didn't seem real until then. It was almost like the first time we went years ago with our very first camper - a  bumper pull 22 foot, 2 naïve RVers who were going to travel down the coast to San Francisco. A trip that took many attempts to actually get to San Fran, as we never dreamt we would fall in love with Oregon and stay too long, or just long enough, at every stop. We eventually did get to San Fran, many times!

Back to this year it was almost surreal after the pandemic to be able to resume this part of our life.

Anxious to fit lots of adventures in between my travels back and forth for work, we left home a bit earlier in January than normal. We will see how that goes. Here's a little summary of February from the road.

Our first nights were spent at a Home Depot in Helena then a road side stop by Overton. That brought us to the "good weather" and we could relax and determine where we would go.

We went directly to Yuma and where we were our last time here, Sidewinder Road. This is a great spot, so accessible to Yuma, just at the California border, and the Mexican border. We stayed here for a week. Not that long ago we would never had stayed anywhere that long, but we are finally learning to SLOW down!

Besides the daily tasks that happen no matter where you are - home or RV - we really just chilled out and did close to nothing. It was so windy on Sidewinder we decided to move to Fortuna Pond (still our favorite Yuma location) and did more nothing for 2 weeks. 

We were hoping to catch our boondocker friend Ivan while in the area, but he was MIA. However, we were lucky enough to find our friends Ernie and Deb, and get in some quality walking, sightseeing and sharing of refreshments!

And on top of that we met a couple of times with my "co-op friend" Judy and her husband, as well as some old acquaintances from the home area, Cindy and Terry Tuks.

So we didn't actually do nothing, just lots at a slower pace.

Have you ever visited Valley of the Names by Yuma? Pretty cool place where for years people have written their names and memories in rock.

I may have had one margarita too many once or twice in Algadones as well:)

We moved to Craggy Wash at Lake Havasu the end of the month. It was there that I had SO MANY meetings. I even rented a meeting room a couple of times, and used the library facilities as well. In some ways I was fortunate my work was still all online due to Covid, as it meant I didn't have to fly back to Saskatoon as often as usual.

I spent my 60th birthday in the sunshine with a beer, and the day after at our favorite restaurant the Blue Chair in Havasu.

One last place to share that we visited and had some fun at was the Dessert Bar near Parker. It's a vicious drive in but very worth it! Totally solar operated, seats 100's of people, and live music.

A New Year A New View

Point of view that is!

That being let's stop letting Covid take over our mindset. That doesn't mean not acknowledging it.

January was a crazy month as we determined WE ARE GOING SOUTH!! WOOHOO

So now we navigate the packing, the birthdays we need to celebrate that we will be missing, and how to fit my work and trips to Saskatoon.

But we are old hands at this and the flow returns.

We had trips to make and dates to be had prior to our approximate end of the month departure.

First for me was the start of celebrating my 60th birthday! My dear friends Anais and Maria whisked me off to Canmore for a girls weekend. We did not pursue any crazy activities other than long walks, and actually stayed in the condo mostly, laughing talking eating drinking binge watching TV and even working! For the 3 of us it was just what we love.

You know you have raised your kids well when they grow to be loving and caring woman. Between Don and the girls I had the most special family day to celebrate my BIG birthday! One of my favorite meals, chocolate cake, an amazing gift and best of all everyone together in one place! We have always appreciated that part, but this pandemic makes it all the more special after almost 2 years of not being able to gather.

Then Don and I were off to Tisdale. We really wanted to see Mom as Covid and the world in general had hindered that for a while. We were so lucky while there to have a dinner with all of Don's siblings!

After the quick trip to Tisdale we were off! I'll let you know how this goes! See you in February. 

Farewell 2021

Well this winter has been fantastic since travel restrictions to the US have opened and we can start to plan a trip down after Christmas, it changes your mood a bit.

Unfortunately Don did have Covid, it took him down hard for a few days and he still feels the effects a bit. I guess we may never fully understand this pandemic, as I never did get it. Odd…

We celebrated Reese’s birthday in November and were able to get her to the mall for the traditional shopping and lunch trip. Crazy kid has wanted to rent one of these animals for along time. Why not on her birthday?

And Tracy had her birthday. Last year we decided that Tracy Lindsay and I would go to a spa for our birthdays instead of figuring out what to buy. It is a wonderful new tradition!

As soon as November approached it was time to start the Christmas Box tradition again! We started this last year and it was so much fun. The first box contains cookie kits for each kid, and then other ideas I get along the way. The second one is gingerbread house kits. The kits are all handmade by Don and I!

Again we been so fortunate Covid has not shut sports down yet, and we have been BUSY with rink appointments for everyone.

We were so excited to have Christmas at the house with everyone, and were so sad for the Stecyk family when just days before Christmas they all contacted Covid! I felt so bad for them, and mom and dad were sicker than the kids for a longer time, so combined with arctic temperatures that stopped the boys from playing outside, it was a hard holiday.

We did enjoy our days with the Camerons though, and look forward to a time when we will all celebrate together.

Don and I did something odd for New Years Eve - we went out! LOL

We bought tickets to a dinner and show at the Yellowhead Casino. It was a Beatles show and it was fantastic!!

All in all the last 2 months have flown by, and I must say we sure are looking forward to 2022 and hoping for a more normal world in general.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

October

We had a first this month – Thanksgiving at the Stecyk cabin. We even styed in the trailer and cooked a turkey too!

Then we filled our month with our favorite sport – rink hopping. This takes endurance and map planning – what time to leave, which route to take, where to eat and when! Fabulous!!

Connor

Blake

Mason

Reese

Emerson

And then the highlight of October was Don’s 65th Birthday. We rented a small room at the Something Else restaurant and found a day where EVERYONE cold attend, between ice times.