Home Again

Home Again!

We had one final "emergency" while parked in the RV friendly Abbotsford Walmart Thursday night when we suddenly lost our 110 volts from the generator. It was raining so I did not investigate but in the morning I found the main breaker on the side of the generator had tripped. Strangely, this has never happened before. I have overloaded the generator but that only resulted in the generator bogging down and quitting. This time it kept running but the breaker tripped.

Anyway after donating $285 to the BC Ferry System we got to Victoria by dinnertime. Minutes after we arrived at Penny's condo, the fire alarms went off and the parking lot was soon full of fire trucks. I grabbed my computer, Penny grabbed her cat and we went to stand in the parking lot with everyone else. It turned out that one of the owners had "smelled something funny" and hit the alarm. Thanks a lot, we all ended up wet and cold and decided we did not want to make dinner but ordered a Romeo's Pizza instead.

Other than that, it is nice to be home but sad that the little five week vacation is over. I will spend a couple of days here, visit Brooks for his birthday on October 1 and then head home to deal with the flood damage. Never a dull moment!

Update On The Flooded Crawlspace

The plumber has been busy, He determined the leak was outside the foundation and jack-hammered a hole in the sidewalk to get at it. He dug and found a split in the pipe near where it passes through the foundation. He made a "temporary" repair with a vinyl sleeve and clamps and left it like that awaiting further instructions.

Brooks talked to the plumber and the recommendation is to replace the entire 150 foot line down to the road and up to the pressure reduction valve in the crawl space. A big ($) job.

The cheapest way to do it would be for Brooks to come up for a couple of days. hire a bobcat, dig a trench, buy a roll of water line, place it in the trench leaving a coil long enough to go into the house, cover it up and call the plumber back to make the final connections.

In the meantime my friend John is going to try to find something to cover the 3' by 3' hole in the sidewalk and make it safe and that will give Brooks and I time to decide what to do. In the meantime I have water to add to my scotch!

A Quieter Day

A much less frantic day today! We had a leisurely breakfast and then drove on the east side of the lake road from Okanagan Falls to Penticton and then on to Naramata. We were amazed by the number of wineries on that side of the lake! We stopped at a couple of them and increased our wine supply a little bit. Then we had a small lunch and came home to cook a great dinner of Alaskan Black Cod from the freezer. This stuff is expensive but is oh so good....

Stinky Problem

All the time we were boondocking at Tanis and James place in Vernon we were storing our sewage (black tank). When we got to Oliver I hooked up and dumped. I thought the black tank emptied quite quickly - as in not enough time to dump five or six days worth of poop but since I have not had problems with this for years, ignored it.

Until this morning. I got up and discovered a small river of water crossing the hall floor, following the wall to the door and forming a puddle on the ground! The tank was full and PLUGGED! On one of our middle of the night trips to the commode some toilet paper had become lodged in the toilet valve and opened up the water supply very slightly! This kept a slow but steady stream of water flowing which in time (very little) filled the system and overflowed the toilet!

I immediately turned off all the water and used a container to eliminate some of the water out of the toilet. I then checked the position of all the outside valves and tried to dump. Nothing going! After considering all the options I could think of (none of them good) I went to see Nate, the new owner of the Maple Leaf RV Park. He thought the best thing to do was to phone his septic tank guy who thought he could at least empty the tank without the contents ending up on the ground.

He came over and attached his pump onto the black tank and started sucking. This only resulted in the tank looking like it was being collapsed. No good! Next he thought of trying to suck everything out the top and gave me a pipe and valve to try to push down into the tank from the toilet. Well, it met with a little resistance and then it suddenly went down and the tank emptied on it's own! Success!

As he was loading up his equipment I asked him how much and he said that as he had actually done very little, $25 cash for gas would make him happy! Well, that made two of us happy as I was expecting at least four times that amount! I followed up by flushing the tank with my "Magic Wand" and many gallons of high pressure water from Nate's irrigation water supply. All fixed (well after washing the floor that is).

Later on we drove west to the Nighthawk Crossing into the USA and took a drive through backwoods Washington back to Oroville and the border crossing to Osoyoos, BC. We didn't stop except to take photos of several old barns and some landscapes. A great afternoon!

Back In Oliver

We arrived back in Oliver BC yesterday only to be greeted with some bad news from home. My house sitter Kelly reported a flooded crawl space and reduced water pressure in the house! She called a plumber and he has determined the leak is in fact from the city water pipes. He thinks the leak is outside the cement wall and is getting inside under the foundation wall. He got the city to come and shut off the water at the street and is going to give it a day for the water to sink down through the sand and dirt floor of the crawl space. Tomorrow he will jackhammer the concrete sidewalk in front of the house to get a look at what exactly is going on and will plan repairs from there. My homeowners insurance is $1000 deductible and that is about what Brooks thinks the repairs will cost. There is no real damage in the crawl space, just the cost of drying it out which I may be able to do myself by simply leaving a fan on down there for a week or two to keep the air moving.

Other than that we are having a wonderful time here in the Okanagan. We left Robin and George's on Saturday, had dinner in Jasper and then drove to a hotel in Valemount, BC. Back to Vernon on Sunday where we spent three more days parked beside Tanis and James' barn. We stocked up on garlic and visited a couple of old friends.

We are now back in the Maple Leaf RV Park in Oliver where we went out for dinner tonight to celebrate Penny's seventh anniversary of being declared cancer free! A good reason to celebrate!

Lacombe, Alberta

We have had our feet up in Lacombe for a few days now, enjoying our visit with my niece Robin and George. Great conversation, food, wine and visits from Robin's kids (at least all the ones who don't live in Ireland) :).

George works two days a week in Edmonton, inspecting a fibre optics job being done for the City of Edmonton and is away one night a week. Robin, Penny and I took advantage of the time to go and visit Robin's daughter Chrystal where her kids took great delight in playing tricks on their old great-uncle and their new friend Penny.

It has been cool here and is actually raining today. We are planning on leaving Saturday morning and if the weather cooperates, we are thinking of returning to Vernon where the motorhome is waiting for us, via the Yellowhead Highway 16 with it's better view of the Rocky Mountains.

This has been a great little vacation for us.

Rocky Mountain High!

We made it as far as Golden, BC today. It was raining when we left Kelowna but it had let up by the time we dropped the Motorhome off with our friend Tanis in Vernon. She has a garlic farm with lots of room to park and even offered us some power to keep the fridge running. The solar panels would probably handle it but with the dreary weather forecasts we accepted her offer. We will stock up on garlic on the way home!

We are heading to Lacombe, Alberta to visit my niece Robin and George. We are taking the car to save a few $ in gas.

Data Hog

I Tethered for a half hour while we did our individual banking and emails and it used up about 300 MB of data, way more than expected. The extra two GB I just bought for $32 will be used up very quickly. We are using the park's free wifi at the office right now.

One more night in Kelowna and then we are storing the motorhome at a friend's farm in Vernon and taking the car across the Rockies to visit my niece Robin in Lacombe Alberta, After that, we shall see as neither of us has to be home until the end of the month.

Back On Line

I am almost back on line. My motorhome Wi-Fi device failed and naturally my device and plan is no longer offered. So...... I am experimenting with tethering my smart phone to my tablet and this is the result.

Kelowna, Part Two

We drank a whole bottle of wine between us last night and that is why the TV dish would not line up. OK, lesson learned. I tried again this morning with no luck when Colin offered to help. He had a compass (which I had left at home) and some local knowledge. He took one look and told me I was too close to the hedge. He was right. We moved the dish a couple of feet back, turned on the TV and it was working! Thanks Colin.

We made an attempt to go to one of the local wineries, Grey Monk, but when we arrived at the highway traffic was lined up in both directions as far as the eye could see. We didn't need that so we returned to the rig and are blogging and reading. A nice, quiet day.

Kelowna!

We left Oliver at about 10:30 and after a propane stop, headed for Kelowna. Our friends Colin and Contessa live at Holiday Park Resort, about 20 KM north of Kelowna and that is where we had reservations. We checked in, hooked up the power and headed to our friends lakeside site for Happy Hour which turned into much longer than an hour.

We came back to the rig and made a half hearted attempt to set up the TV but gave up until daylight tomorrow when it will be a little easier.