Taxes!

I think I am done! Six hours of going through mail, sorting and entering. I have taxes deducted from my main pension cheque but not from my two Government cheques. Norma has no taxes deducted from any of her cheques. This means we always have to write a cheque at tax time, it is only the amount that is in question. We had a lot of medical expenses last year with Norma's dental specialist in Victoria. The government is quite generous in allowing travel and meal allowances for these trips. $51 per day for meals and $.52 per kilometer for driving your own car. With five return trips to Victoria in the year this adds up.

I finally got everything entered and discovered we owed $1,100 between us. Not bad, could be worse. I then did the tax program's built-in review and it suggested splitting our income. Why not? After doing this change, we owed only $450 between us! Very manageable!

I will leave it in the computer for a day or two and then send it in. This is a big worry off my mind!

There's No Place Like Home!

We are home! On the way up from Brooks and Linda's a car pulled up beside me and told me I had no brake lights! I stopped to check and indeed I had no brake lights on the motorhome or on the car dolly! The emergency flashers worked which was strange because I was always under the impression that the way to test the brake lights was to turn on the emergency flashers. I wonder what could be wrong? The rest of the way home I turned on the flashers before I applied the brakes.

My new desktop computer was waiting for me and I fired it up and started deleting the garbage that comes with new computers. The process did not seem to take as long as it usually does. This is the first Acer I have bought, maybe that is the reason. Tomorrow I will attach the laser printer I bought on the way home. It will really be nice not having to constantly deal with empty or dried up ink jet reservoirs.

Our house sitter has done a great job of sorting the mail. The usual pile we are faced with when we get home is greatly reduced. I easily found the tax program I ordered online and loaded it on the new machine. Tomorrow we will find all the tax related mail and start entering it.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know we are home safe and sound. We will be busy for the next few days and may not have much to report. Everyone have a great day and thanks for sticking with us.

I will do a budget comparison between this year back in Mexico and last year in the USA. I will have it within a few days. 

Fencing And Moving On

We spent a few hours putting up a split rail fence at Brooks and Linda's. They had quite a bit of material left over from a job and decided to use it on their driveway. It went up quite easily although I picked up a few slivers along the way. It was a fun couple of days here in Shawnigan Lake but it is now time to head up Island. Brooks and Linda just got the go ahead on a big job that they can start in a week or so, so their income is secure for the first part of the summer!

Canada Customs

A piece of cake!

We drove off the ferry in Victoria and up to the inspection booth. He asked how long were we away? Five and a half months, four of those in Mexico. How much in goods are you bringing back? $1,439. How much wine? We thought we had four bottles but when we were sorting everything out last night we found two more, so we have six. We will throw out two bottles if we have to. How much liquor other than the wine? More than we are allowed but it is all open, partly full bottles. How many cigarettes? Four cartons. Four? Yes, two each. You are only allowed one each. Oh, sorry, I thought we were allowed two. Is that all you have? Yes. Welcome back to Canada, have a good day.

As a bonus, the ferry made an error measuring the rig. We are 49.5 feet tip to tail. Usually they say 49 feet and once in a while, 50. Today he measured it, wrote out the slip for me to take to the cashier and told us which lane to go to. As I was walking back to pay, I looked at the paper to see what he wrote. It said, "Motorhome 31 ' , trailer 7'" That is a total of only 38 feet! I thought for a minute about questioning it but quickly reconsidered and just paid what they asked. It cost us $260 to go to the States and only $160 to come back! Good deal!

Port Angeles, WA

We drove up 101 along the Hood Canal yesterday. I always like this drive although it is twisty with lots of narrow sections and inclines. We stopped at an RV repair place as the water heater had quit functioning on Thursday night. It would fire but then went out instantly. He looked at it and said, "It is lighting but it doesn't know it is lit". He bent the temperature sensor a little so it was closer to the flame and everything worked again and the best part was, "no charge"!

We pulled into the Port Angeles Walmart along with six other rigs and had a nice quiet night. Norma added up all our purchases for the past 5 1/2 months and surprisingly, we are almost at our $1,500 limit! We did not realize we bought all that much but all added together, it was about $1,400. The new laser printer and BluRay player helped. We are way over on our booze limit but we will do as we always do, fess up to everything and offer to dump some out. All the bottles are partly empty so they always give us a break. We are obviously not bringing it in for resale and they tend to treat RV's more like "homes" than vehicles. Hopefully this year will be the same.

We are in the ferry lineup now. It is 7:30 and the boat loads at 8:00 We should be at Brooks and Linda's by noon.

Centralia, WA

It was a long drive in the rain today. Welcome back to the Pacific Northwest!

After a steep climb over the hills on the way to the Columbia River, the check engine light came on again! Very annoying! We tried to find a Meineke Car Center to get it checked and hopefully reset again but the first one the GPS lead us to was no longer there and the second was blocked by road construction. It will have to wait.

We headed up I-5 in a pouring rain storm and pulled off at Centralia and it's very RV friendly Walmart. We stocked up on a few things that we wanted to take home like Tilamook cheese and cheap USA butter and settled down to watch TV. Tomorrow we will drive to Port Angeles for the night and catch one of the two Saturday ferries to the Island. The party is over!

Maupin, Oregon

Two nights in Crystal Crane Hot Springs and it was time to move on. The water was great but the hundred foot trek to get to it in the cold made me pucker!

We headed out intending to drive about 260 miles to Hood River and it's Walmart but we had to stop in Burns to dump (no dumping at Crystal Crane) at the Chevron station. There was a Les Schwab Tires just down the street and we had a slow leak in one of the dolly tires. It turned out to be a nail and while we were there we asked them to check and adjust all the tire pressures. There was no charge for the flat repair! We have had several free flat repairs from Les Schwab over the years and bought our last set of motorhome tires from them.

All this delay made us late getting on the road so when we got to the tiny town of Maupin on Hwy 197 it was after 5:00 so we looked for a place to stay. There were signs pointing to a city owned RV park so we went to look. It is a tiny park on the river with no pull throughs but there is also a large gravel parking area across the street. It was posted as parking with a note to pay at the city RV park office. We pulled in and I asked how much to park over there with no hookups. $20. I asked how much for the RV park and it is $20 as well. Hardly seems fair as we have no hookups. Oh well, I don't want to unload the car and dolly for one night. We do get their WIFI over here and I set up the Starchoice dish. I will watch the Canucks..... They are down 0 - 3 games and could be eliminated tonight. The best team in the league getting trounced by one of the worst!

Crystal Crane Hot Springs, OR

We eventually made it to Winnemucca, NV yesterday. I say eventually because the GPS took us the wrong way. I looked at Google Maps and it said Winnemucca was 199 miles from Tenopah. I then set the GPS for Winnemucca and followed the directions. After driving for an hour or so things did not look right. We were heading towards Hawthorne which is not on the route at all. I checked the mileage to destination on the GPS and it read 250 miles! It had sent us on a different route and added 100 miles and 10 to 12 gallons of gas to our day's drive! By now it was not worth it to turn around so we kept going the way we were told. Another reminder to double check the GPS and to add a little common sense to her instructions.

We got to the Walmart in Winnemucca only to find my Virgin Broadband did not have a signal and there were no free WIFI signals available. We were dark! I set up the Starchoice so at least I could watch the hockey game. This is really not "etiquette" while parked in Walmart where you are just supposed to "park" and not "camp". You are not even supposed to extend your slide but Norma had spent about $150 in the store so I felt we had more than paid for our parking. I managed to set the dish up between the car and the motorhome where it was really hard to notice so I was in "stealth mode". I may as well have saved the effort as it was a terrible game for the Canucks who are down 0 - 3 in the series.

We left this morning heading into Oregon without a clear destination in mind. We were just going to drive until we got tired. We were on the same route as last year which took us past the Crystal Crane Hot Springs and it's $9 Passport America rate. As we neared the hot springs the wind and rain started up so the decision was made. We pulled in and I ran over to register. When I got back to the rig I was already soaked so I stopped long enough to plug in the power. This is not good for the cold I am fighting off!

After an hour the rain stopped and the sun came out so I set up the dish. It went pretty easy and moments after we got the signal it started to rain again. We are nicely hunkered down here and I just might make my way over to the hot springs later for a soak. The WIFI is great here. The $9 rate is just a "teaser" for the first night only but the second night is still only $18 less 10% Good Sam Club discount so two nights for just over $25 is not bad at all. If we decide to stay. It would let me watch the hockey game tomorrow night. For what that is worth....

Travel Day

No more snow overnight and this morning is bright and sunny, if a little cold. It is a good day for travel. I am not feeling right up to par so we will aim for around 200 miles, or about four hours driving time today. That will put us in Winnemucca, NV and a Walmart where we stayed previously. The weather is supposed to be a little better there and the altitude is a little lower.

Snowed In

Like the Donner party, we got snowed in! It started snowing at seven or so last night and continued until there was a couple of inches on top of the car and road. It was blowing and swirling pretty good all night and this morning the fresh water hose is frozen. We are using our internal water supply until I get brave enough to go and unhook the hose and try to get it into the cab of the motorhome to thaw. I forgot for a moment that we are at 5430 feet altitude here!

Wunderground.com is calling for 45F today with a chance of thunderstorms. Warmer weather (54ish) is on the way starting tomorrow. I think we will stay hunkered down here for the day where we have electricity, water and Starchoice. The bare necessities of life! There is another electric heater stored in one of the outside bins that I will have to brave the elements to find.

I miss the Tropics!