Sunday 14 July 2013

The First 2 1/2 weeks!



Two and  a half weeks ago today we officially moved into our 28ft Airstream!!
For the first 2 nights we ‘camped’ at Can Am in London ON, while the weight distributing hitch was put on the Trailer, the hitch on the truck was reinforced AND the solar panels were attached to the roof!

 After our house sale closed on June 4, we moved to a short-term-rental Condo in Mississauga. [John was still working, so we decided to be closer to his Peel office.]  However, we had put a lot of boxes, bins and things in a neighbour’s garage on the last day in the house. Most of our possessions, including the furniture had already been put into a storage locker at Kennedy and Stouffville side road. Unfortunately the lock on the neighbour’s garage door broke on Tuesday night. It locked, but would not unlock! Here we were with bins for the storage locker, some for the Airstream, some for Value Village and some with garbage- but no access!! The locksmith who was supposed to come Friday night, then 9am Saturday, still hadn’t shown up by 11am Saturday, so we took the few boxes we had already taken to the condo, to London to put in the RV  [not as much as we hoped though, as the elevator folks were on strike and there was one elevator for 35 floors in the condo building!!].
All this meant that, when we left the condo to begin our Airstream life, almost EVERYTHING had to be taken in ONE trip in our new Dodge Ram 1500!! [We still didn’t get everything in it spite of repacking 4 times, so we had to take another trip to the Storage Locker!!] The truck was packed to the roof. The folks at Can Am looked and chuckled and showed John where the dumpster was!! They didn’t believe we’d ever make it fit!
While work was being done on the truck, I unpacked and stored!! And unpacked and stored some more!!
Finally we were ready to leave. We had had an orientation walk-through of every part of the trailer, how to connect the hitch, and John had a long lesson on towing, turning and backing up! We pulled away and decided, since we had lots of time to get to our first camp, that we’d practice signals and communicating the back-up procedure at the old Ford Plant down the street. We pulled in, set up a “driveway” and began- only to hear a loud crash! We figured something had come amiss and slid across the floor. When we checked inside, we found the bathroom mirror had fallen off the wall. Luckily we were close to Can Am, so back we went! They quickly had a new mirror cut nearby, and installed!
Our first stop was Turkey Point Provincial Park- a beautiful spot, but it rained non-stop for 2 days! For the long July 1st weekend, we were able to stay in a private park-Lawson’s Campground- another beautiful spot.
We had a pull-through site in both places- so no back-up with the trailer yet! With instructions in hand, however, I directed while John unhitched the trailer!
Then on to Beautiful Bronte Provincial Park! We stayed in the ‘Prairie Campground’. The sites are “carved” out of tall grasses and wildflowers! 
Luckily we stayed relatively close to London, as the Solar output was not registering! So we had to go back to Can Am Camping for one more night, while they looked at it, and also the mystery of the pulsing water pump! It turned out to be 2 simple fixes- recrimping a connecting wire, and removing shavings from the pump screen!!
We are now at Glen Rouge so we can visit with daughter Cindy, and our friends in the East end of Toronto, before moving to Montreal to visit with John’s Mum, and then off to Campgrounds to the WEST!!

2 comments:

  1. Let me be the first to wish you both a wonderful adventure and to thank you allowing those not yet so free to accompany you through this blog on your journey.

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  2. Thanks Jim. We are having a blast!! We are actually in Montreal for the next week.

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